Eudora 6.2.4 won't run under Leopard 10.5.6

[CrisBCT]

I've just purchased a MacMini cos my previous G4/Tiger was getting obsolete.

So I copied all my setting from the old Tiger mc to the new one when installing Leopard using Migration Assistant.

This seemed to go okay, but now Eudora 6.2.4 won't even load. More or less immediately after the Eudora 6.2 flash screen, it reports: "Eudora cannot continue. Unable to find or create your Eudora Folder. -35 (12.2161) Quit Now". And the (obsolete) online Eudora help link (?) doesn't help.

[attach]Eudora won't load in Leopard.png[/attach]

I'm delighted to see confirmed that other people are still running Eudora under Leopard. Thanks for your post, onceagain! Any ideas what might be wrong?…

So I've just downloaded and tried Eudora-8.0b7 but this crashes the Crash Reporter! Which makes me wonder if there's something funny about Leopard and Migration Assistant...

One time, I did check out Mail and Thunderbird. Not for me, not nearly as capable.

Any help anyone can give will be **very much** appreciated. And I do now realise there is an upgrade to 10.5.8 which I need to get. :-)

[onceagain]

Quote: Originally Posted by CrisBCT This seemed to go okay, but now Eudora 6.2.4 won't even load.

FWIW, I've run Eudora 6.2.3 under Leopard and now Snow Leopard without any hints of any problems.

Quote: More or less immediately after the Eudora 6.2 flash screen, it reports: "Eudora cannot continue. Unable to find or create your Eudora Folder. -35 (12.2161) Quit Now".

Sounds like it could be a permissions problem. Eudora wants to write a folder ~/Documents - what I would do is make sure there is no Eudora folder in there and see if you can get it to launch. It will not have your settings and stuff - but that's OK. See if you can get it to launch that way. If NOT, then create another brand new user account, log into that account, and try to get it to launch there. If it does, you know that the issue is something with your account and/or home directory (some kind of prefs file that Eudora wants to write to doesn't have the right access). If it doesn't launch in the brand new account either, then you know you have a bigger problem.

Give this a go and report back (:

[CrisBCT]

Thanks for some great suggestions, onceagain! :-)

The Documents folder is there. And I've removed the alias to the original Eudora Folder to see if it would create a new one with the real folder missing. It has done this in the past when it couldn't find the correct folder. But it still refuses to start with the same -31 error.

In the Test user account, I started Eudora, and it did start. Didn't have any of my current info or emails, of course, but it did work. So Success!!

My start-up disk is a brand new partition Volume created Friday, just two days ago on my brand-new machine. So I've Just repaired permissions on it. Several times. But it won't clear the complaints it has...

So It seems that permissions is definitely a problem, and maybe the cause of Eudora not loading as well. How do I get Leopard to repair permissions when Disk Utility pretends it is repairing permissions, but doesn't! Here's the log...

All further help would again be much appreciated!

[appleman_design]

what does console say about eudora @ startup, and do you have rosetta installed for S.Leopard??

[CrisBCT]

Thanks, very good questions, Appleman!

I checked Console to see if there's anything relevant. But I can't see Eudora in ~/Library/Logs , although Crash Reporter is there with an Eudora crash.log. But that Eudora log only has entries from Tiger, and in Tiger, Eudora did crash from time to time. Nothing since I got Leopard and the new machine.

Nothing in /Library/Logs.

Although System Preferences has crashed couple of times since I tried to get /Desktop and Screen Saver to use my custom Astronomy pictures folder on a different volume. This worked well on Tiger...

So no, nothing in Console seems to relate to this Eudora not working problem.

This is Leopard 10.5.6 not Snow Leopard. And AppleWorks is still working, which is a PowerPC application as reported by Application Monitor. So I hope Rosetta is loaded - how do I check this explicitly?

Any and all further help would again be much **very much** appreciated! And I'll get the upgrade to 10.5.8 asap.

