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Leopard Upgraders Getting "Blue Screen of Death"
Posted by
kdawson
on Sat Oct 27, 2007 02:58 PM
from the they're-called-haxies-for-a-reason dept.
from the they're-called-haxies-for-a-reason dept.
Z80xxc! writes "Some Mac users upgrading to Apple's new Leopard operating system are encountering long delays on reboot — an experience they liken to the Windows 'Blue Screen of Death.' While some of those upgrading were able to access their computer after waiting for as long as several hours, others were forced to do a complete reinstall. Some suspect that a framework called 'Application Enhancer' by Unsanity LLC may be causing the problem, but there has been no official word from Apple at this point."
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Archive and install (Score:5, Interesting)
Archive and install!
It's the safest way to upgrade. Yes, it's less convenient, but way better than finding out that some 3rd party tweak is not compatible the hard way...
Re:Archive and install (Score:5, Informative)
Then restore the data from the backup drive, erase the backup drive and then you can turn on time machine.
See, those years of doing Windows upgrades finally paid off for something
Or, if you actually get the blue screen:
1. Reboot into single-user mode (hold Cmd-S while booting machine)
2. Follow the directions OSX gives you when you get to the prompt (I think these were them - just type the two commands it tells you to):
fsck -fy /
3. Remove the following files:
rm -rf
rm -rf
rm -rf
rm -rf
4. Exit, to continue booting normally
exit
Via: http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=1195031&tstart=0 [apple.com]
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Re:Archive and install (Score:5, Funny)
(Laugh. It's funny.)
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Re:Archive and install (Score:5, Informative)
3. Remove the following files:
rm -rf "/Library/Preference Panes/Application Enhancer.prefpane"
rm -rf "/Library/Frameworks/Application Enhancer.framework"
rm -rf "/System/Library/SystemConfiguration/Application Enhancer.bundle"
rm -rf "/Library/Preferences/com.unsanity.ape.plist"
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Re:Archive and install (Score:5, Insightful)
I get mod points quite often and I've fucked up applying them a few times. Each time it was related to the fact that the current UI for moderating is drop down menu (which is just fine) that applies whatever moderation is selected immediately upon being clicked (no fine). This would be halfway fine if there were some means to un-mod a post, or at least re-mod it, but there is not.If my mouse pointer is off slightly when I click an item in the list I'll have applied the wrong moderation and can do nothing about it.
This is obviously dumb. I don't want to be bothered like I'm using Windows, but some things involving user selections on a computer need either a confirmation step that is distinct from the selection or have a Back button.
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Re:Archive and install (Score:5, Informative)
- Plain old upgrade. Just lays down the new OS on top of the old one
- Archive and install. Takes a backup of your current stuff, lays down a clean OS, and recovers your stuff from the backup it made
- Erase and install. Erases the disk/partition, and installs the OS.
(2) or (3) are the best option. I use (3) because my home directory is on a different disk to my boot disk, and I did that on purpose so I could do nice clean installs. (2) works well too though.
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Re:Archive and install (Score:4, Interesting)
Anyway, I'm a bit non-plussed with Leopard. The "stacks" thing is really lame. Used to be you could put a folder in the same spot and get a menu -- nice way to navigate through applications, particularly for those who don't like a giant slab of apps but prefer to have them organized by type, e.g., networking, graphics, games, etc. The stacks are only one level deep -- if you click on a folder, it just opens in Finder. This is very non-ideal.
The real deal killer is X11 though -- totally borked. If you launch it from the applications/utilities folder, it doesn't even launch. You have launch it from it's actual location under
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Re:Archive and install (Score:4, Funny)
iqu
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Re:Archive and install (Score:5, Informative)
But don't you have to then reinstall all of your apps? That's like Win98 logic.
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Re:Archive and install (Score:5, Informative)
1) Grab application or directory off
2) Grab plists from ~/Library/Preferences
3) Copy any related resources from
4) Check in
About 90% of applications are fully migrated after step 1)
This doesn't cover drivers or other wierdness like PreferencePanes, but those are usually stand alone files that can be copied over.
