Well if you know what files are installed where, you can at least remove them if you have problems and have confidence that all the bits have gone.

Re: Re: Re: error messages
 

No, but I wanted the extra nonesense :(

Re: Re: Re: Re: error messages
 

i'm guessing the crash is non-repeatable? if so, you have a value judgment to make.

i run 7 APE modules, and my machine crashes at a rate of about 4 -6 times per year. i'm assuming at least some of those crashes relate to APE. pehaps all of them do. depends on whether a non-APE machine would never crash or not.

for me, i'd rather have APE, and that level of rare crashing, than to do without their functionality. they make me a happier computer user, and they save me more time than i lose through the crashing.

YMMV.

---

also, the scuttlebutt is that the CM portions of FruitMenu are the buggy parts. i turned off the contextual menu option in the prefs, and it works happily on my system.

and since you have a nicely appropriate log, you should send your bug report and log to slava at urgent@unsanity.com

Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: error messages
 

My machine has been crashing (in one way or another) every couple of days - which isn't acceptable. I suspect that there's an interaction between the unsanity stuff I had running and various other mods and hacks I have installed. I'll see how I get on in their absence for a while and either things will improve (which will confirm my suspicions), or they wont - in which case I'll need to look elsewhere.

And thanks for the unsanity email address - I posted the log.

Writing Unsanity about APE is fruitless. I started contacting them about APE over a year ago. I couldn't understand why my machine was crashing on a regular basis daily. And other anomalies. I disabled all APE, and my system has been smooth as glass ever since (for over a year). Unsanity REFUSES toa dmit or take any responsibility for APE causing problems. For me - the results speake louder than words. NO APE FOR ME... EVER!!!

Danger will Robison Danger!
 

Danger will Robison Danger!

---------------------------------------

Only would play with this and other #$@#@! on a cloned copy of system.

Well, I've cleared my system of it (and also stripped out a few other 3rd party kernel extensions that I can probably live without) and will see how I get on. My record uptime in the last six months is seven days without a crash ... and that was an anomaly - a more usual scenario involved a reboot every couple of days or so.

slava seems like a good guy to me. he certainly claims to read his mail.

and he was willing to come and do some reasonably detailed posts in a thread on this site.

---

it's worth noting that i have the opposite experience from you with stability using APE.

i think the final word on APE is "YMMV".

When I first started to use APE with Puma, it was horrible. I had some bizarre problems, ended up removing it all and staying away from it.

Once I upgraded to Jaguar, I looked into APE again which had by that time gone through several releases.

I now run between five and seven APE hacks and they work flawlessly. I have had not one single problem.

--

That all said, I'm very careful with them. When Panther arrives for the masses, be sure I'll uninstall all of it and do research before even trying to bring it all back.

Jacques

I had to take APE in order to use the MightyMouse haxie and I haven't had any problems with it (yet). I now have many beautiful cursors at my command to replace the too small, boring, white arrow that came with this great iMac. I've been wanting to download Xounds, but, have read a number of threads where people state that Xounds caused problems and they had to uninstall it. Oh, well; I'll just keep my pulsing, red cursors and settle for the silence of the iMac.

I run fruitmenu and cleardock on an iMac, two G4 desktops, an ibook, and a G4 powerbook, and I have never had a system crash.

On my G3 ibook I do notice that the graphics card slows way down if APE is activated, but on the faster machines there is no obvious effect.

About a year ago I discovered it was incompatable with OroborOSX, which I no longer use, but checking the exclude box was enough to avoid that problem.

I still have no idea why you need to have APE to make the stupid dock background clear, and I am unconvinced that fruitmenu's basic functionality requires APE. It seems to me, if memory serves, that fruitmenu used to work without the APE.

It would be nice if they offered APE-less versions, even if they had more limited functionality. All I really need with fruitmenu is the Apple pulldown menu, and I really only need it in the finder.

Have a look at the third post from the bottom in this thread. One of Unsanity's developers explains the rationale behind developing APE rather that individual daemons to accompany each haxie.

After reading the responses from Slava and realizing they make the SDK available for inspection and use for free, I have to say I am fairly impressed with Unsanity's position and their explanation of the need for APE. They earned their $7 from me. Could you imagine Microsoft addressing any of the numerous problems with Office X with this sort of candor?

The things I use are convenient, but if problems develop, I can always delete APE or as slava points out, just

Log in while holding down the shift key


My only gripe is that they do not post this trouble-shooting information on their website in any place that I have managed to find.

I find it necessary to point out that "Safe Boot" (what you get by restarting while holding Shift) is only to be considered a troubleshooting aid - i.e. a step you can take in diagnosing troubles. It is not suggested as a normal mode of operation. See this Apple article on Safe Boot for some of the limitations: http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=107392

Logging in while holding down the shift key and safe-boot are not, however, quite the same thing; i.e. the latter merely disables third party items set to load as part of your user account and doesn't disable any system-wide aspects of the OS as safe-boot does. I agree though, it isn't something you should need to do all the time.

1) I think you meant "the former" instead of "the latter"
2) I hadn't read the previous post carefully enough to see that it was referring to logging in and not restarting. Did the Unsanity developer really recommend just logout & login with Shift?

I wouldn't have thought that would be sufficient to disable APE since I thought it was run system-wide (independent of user) via a system startup item.
(I haven't installed it so I don't know how 'aped' gets started up and this question has not yet been satisfactorily answered on these forums.)

If a mere re-login with Shift is sufficient to disable APE, that would seem to mean that it is started up via a Login Item. In that case, you could simply disable it via the Login Items section of System Preferences.

1) Yes, I meant the former - thanks.
2) APE (i.e. the aped process) is installed as follows:

"/Library/Frameworks/ApplicationEnhancer.framework/Versions/A/Resources/aped"

... and I've just checked this and Slava's advice was not correct. Logging in while holding down the shift key does disable the various haxies/modules but not the aped process itself.

SystemConfiguration folder
 

I think that any bundle that is in /System/Library/SystemConfiguration/ gets executed at startup.
And I've been informed (by email) that APE installs a bundle called "ApplicationEnhancer" in that folder, so I think that is how 'aped' gets started.

You could test this theory by (temporarily) moving that bundle out of the SystemConfiguration folder and restarting and checking if 'aped' is running.

- the aped process gets spawned by the PrefPane. if you look inside the package, you can see a file named "Application Enhancer Launcher".

- Shift Key while logging in generates a notice that "Application Enhancer is Disabled". did you see that notice?

- after seeing that notice, i think i remember that the aped process doesn't run. but i'm unsure of this one.

- i trust Slava is mischief free, at a minimum. this doesn't mean poor decisions weren't taken, but i trust his intentions are in the right place.

On my machine holding down the shift key at login does bring up the display you mention but it doesn't stop the aped process from loading. I did this a couple of times and aped has a different pid each time so it's clearly loading each login - despite the shift key.