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Leopard Upgraders Getting "Blue Screen of Death"
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."
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...
In addition Apple have pulled support for time machine on airport disks in the last minute. Big stinker. It's bad enough that Aperture can't use airport disks for vaults...
TCAP-Abort
people are so fucking stupid
"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
Unsanity is officially listed by the company not to worik with 10.5
http://www.wire-heads.com/istrip/index.php?strip_id=26
I have done this on two Macs so far, my PowerBook G4 @1.5 GHz and a G5 iMac @2.1 GHz Both have Application Enhancer as well as Fruit Menu, WindowShade X and other Unsanity products installed. They still show up in System Preferences, but are not functioning. I'm hoping for updates soon. However, their presence in my systems had no ill effect on my Leopard upgrades.
I had used Application Enhancer for a while, but Photoshop became very crash-prone; a friend reported Safari crashes after installing it. I wouldn't suggest it to anyone.
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.
Circumcision is child abuse.
Yep, and it would be tagged as "defectivebydesign" and "haha". You know, MS is a near-monopoly so their products do deserve a good deal of good old unfair bashing...
Anyone experiencing this should try holding shift while booting. Any additional frameworks, kexts, and whatever will be left out and the system will boot cleanly. If that works, then the offending software should show up in a log and can be identified and removed.
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.
It really IS catching up with Vista!
You see? You see? Your stupid minds! Stupid! Stupid!
I don't see what hippos have to do with this, but if you're making some comparison about the weight and gracefulness of a hippo with MS then I'm with you...
Any time there is a major OS version, it's foolhardy to 'Upgrade' in that there is no way for the vendor (in this case Apple) to possibly test for each potential configuration. While it's true that this may make the move to a new platform base take longer (with needed software reinstallation) it's the best way to ensure a smooth transition, and also assist the end-user AND the software vendors in question to bug squash.
It's easy to point fingers, and the upgrade process should in truth be discontinued altogether (imco) and rather provide utilities that will help a user migrate personal settings and preferences to a new build via a back-up utility of some type. To be fair, Apple does a GREAT job by providing the archive and install method which goes half-way but does not provide the opportunity to 'archive and clean install' which would be the ideal case.
For myself, I can't wait to step into the time machine, and also get the new features available in the OS X Server product.
if I claimed I was emperor just because some watery tart lobbed a scimitar at me they'd put me away!
This is hardly the first time Unsanity's stuff has caused problems with a new version of OS X. If people are too damned dumb to uninstall their unsupported-hack add-ons before upgrading, that's their problem, not Apple's.
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
Hippocracy? Is that the system of government where horses are the ruling class?
Command-v during the boot chime (or "sudo nvram boot-args=-v" to set it permanently). This shows a lot of "scary" unixy output, but it's great for diagnosing a boot problem.
:).
Of course, I'm a cli guy
It isn't. A kernel panic is the Mac OS X equivalent of a BSOD. If the machine takes hours to launch after an upgrade, or doesn't launch at all, it's a different kind of failure. I speak from first-hand experience, as this happened to me. Thankfully I keep good daily backups.
You can either give up on an upgrade and do a fresh install or an archive/install. If you want to be able to upgrade, try this to manually get rid of APE: Please note that this does involve manipulation of files from the root prompt. This is not for the faint-of-heart, or those who are unfamiliar with the UNIX file system/command structure. 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 / /sbin/mount -uw /
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
4. Exit, to continue booting normally
exit
or else!
What makes this all the more ironic is that in the new CoverFlow Finder, PCs on the network are displayed with a Blue Screen of Death... teeeheee!
I hate monopolies, and I am posting from my Apple computer, which uses Apple's OSX, and has an Apple mouse, keyboard, and monitor. I connect wirelessly through my Apple router, email with my Apple webmail account. I'm also listening to music on my Apple iPod, which I purchased from my Apple iTunes account.
Damn that evil Microsoft monopoly!!! Always forcing everyone to use their products!!
1) backup your home directories first
2) do not let the install do a straight upgrade, use the archive and install option or erase/install if you have reliable backups and can afford a little risk and a little more work
3) remove any programs that integrate themselves with the OS (hint: these will often add new preference options to the system preferences pane). These programs almost always have issues during an upgrade and are often not supported right away by new operating systems due to their nature.
These are just some basic guidelines, but if you have any specific questions or concerns, ask Apple and search for answers prior to installation. Not rocket science, but most users have never upgraded their own OS before and Apple makes it appear that anyone can do it without the slightest worry. That's close to the truth, but not close enough.
Creationists are a lot like zombies. Slow, but powerful and numerous. And they all want to eat our brains.
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.
There are similar Windows applications that modify the OS. They have been known to not work on new versions of the OS. Even the most extreme Microsoft skeptic wouldn't say it was Microsoft's fault if Windowblinds had to be upgraded to work with Vista.
If you're doing an upgrade to the OS, and you're using any third party system extensions, you remove them before you upgrade. That's pretty basic.