Parent
Re:Archive and install (Score:4, Insightful)
1) the registry entries may be spread over various sections of the registry. Offhand, I can recall
-HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE
-HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software
-HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT (have fun searching through that)
2) fishing out the DLLS may require an extra tool like Dependency Walker (URL:http://www.dependencywalker.com/). Easy enough if you know such a tool, but it may be somewhat beyond a newbie.
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Re:Archive and install (Score:5, Informative)
When you drag an application from a disk image to anywhere on the system, Apple's launch services register the application, based on the configuration within the application bundle. It has nothing to do with the
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Re:Archive and install (Score:5, Informative)
If you're going to criticize something it helps if you have the slightest clue what you're talking about. Try actually using a Mac sometime, you might be pleasantly surprised.
There's nothing special about the
By contrast, Windows applications have a tendency to sprawl over the hard drive, copying things into shared system-wide resource directories because that is how a library is registered in the windows world. The windows start menu is used to cut through what would otherwise be a very cluttered place, the "\Program Files" directory.
On the Mac the equivalent, "/Applications" contains the actual application in it's entirety. Again; in contrast linking applications into the Start Menu is one of the many functions of an installer in Windows. Without installers you wouldn't have any idea where the application went and would have to navigate the troubled waters of "\Program Files" alone.
The other magic usually handled by installers in Windows happens when you first load an application, at which point it exchanges information with the OS, the OS from that point on knows where on the disk the application is so that even if you move it around the filesystem hierarchy it will still be able to find it, it also exchanges information about what mimetypes the app would like to be associated with so that it can show up in the "open with..." list for certain file types and declare itself able to handle any types of files it might create.
If you need to register system services, then you need an application installer or a monkey willing to do it by hand (a user, for example). In that case mac applications install like Windows ones, by using an installer package.
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Re:Archive and install (Score:4, Informative)
On Windows, most file type associations are done by installers. Occasionally the app itself does them when it's launched (many people object to that unless it's optional though). Either way, they are stored in the registry as a path to the EXE. If you move it, the link breaks. If you copy the app to a new system, the link doesn't exist.
On a Mac, as soon as the system sees the app (regardless of where it is), you can open file types that belong to it with a double click. It's been like that for decades, so yes, in this regard, it is easier on a Mac.
As for the other support files, it's a little more complicated. On Windows, you have DLLs that are sometimes in the app's folder, but are often in the
On a Mac, they may be in a few places too, but usually they are pretty obvious. They are often found in appropriately named folders either the Application Support or Preferences folders in either
So, again, it's a little easier.
On a Mac, you could even rename the
Personally, I don't think OS X outshines Windows in most cases, but these are the kinds of things it does do very well.
*Everything except Apple's own Software Updates, although most people would consider this a bug. Apps and file type associations would still work though.
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Re:Archive and install (Score:4, Informative)
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Re:Archive and install (Score:5, Informative)
It also moves all your preference settings and fonts to another folder, and cleans out the startup items list. (fonts and preferences are the only two things that normally leak beyond the app container (there's a few other exceptions for special apps, but as a rule installing an app does not barf all over your computer with DLLs and Registry hooks. On macs, the OS polls the App in Applications folder for its capabilities and files it likes to open, so the app does not need to modify a registry. as a result unistalls are normally as simple as dragging the app out of the application folder.
So after an archive and install you drag back the things you want to keep. The only hassle is sometimes you need to look for the associated preference setting which is where most apps store their activation key.
A few non apple apps behave linux like and shove things into
Rumor was that apple worked hard to make the non-archive and install mode (update) smart enough to remove all the bad crap and leave the okay crap. Apparently not!
But if it is APE then well then that's kinda understandable its the singlemost invasive kernel mod of all.
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Re:APE is *not* a kernel mod. (Score:4, Interesting)
Apple removed the functionality which makes APE work by the reason of one anonymous idiot coding a horribly coded Trojan horse abusing Input Managers.
I don't know if US law supports it but Unsanity should sue Macfixit or a similar FUD spreading company for $1. Let them prove APE does anything bad to OS scientifically or pay the $1.
As I am preparing for Leopard on this system, I uninstalled APE (Unsanity recommends not doing it) and see how "evil" "performance killing", "system crashing" thing APE was. No, the idiotically coded Applications still crash with trivial reasons, System still boots in exact time which it booted before and I am staring at Mr. Jobs favorite widget graphics knowing the fact that I will stare at them for a long time until Unsanity codes shapeshifter for leopard.
