Re: Version 9.3 Macintosh binary won't start with preferences on network share

On Wed, 8 Feb 2006 13:53:03 +1300
Peter Kerr <p.kerr@auckland.ac.nz> wrote:

> 
> On 8/02/2006, at 12:24 PM, Brian F. Opitz wrote:
> > Amaya 9.3 Mac OS X binary distro:
> >
> > Amaya won't start in an MCX environment.
> >
> > Mac OS X workstations that are managed by MCX (Managed Client X aka  
> > Workgroup Manager) have their preferences stored on a network  
> > shared volume. Amaya attempts to start but is unable to write  
> > preferences to the preferences folder it creates, so it just quits.  
> > The prefs folder that Amaya creates is at the top level of the  
> > user's folder and is labelled .amaya so it is hidden from the user.  
> > Once the invisible .amaya folder is created, Amaya cannot write/ 
> > read into/from that folder.
> 
> Disclaimer: I do not use MCX because I could forsee this type of  
> problem with some other apps we use. However I have a colleague who  
> is using it in a student lab, where the bulk of users have a network  
> Home dir, but ~/Library is not mounted at login. Instead the custom  
> login script provides a copy from a local template.
> 
> He also has a group of users who are permitted to mount their entire  
> home dir. They are not using Amaya, but some use Gimp which has a  
> similar .gimp folder for user prefs. Points: .amaya may need to be  
> created manually the first time; it must belong to the current user;  
> permissions 744; is your network clean and fast? we have had other  
> apps crash because they could not write and confirm their prefs, a  
> ping time of 400 milliseconds was too long.
> 
> Where are the networked home dirs? MacOS-X will allow a user to write  
> to an invisible folder if it is correctly addressed. What about  
> Windows servers? or is the path turning out to be that horrible Apple  
> convolution
> /Network/Servers/Domain/Servername/Users/<username>/ ?
> 
> > Amaya should write it's preferences to a MCX compliant XML-based  
> > property list file (labelled something like org.w3.amaya.plist) and  
> > it should place that file in the /username/Library/Preferences  
> > folder. Any additional files/folders that Amaya needs should be  
> > placed in the /username/Library/Application Support/Amaya folder.  
> > Any preference files or folders that Amaya creates should not be  
> > invisible.
> 
> If it were a well behaved MacOS application, yes. But Amaya has to be  
> crossplatform, without too much differences for the developers to  
> manage each. I observe in my own machine ~/.amaya/ ~/.gimp/  
> ~/.mplayer/ ~/.openoffice.org2/ ~/.pfaEdit/ ~/.scribus/ These contain  
> either xml or rc preferences files, both of which are valid for OS-X.  
> If you want to manage user preferences thru MCX you could try a  
> symlink ~/.amaya -> ~/Library/Preferences/Amaya
> 
> This is not supposed to be an apology for Amaya ;-) I had just gotten  
> used to Macintosh Manager on OS9, then Apple well and truly broke it  
> in OS-X. It's starting to come right again, but it still needs a  
> little help.

Our main goal with the native Mac OS X version of Amaya was to release a first version as soon as possible to have early feedbacks. This first version and the following ones had some limitations, some specific bugs, some specific crahes also, and we continue to work on the improvment and on the reliability of the tool.
As we progressively gain some experience on this platform, we also work on some specific aspects of Mac Applications that we didn't know before (how to manage the Preferences, how to open a document with the command line or by dragging, ...), it is why every feedbacks on these aspects are welcome.
But these specific developments represent a lot of work and we have limited resources to work on all platforms, so we we'll progressively incorporate them in the future versions.

> 
> More trivia: amaya writes its pid to ~/.amaya/pid/ not to /var/run/  
> like all good *nixen.
> top and ps can still find it tho'

Thanks for the tip

> 
> Peter Kerr
> School of Music
> University of Auckland
> 
> 

Thanks,
-- 
Laurent Carcone	
W3C mailto:carone@w3.org 
INRIA Rhone-Alpes, 655 Avenue de l'Europe
      38334 Saint Ismier Cedex - France
      Tel: (33) 04 76 61 52 67

Received on Wednesday, 8 February 2006 15:48:27 UTC