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The Spotted Cat: Troubles major, minor, weird and annoying with JaguarBy Francine Schwieder |
Since Jaguar will shortly be replaced by Panther I decided to write a final few words about this incarnation of OS X, with which I have had a love/hate/annoyance relationship ever since the first beta version appeared. I always thought it would be a great OS, once the bugs were worked out. I've waited and waited and tried and tried, but that great day never arrived and, with the imminent arrival of Panther, it looks like it never will. There seem to be some fundamental problems that were not present in 10.1.5, and have never really been resolved. OS X 10.1.5 remains the most stable and trouble-free operating system I ever used, and I've used quite a few, from Mac OS 7.5 thru 10.2.6, plus several flavors of Linux and Windows 95, 98 and 2000 Professional. Nonetheless I'm running Jaguar because you can't use Safari with 10.1.5, and I love Safari. Ditto for Apple's implementation of X11, and I want to use the GIMP and fiddle around with the many Linux programs available and usable in X11. Oh yeah, Jag is also faster than 10.1.5—Apple did get that part right. So after months of experience with Jag I've figured out its big and little quirks and how to live with them all.
First of all, be sure to update Jaguar to either 10.2.3 or 10.2.6, they are the least bothersome of the various incarnations of Jag. The 10.2.4 and 10.2.5 updates had big problems, one with USB ports (more on this below), and one had a horrendous date bug that messed up lots of different things. So install Jaguar and download the 10.2.6 Combo updater and run it. Next reboot in Jag and launch Disk Utility, click on your Jag install partition, click the First Aid tab and run Permissions Repair. It ALWAYS finds something to repair. There are a couple of bogus things that, no matter how often and religiously you run it, it "repairs" them. I understand that two of the items it "repairs" don't even exist. But if it repairs a whole lot of files, run it again. Once you get down to it "repairing" only the hfs.util, local.nidb/Clean and run/utmp files you're done. Many people recommend running this utility as often as you used to rebuild the pre-X desktop, as routine maintenance, and run it any time you install anything at all and any time you experience problems.
Next, just for luck, you'll want to check and repair the disk and file system. In order to check and repair the startup disk you need to run the Repair Disk function of Disk Utility, but this can't be done when the System is running. Apple tells you to start from the Install CD, then ignore the install screen and instead go to the installer menu and select Disk Utility and run it. This process is slower than molasses in January. It is much faster to hold down the "command-s" keys when you start your computer, watch the mysterious words fly by on a black screen, and when it stops doing this and is obviously waiting for you to do something, type: /sbin/fsck -y (make sure there is a space between the "fsck" command and the "-y" option) and press Return. It will deliver reports on what it is doing, with a final line about the status of the repairs, if any. If the last line says it did anything at all, run it again. Once it reports that no problems were found, type: reboot. Hit the Return key and your computer will restart normally. Incidently, my UNIX guru informs me that "fsck" is pronounced "eff ess check" and not "eff sick"—which I think is funnier. Stands for "file system check."
Jaguar should now be running as well and as cleanly as it can run. But you may begin to discover some of the problems with Jag, how soon you do depends on what programs you use and what machine, hardware and peripherals you have. There appear to be more problems with the dual processor machines, and Jaguar is extremely sensitive to bad RAM, so if you have installed third party RAM and start getting lots of problems that could be the cause. Fortunately I haven't had that particular misfortune with Jag (it seems to be the only Jag misfortune I've missed). So here's my list of Jaguar's Troubles, with solutions or work-arounds.
Kernel Panics: My G4 tower is hooked up via ethernet to a Netgear Router, to which is also connected my cable modem, an old 8600 running OS9, a Windows machine running Win2000 Pro, and sometimes my iBook, running Jaguar. I usually have my LaCie firewire drive plugged into the firewire port as well, to do backups. Everything worked just fine with 10.1.5, I could move files around and never had a single problem. Then along comes Jag. I was transferring a bunch of vacation photos from the iBook to the backup partition on the firewire drive when I got a kernel panic on the G4. I was mystified, but thought maybe it was due to moving the files so indirectly to the firewire drive, so I plugged the LaCie directly into the iBook and moved my files that way. Next time I wanted to move files from the iBook I decided to put them directly onto an internal drive of the G4. Another kernel panic. I could cause a kernel panic any time by moving files over ethernet with the firewire drive connected. The other day I moved some MP3 files from the Windows machine to the G4, but I unplugged the LaCie before I started the G4 and didn't get a kernel panic. I've also been moving iBook files by plugging it into the G4 by firewire instead of ethernet, and then starting it in firewire Target mode, which is actually way faster anyway. Eventually I decided to find out a little bit about kernel panic log files (they're located in /Library/Logs) and noticed that the one human-readable note in the backtrace mentioned "Kernel loadable modules" (which is the X equivalent of extensions), and fingered something called "com.apple.filesystems.afpfs." So I started thinking about the Apple File Protocol as a file system, which led me to thinking about AppleTalk. I decided that Apple long ago lost interest in AppleTalk and my practice of turning it on was probably quite unnecessary, so I went to System Prefs->Network->AppleTalk and unchecked it on both the G4 and the iBook. The problem disappeared. In poking around the Apple Discussions forums I discovered there is a similar problem with the smbfs module (this is the one used for mounting Windows file systems through a network). Evidently a variety of network naming issues will lead to a kernel panic by way of the smbfs module.
