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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."
There have been plenty of issues with archive and install as well. Just backup your home directory to that lovely new HD you got for time machine, and then unplug it and Erase and Install Leopard. I had no issues.
:P
/Library/Preference Panes/Application Enhancer.prefpane /Library/Frameworks/Application Enhancer.framework /System/Library/SystemConfiguration/Application Enhancer.bundle /Library/Preferences/com.unsanity.ape.plist
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
There are three options on any Mac OS install
- 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.
Physicists get Hadrons!
Unsanity is officially listed by the company not to worik with 10.5
http://www.wire-heads.com/istrip/index.php?strip_id=26
Using APE is an insanity of the first order anyway. Dealing with Unsanity's refusal to help is what made me dump all their products.
... " ... "
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"
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.
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
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!!
Oh, yeah, you expect Aunt Tillie to be able to do that? All these command-line fixes just show how Mac OS X is not yet ready for the desktop, and how Linux is superior because "it just works." ;)
(Laugh. It's funny.)
My blog
APE is a third party product that is not a part of OS X.
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.
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.
Like most problems of society, drug use is not likely the cause of the above errant moderation.
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.
"Sacrifice for the good of The State" - The State
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.
Ummm... no. Please don't flame until you know what the heck you are talking about.
/Applications folder - you can drag to your desktop if you want, and it will work the same way.
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
I've never found an app that I couldn't easily scoop up and move to a new machine.
/Applications and drag to other computer /Library/Application Support and ~/Library/Application Support /Library/StartupItems and ~/Library/StartupItems for any related startup items
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.
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!