[CrisBCT]

Just checked the Console Messages log, as suggested.

I saw a FinderPop message about: Not patching Rosetta app 'Eudora' 0:000b40b4. So I looked at FinderPop and although it's up to date, I uninstalled it just in case. And have now restarted. And Eudora still won't load. So it wasn't FinderPop's fault.

The initial few are the FinderPop messages I've left there, and the Eudora messages I found. Then the complete list of today's messages follows in case this helps shed some light on what's happening...

Thanks in advance for any help anyone can give me in solving this curious problem:- Why does Disk Utility say it's repairing permissions and then leave them unchanged? How to get it to repair them?

[onceagain]

Well, let's be clear about something here. Eudora did load fine with the "Test" account. So, it's not a Rosetta issue, or some other thing. It has something to do with trying to make use of your Eudora-related preferences in your main account.

What I would do - in the test account, bring up Eudora and manually enter your prefs for your e-mail account. Use it to check your mail a few times, verify it all really works. If you're getting this far, you know that clearly the issue is with the Eudora stuff in your main account. So, what I would do next is to DELETE the Eudora stuff in your main account, except for the "Eudora Folder" in the documents folder. In other words, what you're deleting is anything in ~/Library/Preferences, ~/Library/Application Support, and so forth. Next, MOVE your Documents/Eudora folder to the desktop, just for now. Now, Fire Up Eudora in your own (main account). Re-enter all your settings to check mail and so forth. It should work fine. Verify it does, then quit. Lastly, Delete the ~/Documents/Eudora Folder (that's new and has nothing good in it) and copy your Eudora Folder from your desktop back to ~/Documents and start Eudora again. It should work - and this time, all of your mail and stuff will be there.

[CrisBCT]

Thanks a whole bunch, this worked and now Eudora 6.2.4 is working in Leopard 10.5.8.

For the benefit of anyone else who has such a problem, let me document what I did and what I would have done if I had known what I now know and could do it over.

The extra stuff that somehow got into my main account seems to have caused the problem, maybe when I used Migration Assistant to upgrade from Tiger on my old machine to Leopard on my new Mac Mini.

Having demonstrated that Eudora came up in my Leopard test account, then on reflection I wouldn't actually download emails with it, cos now the emails that I want to keep are in the wrong account...

Quote: what you're deleting is anything in ~/Library/Preferences, ~/Library/Application Support, and so forth

I moved the following to a new Temp folder on the desktop.

1 Eudora Attachments and Eudora Folder from the Documents folder.
2 Eudora.app from the Applications folder
3 Eudora plists from the Library Preferences folder. Turned out there were three of them!
4 There was nothing in Library/Applications Support
5 Lastly, anything else I could find with the name Eudora in ~

Then I put a virgin copy of Eudora.app back in the Applications folder, and ran this virgin copy, giving it my registration info, and it started from scratch and put up a new account in the Documents folder.

Then I Quit Eudora. Moved the brand-new Eudora folder in Documents to the temp desktop folder. And put back my real Eudora Folder from Temp/Original Document folder. And when I'm happy things are working fine, I'll delete this Temp folder at some point in the future.

fyi, I actually have my Eudora folder elsewhere, and use an alias to it. This enables me to store my important data where I want, rather than where the MacOS thinks it should be. This process has enabled me to backup regularly, even daily, for many - more than ten - years, long before Time Machine. But I was very surprised when I found out that using such an alias is apparently an application dependant function, rather than being implemented by MacOSX so it's automatically available for everyone!

[onceagain]

Quote: Originally Posted by CrisBCT Thanks a whole bunch, this worked and now Eudora 6.2.4 is working in Leopard 10.5.8.

Yeaaah! Another happy customer (:

Quote: The extra stuff that somehow got into my main account seems to have caused the problem, maybe when I used Migration Assistant to upgrade from Tiger on my old machine to Leopard on my new Mac Mini.