Missing Firewire Drive/Partition: After the kernel panic I discovered that one of my firewire drive partitions would no longer mount--it seems to always be the first partition on the drive. Checking the disk with fsck you get this weird message about the hash table being full. Being chronically suspicious of Jaguar I rebooted in 10.1.5 and the "bad" partition mounted without any trouble at all. Furthermore I was able to select it as a start-up disk (it has the 10.2.3 version of Jag installed) and boot from it. When I next booted in Jag26 it mounted the previously unmountable partition just fine. I believe that when Jag has a kernel panic it does something bad to a disk partition which fsck reports as a full hash table. It doesn't really have anything at all to do with the actual contents of the disk. The fact that the disk partition will mount in 10.1.5 and will boot, and then everything is just fine again leads me to the conclusion there wasn't really anything wrong with the disk's partition in the first place. I have no idea what sort of a bad thing a Jag kernel panic could do to a partition, which would then lead to a failure to mount in Jag, and also cause fsck to give the "hash table full" error. But the "bad" partition WILL mount in 10.1.5, and the partition can be booted, after which there ain't no more error. It's as if the whole unpleasantness never happened. I have yet to find a way to fix the problem in Jag.
System Freeze: If you have dual monitors, an nVidia graphics card and a USB hub, dragging a window from one monitor to the other can cause a system freeze requiring a forced restart. As far as I've been able to determine you have two choices: (a) unplug your USB hub, or (b) get a new video card, the ATI Radeon 9000 seems not to have the problem. I chose to unplug my USB hub and when I want to use something not already plugged in I unplug the printer from one of the ports on the back of the Cinema display and plug in something else there. This is not hugely convenient, but the regular system freezes are an even bigger pain, so I do it. I'm hoping to one day be able to use my USB hub in the system I regularly use. Maybe in Panther. BTW, this doesn't happen in 10.1.5, it is part of the general problems that appeared in Jaguar's handling of IO stuff, whether USB, firewire, ethernet and/or combinations of these.
Photoshop Quits: Using the File Browser in Photoshop 7 causes the application to bomb out. Every time. You need to go to Adobe and get an updater for the File Browser, which goes into the Plug-ins/Adobe Photoshop Only/Extensions folder. It is called, simply enough, File Browser Update. While admiring the contents of this folder make sure you have both the AltiVecCore and AltiVecCore Update in there as well.
Custom Icon Misfires: Any application that creates individual custom icons, such as Photoshop or PS Elements, can cause the Finder to fail to correctly update an open window containing said custom icons. What happens is that some other custom icon is plastered onto your freshly saved file, rather than the one that should be there. The Finder seems initially to give the icon for the file being saved to the file next to it also, but it has assigned some other icon, seemingly picked at random, as well. You can end up with a folder full of identical and incorrect icons. If you force quit and relaunch the Finder it then gets them right, until the next time you save anything, including another file, whereupon the problem recurs, with everything regaining the incorrect icons, plus yet another file receives a wrong icon. Even moving a file into or out of the open window can provoke Icon Madness. You can use this AppleScript to force the window to actually update the icons correctly, but they revert to an incorrect state each time you do almost anything, such as copy another file, open a file, whatever:
tell application "Finder"
update every file in folder of the front window
end tell
If you're doing stuff requiring you to keep the Finder window open you'll have to repeatedly run the above script. I put a copy of it in my dock so I could just click it there and update the window every time I saved a file. You can save the script in your Utilities folder, name it something like "Update" and give it a custom icon so you can spot it easily when it is in the dock.