My FreeBSD/Debian/Slackware using nerd friends and system admins happily changes how their desktop looks but on a $190 (family license) OS, I am not allowed. I can't even change mouse pointer which I did back on Windows 95 and even X11 on AIX allows!
Apple invited thousands or hundreds of thousands of people who aren't happy with their desktop look to binary hack their OS resource files. That is what they did instead of removing InputManagers from home directory or secure them.
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Re:Funny (Score:5, Informative)
If you had Linux apps that worked the way APE does, it would bring down the entire system, too. The only reason you don't is that Linux doesn't have a community of people who long for the olden days of Mac OS 9. I'll explain.
Back in Mac OS 9, apps didn't have protected memory, and thus you could write extensions to the OS that quite literally rewrote parts of applications and the OS itself. Mac OS X uses a more proper model like Linux. However, some people still want to do those sorts of mods to the OS. The result was that the Unsanity folks created APE. APE basically sits down at the linker level and starts an additional thread with its own code running inside the address space of the target application. This thread then loads plug-ins that modify the behavior of the app.
You should immediately see the problem with this. You have a bunch of people who don't have anything to do with the author of an application writing code that mass-modifies dozens of applications, libraries, etc., essentially doing binary patching on the running OS. There's no other phrase to describe this other than mind-bogglingly dangerous. In a biological comparison, it's like rewriting the genetic code of the entire planet using only a single person as a template---as soon as you hit a person with slightly different biology, the patch goes completely wrong. Similarly, when APE tries to operate on new versions of the OS, new versions of applications, new versions of frameworks and libraries, etc., it tends to result in cutting a path of destruction rather than enhancing anything.
What blows my mind is that APE isn't smart enough to check the OS version and NOT LOAD. It is truly unbelievable. How hard is it to say if [ "$(sw_vers -productVersion | sed -E 's/([0-9]+\.[0-9]+)\..*/\1/')" != "10.4" ] ; then syslog -s "unknown OS version." ; exit 0; fi? Every OS release, APE causes some sort of major problem for a lot of users. Every OS release, people just keep coming back and reinstalling it even after seeing the fallout. I just don't get it. It's like Stockholm Syndrome or something....
IMHO, the Unsanity team should be taken out and beaten with wet noodles until the mere sight of a Chinese restaurant causes them to have nightmares for a year.
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Re:Funny (Score:5, Funny)
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Why Linux doesn't have this problem. (Score:5, Interesting)
I've done that as well. I mean, binary patching the actual OS, not just applications running in userland. Sometimes you gotta do it.
If you knew what GNU libc does to try and avoid having to make people rebuild applications when upgrading libraries, you'd run screaming. They have code in there to look for libraries at runtime and dynamically load different variants of other libraries depending on what you're using and what you have installed. The glibc team has people who do nothing but look for cases where they have to adapt for different libraries and different kernel versions.
The reason that you don't have more of a problem on Linux is that there's no central Steve Jobs for Linux who dictates the way the GUI works, so if you don't like the way Enlightenment or fvwm or Windowmaker behaves, you can change it. The downside of this is that there's no single framework you can modify or replace to make global changes. There used to be, back when everyone used Athena Widgets, and you could replace libXaw with libXaw95 to get a Windows 95 look, or with libXawSTeP to get a NeXTSTeP look. Now, instead, you get Battluin GUIs between the Gnome and KDE yobbos.
And there's all kinds of Windows hacks that do similar stuff to APE, from development tools to simple user interface enhancements. And, yes, they can cause problems and break in new versions of the OS.
What Unsanity has done is to create a framework that makes this kind of thing relatively safe compared to having everyone build their own. Unfortunately since they're not at Apple or someone that Apple is willing to support (because they are undoing the things that The Steve has decreed) there's an unhealthy passive-aggressive relationship between Apple and Unsanity that doesn't exist between (say) Debian and the glibc team.
And, yes, they should be disabling themselves on upgrade. And Apple should look at the things that people are using Haxies for and make the things they are trying to get rid of optional.
The other thing is, on Windows people simply don't put their trust in having an upgrade work. They do clean installs. And they wait on upgrading Windows until this kind of thing gets shaken out.