This is why I would never ever recommend anyone use Migration Assistant or other happy BS to take a lazy shortcut. I hate the automatic crap - seems like it causes harm just as often as it does anything productive.

Quote: Having demonstrated that Eudora came up in my Leopard test account, then on reflection I wouldn't actually download emails with it, cos now the emails that I want to keep are in the wrong account...

Well, you can deal with that by using the "leave on server" option when checking mail. I should have been more clear - sorry ):

FWIW - when I migrate my personal documents (home directory/folder) to a new system, its pretty easy and works great with Eudora:

a). Login as root
b). Create an account for myself on new machine (FireVault enabled)
c). Mount my OLD FireVault spase disk image and my NEW spase disk image
d). Delete everything in the new home directory.
e). Copy everything from the old one into the new one.
f). chown -R my_id my_folder
g). chgrp -R my_group my_folder
h). unmount everything and logout as root
i). login as my personal account

No migration assistant, no picking and choosing what needs to be copied - I just get it all. When I fire up Eudora, it will say the attachment folder can't be found - no big deal, you just indicate where it is.

Anyway - glad it is working for you. Since you bought your new machine on Friday, it should entitle you to a free version of Snow Leopard (10.6). Worst case, you'll have to buy it for $10. I recommend getting it, and when you do, do a full fresh install from scratch, rather than an overinstall on your existing system.

Good luck! (:

[CrisBCT]

I purchased the new Mac Mini on Friday 4th mid-day, and it's now Tuesday the 8th at 10 am. Since then I've done nothing much but work on getting both the existing hardware and the software to work.

Not only did not Eudora work but nor did Quickeys. So I tried QK 4, but that didn't work so I have reverted to QK 3. This may also be related to Migration Assistant.

Nor did Windowshade work. So I resolved this by uninstalling it completely. Note that the uninstaller did NOT uninstall the com.unsanity plists so I did this manually. Then I reinstalled it and it's working again. It turned out that the uninstaller also did not delete my registration info, which was actually a good thing!

And there are still other issues. Automatic update the time in Sys Prefs/Date and Time is not working. When I set my time zone the clock shows that but the digital clock above it doesn't... And nor does MenuCalendarClock. Any ideas?

I've repaired permissions, but it came back with an enormous bunch of problems. So I speculate that permissions repair in Leopard is a complete waste of time, agreed?

I've also lost all my Little Snitch saved rules. So I'm starting over more or less from scratch here as well.

So the time wasted was enormous, and even if it were to take a whole day or two to start over, that would still be less than the time I've wasted so far...

[onceagain]

Quote: Originally Posted by CrisBCT I purchased the new Mac Mini on Friday 4th mid-day, and it's now Tuesday the 8th at 10 am. Since then I've done nothing much but work on getting both the existing hardware and the software to work.

Yeah - the effort can be a lot. It's one reason why I recommend that people always get whatever new system they are moving to installed and working on an EXTERNAL drive first. That way, they always have a working install on their machine (the internal drive) that they can use at any time, pause or stop their install process, and make sure the new system really works for them before committing. If you do go to Snow Leopard (10.6), you might want to have a look here:
http://forums.macosxhints.com/showthread.php?t=104976

Quote: Not only did not Eudora work but nor did Quickeys. So I tried QK 4, but that didn't work so I have reverted to QK 3. This may also be related to Migration Assistant.

Can't help you on that one. I've not used QK since OS 9 (:

Quote: Nor did Windowshade work.

Same as above - not used it since OS 9.

Quote: And there are still other issues. Automatic update the time in Sys Prefs/Date and Time is not working. When I set my time zone the clock shows that but the digital clock above it doesn't... And nor does MenuCalendarClock. Any ideas?

Now that's a strange one. I'm guessing it is a preferences issue.

Quote: I've repaired permissions, but it came back with an enormous bunch of problems. So I speculate that permissions repair in Leopard is a complete waste of time, agreed?