Photoshop/Classic Conflict: The most minor problem I have had with Jag 10.2.6 is truly weird and involves a Classic program with a bug at one point in its operation. It actually has run the best in Classic in 10.1.5. I discovered it runs just as well in Classic in Jaguar—provided that Photoshop is not running in X. If Photoshop is running not only does the program crash itself and Classic, it can freeze the machine and require a forced restart. This led me to want to be able to launch the Classic program without Photoshop running, and then be able to quit the program AND Classic before I launched any OSX programs. However, quitting Classic is a pain. You have to launch System Prefs, go to the Classic Preference, then click on the Stop Classic button and then, to keep down window clutter, close System Prefs. Jeez. Why can't Apple let you know that Classic is still running and allow you to stop it from the Dock, with a single click? Well, they don't. Never fear, Michael Caldwell, a high school student in Fountain Valley, has provided the solution. You can download his free Classic Dockling at: http://www.yingster.net/software/classicdockling.html. You put the Dockling in the Applications section of your Dock. If Classic isn't running the icon is grey and you can launch Classic from there with a click-hold or control-click. If it IS running the "9" numeral in the icon has an orange color, and you can quit Classic with a single click. I've been using it for awhile and it works great, its only problem is failing to quit should you get a Classic freeze. You'll need to force quit the frozen program and the Classic environment. Don't forget to check Process Viewer to make sure TruBlueEnvironment has also quit, and kill it if necessary (select the name in the Process Listing window, then go to menu Processes—>Quit Process).
Failure to Load Wacom Driver: Every now and again when Jag starts it doesn't load the Wacom Tablet driver. So far every time I've restarted when that happens it does load the driver. At least Jag restarts fairly quickly.
Missing Recent Items in Apple Menu: It seemed impossible to convince Jag to remember Recent Items, how many I want, and keep them from restart to restart, so this feature was actually quite useless. I thought eventually System Preferences—>General would get the idea that I wanted 20 items, but it never did. Instead it would periodically erase all items that were there when restarted and go back to a default of 10 items. Sometimes it erases all items on restart whether I've changed the preference or not. When that happens you go to Recent Items and all you see is the Recent Items in grey. It then begins adding items as you work (up to its own idea of the right number). I've stopped using it because as often as not I have to do something else to launch a program or open a recent document anyway, so the mouse trip to Recent Items is just a futile time wasting gesture. I put a folder in the dock with aliases to the applications I use, and depend on the application's recent documents list to open files I've used lately. Some applications let you set a preference for the number of recent files they will remember. It sometimes seems like Apple is determined to make the OSX replacement of the original useful Apple menu as useless as possible...
I recently tried a new approach. First I set my preference for 20 Recent Applications and 20 Recent Documents in the System Preferences—>General pane as always. I then went to Users/francine/Library/Preferences and opened the com.apple.recentitems.plist with Property List Editor (you get this when you install the Developer Tools). I then manually changed the entries for max-app and max-doc, plus maxapp and maxdoc, to 20. It worked fine for about week, and then Jag eliminated all recent items and reset to a default of 10. And just for good measure it also eliminated all my custom flile/application associations. Ah well. For some unknown reason preferences have always had a strange tendency to vanish in OS X, I don't know why.
Contextual Menus and the Spinning Beach Ball: For some unknown reason some installs of Jaguar result in getting a spinning beach ball the first time you try to access a contextual menu. Some people experience the phenomenon with each first access for anything. Personally I only would get it the first time I accessed any contextual menu, and all subsequent requests for a contextual menu were fine. This is annoying. I have had identical installs of Jag, one on the iBook, the other on a G4 drive partition, one install with the problem and one without. Even installs on different partitions of the G4 would differ this way. Eventually after various updates (I always use the Combo Updater these days, as it seems to produce more consistent results) all of my Jag installs are behaving correctly. If you're having the problem try repairing permissions, run the 10.2.6 Combo Updater and repair permissions again. Some people, who were having multiple problems, reinstalled the system and this problem disappeared.
The Open With Contextual Menu Bug: Another Contextual Menu bug (this one is a known Finder problem) involves the Spinning Beach Ball and the Open and Open With parts of the Finder's Contextual Menu. When you select a file or files and control-click to bring up the Contextual Menu, and then start to move your mouse cursor down the list of options it will stop at open, and may pause long enough for the Spinning Beach Ball to appear. Just how long the pause is will depend on several things: (1) if it is one file that can be opened by quite a number of applications (such as a jpeg), the pause will be noticeable, (2) if you have selected a whole lot of files, because you were going to move all of them to the trash via the Contextual Menu, the pause can be excruciating--I selected 60 items and counted up to about 30, (3) if your machine is really fast the wait may be somewhat less excruciating. If you aren't going to do an Open With, don't start your mouse cursor at the top of the menu, instead stay "outside the box" until you are below the Open and Open With lines, and then move the cursor onto the list to select GetInfo or Move to Trash or whatever. You'll forget to do this though. Let's hope the Panther Finder is better than the Jaguar Finder.
So with solutions to many problems, and a resigned tolerance for a few, I'm running Jaguar pretty happily. Of course Panther is due out by the end of the year. Maybe I'll have something new to complain about in the near future, and might even say, with some honest regret, "Requisicat in pace, Jaguar. You were an interesting kitty."