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Re:Funny (Score:5, Informative)
You meant why doesn't APE do this?
SInt32 vers = 0;
err = Gestalt(gestaltSystemVersion, &vers);
if (err or (vers >= 0x1050))
{
return paramErr;
}
(which I just took from the APE source code).
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Re:Funny (Score:4, Informative)
http://www.unsanity.org/archives/haxies/leopard.php [unsanity.org]
Personally, I think APE and the Unsanity haxies are %$^%$ and I stay as far away from them as I can!
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jesus h christ (Score:3, Insightful)
"oh no this 3rd party application which adds dubious and useless enhancements to my system is causing my computer to not work upon upgrading to a completely new version!"
bust out the slashdot article I guess
Re:jesus h christ (Score:5, Interesting)
Me: "Hi APE is causing crashes on my mac"
Unsanity: "No it's not, it can't. This is why.... "
Me: "OK, that makes sense thanks"
two weeks later
Me: "Hi, APE definitely is causing crashes on my mac"
Unsanity: "No, it can't be, because... "
Me: "I just did a fresh install. it survived multiple reboots in its completely standard configuration. I installed APE, now X, Y and Z all crash"
Unsanity: "Well it's not APE, because APE does
Me: "I removed APE, and instantly it's working again"
Unsanity: "Well it can't be APE, because
Me: "Fuck you"
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Mod parent up (Score:5, Interesting)
And no matter how much better OS X is than Windows w/r/t the "it just works" aspect, things can and do still go wrong sometimes. A little pre-upgrade basic system maintenance never hurts (at least repair permissions and verify/repair the target disk from Disk Utility on the Leopard CD), and neither does making a bootable clone of the system in case you have to revert.
~Philly
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Re:Mod parent up (Score:4, Interesting)
Logitech mouse/keyboard drivers install them for you, without asking or telling you! It's not entirely the user that's to blame - even a reasonably careful user won't notice surreptitious installs like this. Logitech's method of bundling it is vaguely like spyware, I'd say.
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Re:Mod parent up (Score:4, Insightful)
I just started getting into Apple stuff with the release of the G4 Mac Mini. I then subsequently got a Mac Pro to replace my main machine which was running Linux. I decided to give OS X a fair chance to see if really was better than Linux.
In my experience "it just works" is far from accurate. It's definitely a slick environment and worth using, but comes with enough issues that it doesn't live up to the hype. But I guess its a mistake to listen to the hype (Apple's products fell far short of my expectations due to hype).
The problem, as with any commercial vendor, is that you are often stuck waiting for the company to fix things. For example, iLife apps crash. They crash a *LOT*. What can you possibly do other than wait for them to fix the bugs? OS X itself is usually pretty solid. Occasional something just won't work right. Sometimes I actually have to REBOOT to fix things. This is just not what I expect from an OS based on UNIX. I suspect (partially from experience) that they just haven't gotten it together after the Intel switch.
Apple's products have just as many problems as any other OS vendor. They may be different problems, but don't believe anyone who says they don't exist. And Apple is a company that is constantly changing things (OS9 -> OSX, PowerPC -> Intel, frequent OS updates), so you can't possibly expect stability from them. Having control over the hardware apparently still isn't enough to achieve this.
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Re:jesus h christ (Score:5, Informative)
However, recently Logitech has started using APE as a part of their driver package for their mice and keyboards, in effect installing something known to cause headaches behind people's backs.
Therefore the many people that use Logitech products may have APE without explicitly having installed it.
Either way, I can hardly see how Apple is at fault.
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Re:jesus h christ (Score:4, Informative)
I just found a tool called "ape_install" in the resources of the logitech prefpane
Rosyna, FUCK YOU and logitech both.
-jcr
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Re:jesus h christ (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:jesus h christ (Score:4, Insightful)
Not only did Ubuntu have people going insane over that, but they also had the "is not ready for the desktop" memes all over the place and stupid crap about issues that haven't existed for a decade in Linux.
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the offical word from unsanity is it's broken (Score:5, Informative)
http://www.wire-heads.com/istrip/index.php?strip_id=26
Leopard install with Application Enhancer (Score:4, Informative)
Application Enhancer is trouble (Score:3, Insightful)
Also, rule of thumb: 100% clean installs are always the safe way to go. Back up your stuff, wipe the HD, then restore as needed.