I was worried when I first saw it until I found that it was a 3rd party app causing the issue. The summary would lead me to believe it was a defect in Leopard. It would be nice to mention it's a 3rd party issue and not Apple's fault in the summary.
But if it is APE then well then that's kinda understandable its the singlemost invasive kernel mod of all.
APE is not a kernel mod. It runs entirely in user mode.
Too bad Apple doesn't talk up safe booting more so people will know it is there.
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).
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.
Check out my sci-fi/humor trilogy at PatriotsBooks.
It would be wonderful if it worked that way. However, Apple has decided that they (not Sun) will be the source of Java for Mac boxes. This moderately irritates me in that I'm a Java developer, and would like to be able to test with Java 6. So, to do so, I have to keep a copy of Parallels and Ubuntu around.
Karma: Chameleon - mostly influenced by bad '80s New Wave music
Unfortunately for Apple, it's OS competitor has a much better track record in the quality of new releases.
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.
Unsanity's Application Enhancer uses the debugger framework to access and modify an application's memory space. Since Leopard randomizes memory, one might expect that trouble would ensue.
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.
I'm sorry but your suggestion that Apple would produce and release a product that doesn't work flawlessly out of the box is heretical and simply not true. This idea is contrary to SlashThought, and your account should be deleted.
It might be worth mentioning that on Windows, the api call, CreateRemoteThread() allows you to do what is described here (create a thread in a remote process), without loading any 3rd party hack extensions.
When all freedom is outlawed only the outlaws have freedom
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.
Recursive: Adj. See Recursive.
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.
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.
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).
no, it's reflective of the fact that Apple doesn't provide any APIs for accomplishing those tasks. It's no different than patching explorer.exe while it's running so that the File menu suddenly does something completely different -- basically guaranteed to cause problems with something, because you're not supposed to do it and no programmer expects it to happen. But I'm sure the code that MS programmers work on is reasonably modular and accepting of changes to the File menu without breaking anything else.
Recursive: Adj. See Recursive.
I know I'll get modded down for this, but I agree with everything you said.
If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.
And it is still a terrible idea. You can make very few safe assumptions about the target process. You don't know the state of the heap, so you have to use your own heap for that thread. You don't know the base address for DLLs, so you have to use only kernel32.dll functions (and that is luck that it always loads at the same base address for every process).
But the absolute worst part about CreateRemoteThread() isn't the fact that it does what it says. It is the simple fact that you need to actually inject your thread function into the target process. That is, you need to copy the assembly necessary to run your thread into the target process. WriteProcessMemory() is an API call that will get you flagged as malware by a lot of AV utilities, but is necessary to use CreateRemoteThread().
Unsanity warns you that they are making deep modifications to the user interface and patching applications dynamically when they are loaded. They are not "just apps", they are not even like Parallels which does come with a kernel extension... because it runs as a regular application otherwise. Not to mention that Apple considers Parallels a key player, but has a definite problem with Unsanity.
I'm not saying that people who are having this problem are morons, but I don't think they should be so quick to blame Apple for this... unless you're suggesting that Apple actively broke APE or something?
My car 'just works'
Even with regular maintenance, I still get unexpected interruptions of service now and then.
Nothing technically 'just works' all the time if you want to bitch and moan about all the corner cases where it can break, but there are things designed to work with very little fuss, for a reasonably long time.
Point is, 'just works' doesn't have anything to do with occasional bugs, but describes how something was designed/is intended to happen, and the reliability to work as intended. That's where Mac OS X, and my car wins the title. For the most part, they work very simply, as intended.
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.
"Sufferin' succotash."
14 upgrades, 4 reformats and 2 archive and install. 0 problems.
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.
It's left blank because I have nothing to say to you punks!
I installed Leopard on my PPC Mac Mini and my daughter's relatively new Intel MacBook. No issues with either one, but the time it took was approaching Win2k/XP levels. Still, it was far more painless than any Windows install, any Linux install (and I've gone from Slackware to SuSE and RedHat), and pre OS X Macintosh (System 7 anyone?).
It should be no surprise to many Mac users that each build does break/improve things that may not have been explicitly allowed in earlier builds. Unlike the non-Mac OS worlds, Apple is still the final arbiter on what does and does not make it on their OS.
I think, therefore I am - Rene Descartes; I yam what I yam, an' that's what I yam - Popeye
Screw that. The same logic led Microsoft into the backward compatibility hell it's currently mired in. I think Apple's policy of "if you deliberately break your system then don't blame us" is inconvenient for some users in the short term but much better for all users in the long haul.
Dewey, what part of this looks like authorities should be involved?
Unplug any external USB hard drives, especially if they USED to have a system and now only contain data, but you never reformatted them, and only erased files via the Trash.
Try rebooting afterwards, and you'll start up just fine. People really waited HOURS?!? Wow, what a bunch of Geniurds....