Well, I dunno. I'm not sure what exactly "repair permissions" is doing, other than comparing the permissions on known important files to what they SHOULD be (based on a static list that is somewhere). But what is unclear is how and why permissions are getting screwed up all the time. Seems like a real security issue if you ask me.

Quote: I've also lost all my Little Snitch saved rules. So I'm starting over more or less from scratch here as well.

Did you just install Leopard over Tiger? Or did you erase and install? As you will see from the methodology I describe in the link above, installing on a freshly erased disc is the way to go. It really tends to cut down on problems like this. Anyway - your snitch rules will be in the archived version of your old system, if you did an "archive and install". Is that what you did?

Quote: So the time wasted was enormous, and even if it were to take a whole day or two to start over, that would still be less than the time I've wasted so far...

I know how you feel. I spent 3 days following my process for moving from Leopard to Snow Leopard (but I was doing a lot of compiling and installing standard UNIX software and other stuff you don't need to do, and also taking my time about it). The patience pays off though - no big issues with my Snow Leopard install as far as I can tell.

If you made a good backup of your system BEFORE installing Leopard (which I hope you did), you might want to revert to that backup on your main HD. Then just forget about Leopard and go right to Snow Leopard - install that on an external and get it working, and lay in your own apps and stuff one at a time and make sure things work as you go, rather than trying to deal with a bunch of stuff at once. Once you're satisfied it is working well for you, then you can clone the external to the internal (after backing up the internal, of course).

[CrisBCT]

Quote: Originally Posted by onceagain installing on a freshly erased disc is the way to go.

Thanks so much for this advice. Hmmm. That sounds tempting, since I'm amazed at how sluggish Leopard is on this brand new MacMini, with 3 megs RAM and no paging! Applications are running fine but the OS seems slower than Tiger on my 6 years old G4!. Perhaps I should ignore Leopard completely and just go directly to Snow Leopard.

For many years now, ever since OS 7 or OS8, I have kept my data, as well as my application type stuff (dmgs, registration info etc), on separate volumes, partitions. So hopefully the Leopard volume won't have much at all that's critical and would matter if I lost. I could delete my entire Leopard volume's contents when going to Snow.

Fyi, I could have been more clear when I specified what I had done earlier - I actually used Migration Assistant.app. This Apple application connects two machines by Firewire or Ethernet, and allowed me to copy everything relevant over from my old G4 to my new MacMini. A nice idea in practice. My new MacMini drive was reformatted with three virgin partitions, and Leopard is now in one. My data, and my applications stuff are in the other two.

But I'm confused. I had thought that Snow Leopard won't run my old apps from OS9. I think Eudora 6.2.4 is one such (Carbon?). And the other I continue to use is AppleWorks 6.2.9. I've converted most of my spreadsheets, but I have a few that I've been unwilling to face the major effort it would require to get Numbers to duplicate their low effort simplicity. Yes, for me Numbers (all versions including '09) have major deficiencies, and each new version adds extra glitz without addressing the real problems... '09 has actually added to these non-trivial difficulties.

So will old Eudora 6.2.4 and AppleWorks 6.2.9 actually run in Snow? Cos if so, then your suggestion seems like a very valuable one to consider. What considerations and caveats would I need to be aware of?

[onceagain]

Quote: Originally Posted by CrisBCT But I'm confused. I had thought that Snow Leopard won't run my old apps from OS9. I think Eudora 6.2.4 is one such (Carbon?). And the other I continue to use is AppleWorks 6.2.9.

The issue surrounds the technology called "Rosetta" - which is an OPTIONAL install. Eudora works fine if you install it - I am using it now with absolutely no issues. I assume your old AppleWorks will also work.

Quote: What considerations and caveats would I need to be aware of?

Regarding Eudora - absolutely none that I know of. It is working painlessly here for me.