Re:Application Enhancer is trouble (Score:5, Informative)
I'm not aware of anything quite as straightforward as copying files to an external hard drive and copying them back, but with Ubuntu it goes something like this:
Then on the new system: Then Ubuntu goes back to the repositories and grabs everything again.Parent
Safe Mode (Score:5, Informative)
There is no need to reinstall when something can be removed easily with a safe boot. Too bad Apple doesn't talk up safe booting more so people will know it is there.
come on, Apple, move into the 21st century (Score:5, Insightful)
Too bad Apple doesn't do the user-friendly thing, which is to offer users "safe mode" when the previous boot failed. That's what both Linux and Windows do, and it's the right thing to do (well, even better would be detecting and disabling broken extensions, but I guess that's too hard for any of them).
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iBSOD (Score:5, Funny)
Boot verbosely (Score:5, Informative)
Of course, I'm a cli guy
Oh, irony... (Score:4, Funny)
Unsanity's APE is a nasty hack (Score:4, Informative)
The Unsanity hacks have been a source of trouble for many users for several years. Unsanity has vehemently denied that their products are the trouble, and by a twisted piece of logic, it is the application itself which is misbehaving when things go wrong. It's not hard to find heated discussions of these things on message boards and sites like versiontracker.com and macupgrade.com. The source of the disagreements might be related to how long a person leaves an application open, with the probability of mayhem increasing with time since launch. These remarks relate to pre-Leopard versions of the OS; it seems that Unsanity is finally caught with their pants down and no place to crap.
20 and counting..... (Score:5, Informative)
Thats 10 G5's and 4 Mac Pro's with upgrades.
Thats 4 MacBook Pros reformats.
Thats 2 Powerbooks with archive and install.
You can mod me any way you like, but it wont change the success I've had with Leopard....Awesome.
Re:When posting replies to this article (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:When posting replies to this article (Score:5, Insightful)
Just remember, if windows got taken down by a third party app, not only would you be screaming and shouting...
Not under circumstances like this, we wouldn't. Some of Unsanity's programs are pretty invasive little things that fuck around with the OS in ways that Apple doesn't support. From their site:
So yeah, if you have even a vague understanding of what this product does, it shouldn't be any surprise that it could cause problems if you threw it on a new/unknown version of the operating system. This isn't just a "3rd party application". It's not like if Windows crashed when you installed Firefox (which Microsoft would get criticized for), but more like if Windows crashed when you tried to use an obscure and invasive 3rd party WindowsXP hack on Windows Vista (which Microsoft would not get criticized for).
And it's not even clear that OSX itself crashed (as in a kernel panic). For as few details are available, it could just be that Finder or the installer crashed, which wouldn't be surprising if APE is screwing around with those applications' memory space.
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Re:When posting replies to this article (Score:5, Insightful)
I've noticed that is the latest groupthink to make the rounds. it's a statement about as useful as "i know I'll get modded down for this..." which inevitably gets modded up.
There are a lot of people on slashdot (and I guess in the world in general) who seem to enjoy being the victim of some massive conspiracy, rather than perhaps recognizing that when lots of people disagree with them it really is just a lot of people thinking they're wrong.
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I hate monopolies! (Score:5, Funny)
Damn that evil Microsoft monopoly!!! Always forcing everyone to use their products!!
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Re:Java 6 NOT included in Leopard (Score:4, Interesting)
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indeed (Score:5, Funny)
You're right: Ubuntu kicks Apple's ass not just in terms of included functionality, graphics, and price, but also in terms of smooth upgrades.
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The problem IS caused by Application Enhancer (Score:5, Informative)
There's no suspicion about it; that's exactly what's causing the problem. Application Enhancer is an input manager, and input managers are no longer supported in Leopard. People installing it knew the risks they were taking when they installed it on Tiger. Instructions have already been posted online on how to remove Application Enhancer from the command-line.
Sorry, there's no big "BSOD" error in Leopard's install. It's a hacky piece of software people shouldn't have been installing in the first place.
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Re:hmmm.... (Score:4, Funny)
Yeah, Unsanity is like the syphillis of the Mac world. However, being Mac-based, it's good-looking syphillis that's easy to use.
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