It's the same boot issue that occurs when a windows machine has USB set to boot ahead of the CD ROM or HD, and you put an empty keychain in the USB slot - it hangs.
I had this problem, as soon as I rebooted with no USB HD, things went fine. This is, of course, on an Intel Mac...
On a Core (non-2) Duo, the wireless networking driver for Boot Camp will recognize your Airport Extreme 802.11g as an 802.11n, but since it isn't, you will not have wireless connectivity.
This will show up if you have a Core (non-2) Duo and an Airport Extreme with 802.11n support, since the Airport device always broadcasts the 802.11n signal.
Ask Me About... The 80's!
1. Connect an external hard drive.
2. Download Carbon Copy Cloner (donationware) or SuperDuper (even unpaid/unregistered, it can perform basic cloning).
3. Clone the boot volume to a sufficiently large partition on the external. You can clone the boot volume while you're booted from it (which was a refreshing change from having to make boot floppies when I used Ghost with Windows), though it's a good idea to quit all other applications while the clone runs.
The only option I'm aware of to compress a cloned OS X volume would be to clone it to a compressed disk image using Disk Utility or the Apple Software Restore command line tool. It takes a fairly long time and is a two-pass process (i.e., it images, and then compresses the image), so I don't usually bother with compression. I make uncompressed read/write images, and if I need to boot from one I clone it to a real external hard drive partition.
If you want to clone frequently, cough up the $28 for SuperDuper. It has a 'smart update' feature that only copies changed files after the initial clone, so subsequent clone jobs finish much more quickly. You can also schedule jobs with the paid version.
FYI, Carbon Copy Cloner can be used to make a shell script to clone the volume. If you really want to you can make a launchd item that will run that script automatically when you connect the external drive.
I think I may have had Application Enhancer installed. Clean install fixed that. :-)
...except those commands will silently fail. The spaces need to be escaped with backslashes, or the entire file path needs to be in quotes. Getting rid of the .plist may be enough to disable Application Enhancer, but it's not getting rid of the entire haxie.
/Library/Preference\ Panes/Application\ Enhancer.prefpane /Library/Frameworks/Application\ Enhancer.framework /System/Library/SystemConfiguration/Application\ Enhancer.bundle /Library/Preferences/com.unsanity.ape.plist
/L<tab>" and see what you get. If there's only one valid file/directory, the tab key will fill it in for you. It can really cut down on number of keypresses and chance for error. Type a letter or two, hit tab, type the next letter or two, hit tab, until you have your full command. Magic!
fsck -fy /
mount -uw /
rm -rf
rm -rf
rm -rf
rm
exit
Like that.
Bonus tip for shell newbies:
The default shell in Mac OS X supports tab-completion. For one of those "rm" commands, start typing "rm -rf
± 29 dB
Yeah, Unsanity is like the syphillis of the Mac world. However, being Mac-based, it's good-looking syphillis that's easy to use.
... and then they built the supercollider.
There is one exception to that rule: the /Applications, /Library/Services, ~/Applications and ~/Library/Services folders are scanned for NeXTstep service provider applications at login. These won't be recognised anywhere else on the disk. Now this isn't the Finder's fault, and LaunchServices (which is responsible for associating files and URLs with applications) is unaffected by it, but it is something to be aware of. You won't get Services menu items from an application if it's in the wrong place.
MAcfixit.com broke the FAKE story, a FUD of "APE responsible for this". I have even risked my VT Pro, $50 year account and called the editor openly to resign.
This thing turned out to be a password hash issue related to accounts created back in 10.2 and never changed. Documented here: http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=306840
APE has nothing to do with it. In fact, Unsanity recommends latest APE to be on OS while upgrading to Leopard since believe or not, APE is not just couple of themes or pointers, there are many companies using that functionality and their software may break when linked library is not there.
It doesn't change the fact that APE will be ignored by Leopard btw.
Macfixit has even surpassed itself and was openly called "Depictable" http://www.macjournals.com/news/despicable.html because of their horrible FUD mongering, calling people to ERASE and INSTALL and after CNET buyout, some people think they do it on purpose to make people afraid to use OS X or Mac.
If there is apple.slashdot.org, it should have better hand picked stories, no fanboy idiotic stuff, no "maccies are idiots" stuff, just "news for Mac nerds".
This story was sitting on Digg.com for hours and even couldn't make to being popular (like slashdot accepted) because people simply didn't buy it, especially APE reason.
We rarely get new non-ipod etc. stuff on Apple.slashdot.org and I wished the second one after Leopard shipment wasn't FUD with false information.
Per Unsanity's web page, the current version checks. Previous versions don't. They say "Please accept our sincere apologies for all the trouble that was caused. We have underestimated the number of people running "outdated" versions of our software."
http://www.unsanity.org/archives/haxies/leopard.php
Personally, I think APE and the Unsanity haxies are %$^%$ and I stay as far away from them as I can!
This sig has exceed its monthly bandwidth allotment.