Hi there --

I'm in need of some very specific troubleshooting advice -- ASAP -- as
my Mac Powerbook G4 800 (running OS X v10.2.6) is acting quite
"funky", and I have a very important project due ...

In a nutshell, the OS and various applications have often recently
become "forgetful" about various preferences, settings, etc.  This may
correlate to an application or the Finder becoming unresponsive
("spinning beachball of death"), in which case I have to Force Quit
(or, in the worst case, have to hold the Power button to force the
machine to shut down, when the system itself has become unresponsive).

Some specific examples of "funky" behavior:

Finder:
-- Spinning beachball (which may or may not disappear after a period
of time).  Sometimes this is while performing a function (e.g.,
opening a folder in the Finder) that seems to take far longer than it
should.
-- Forgetting position of all icons on the desktop, defaulting to
having them all "cleaned up" or "arranged" on one side of the desktop.

Mail:
-- Spontaneously "forgot" most of the email messages in various
folders  [yes, I have a backup]

Internet Explorer/Safari:
-- Have repeatedly forgotten user Preferences settings, resetting to
defaults.


Notes:
-- The "forgetfulness" may be generalized, rather than
application-specific:  In other words, it may have been a crash in
some other application (or the Finder) which seemed to coincide with
Mail losing its messages; the browsers reverting to defaults, etc.

-- Some of the incidents may have correlated with a nearly full
internal hard drive (40GB).  However, I've just replaced it with a
much larger one (80GB -- all files copied over with Carbon Copy
Cloner), with approx. 40GB free now -- and the behavior nevertheless
seems to continue.

-- Also, though I can't say definitively that there's a correlation,
this behavior does seem to have begun sometime after installing the OS
10.2.6 patch (upgrading from 10.2.5).

Questions:
--  What's going on here?
--  How do I fix this, ASAP?
--  Are there Preference (or other) files that have been corrupted
(e.g., because of a prior disk full condition), and which should be
trashed, etc.?
--  Is this a known issue (e.g., with OS 10.2.6)?

Note that I'm hoping here for some specific insights into this
problem, with specific troubleshooting steps ... rather than generic
willy-nilly "try this, try that" advice.  Again, I'm on a deadline,
and would be grateful for some informed, KNOWLEDGEABLE insights.

Many thanks!

---

Request for Question Clarification by maniac-ga on 19 Jul 2003 07:55 PDT

Hello Rnd13,

Hmm. I have been running 10.2.6 for a while now without any problems
(400 Mhz iMac DV). There are however a few people who have reported
problems - for reference see
  http://discussions.info.apple.com/WebX?127@184.6aeja93maWQ.4@.ef81dab
[or if that does not work, browse to the Mac OS X discussion and
search for 10.2.6 preference corruption]
Which returns six messages related to this kind of problem. At least
two of these have the "beachball hell" phrase or something similar.

In lieu of a direct answer (which may be incorrect), here is a first
shot at answers to your questions.

Q: What is going on here?
A: One or more files have been corrupted and as a result, the software
is behaving badly. Running out of disk space is a likely cause.
Running a broken disk utility could also do the same. It could also be
an indication of pending disk failure. May things could cause this -
it would be hard to say for sure w/o spending a lot of time with the
disk

There are two places where the damage could occur
 - per user preferences
 - system wide settings / preferences / application corruption

Q: How do I fix this?
A: If it is the first one, try this...
 - create a new user (I can walk you through this if needed)
 - log out / log in as the new user
 - go through the set up of applications (finder, mail, safari) from
scratch
If the problems continue, it is a system wide problem [:-(] and you
must reinstall OS X. If the new user works OK, then I can suggest
techniques for cleaning up the original user account.

Q: Are there preference corruption / need to trash files?
A: If the test above with a second user works - this is the solution.
Search for files ending with .plist. I can suggest a command line
operation to automate this if you are comfortable with using the
console application.

Q: Is this a known issue?
A: Hard to say - only a couple people have reported this in the formus
I searched, so I would say not at this time. Of course, the only
people who could answer this with authority would be someone at Apple.

Let me know the results of the test so I can suggest a better
solution.

  --Maniac

---

Clarification of Question by rnd13-ga on 20 Jul 2003 19:07 PDT

Hi, Maniac --

I've been through the steps you suggested, and the results are
promising, but not yet conclusive.  HOWEVER, I also ran through a
bunch of diagnostics (Apple, Norton) & defragged the drive ... and the
system seems stable enough now to allow me to get on with my project
(of which I'm on deadline right now and unfortunately must attend to).

So ... please claim the $20 fee, and if by chance I have other
questions later on, I will post  a comment or another query ...

Many thanks for your help!

-- R.

Hello Rnd13,

Let me summarize based the feedback we had. You are having a variety
of odd behaviors after
 - upgrading from 10.2.5 to 10.2.6
 - having "disk full" on a 40G disk, moving its contents to an 80G
disk
As I previously mentioned, this is consistent with file corruption
which could be caused by:
 - out of disk space / application not handling this properly
 - possible bugs in a disk utility
 - latent bugs in 10.2.6 (or its update)
 - improper shutdown / power failure
There are a few reports of similar behavior from other users on Apple
discussion groups.
Browse at
  http://discussions.info.apple.com/
select Mac OS X, and use the search bar with
  10.2.6 preference corruption
to list at least two that indicate problems with the finder similar to
what you describe. (sorry, the direct URL does not work)

To fix / solve the problem, suggestions include:
 - create a new user and see if the problems recur with that new user.
 - run another disk utility (as you did)
 - reinstall the operating system
 - reinstall the operating system on a clean disk
This last suggestion came to mind as I thought about previous disk
upgrades that I did. I have done that step about 4-5 times in the last
15 years. When I upgrade a machine with a new hard disk, I take the
opportunity to start over w/ the operating system / system preferences
to make sure I don't bring along latent problems.

Of course, it would be better if I also provided some suggestions to
avoid the problem in the future. For example:
 - monitor disk usage / take action when it exceeds 85 - 95% full.
Note that with Mac OS X, the operating system does reserve 5 - 10% of
total storage for the "root user" which allows the system to continue
to run OK while user applications get disk full errors. This
reservation is made by the Unix system now running under the hood.
 - run disk utilities / defragmentation on a regular basis. The OS
runs basic checks, especially if the machine is shutdown improperly.
However, if you are having problems, doing checks once a week (or
monthly) can help.
 - review system logs on a periodic basis / understand what is
"normal" so you can take action when something out of the ordinary
occurs. This gets to be a little more involved. If you run a terminal
window as "root", you can review files such as
  /var/log/system.log - system messages during operations
  /var/log/daily.out - output from a daily job that checks various
items, disk usage is one of the items checked.
or run
  dmesg - output from the boot sequence
A unix system administrator can do these steps (if you have access to
them), or I can suggest a few safe commands / procedures to follow if
you want to do this yourself.

I hope everything works out well - if something else comes up related
to this, don't hesitate to use a clarification request to let me help
fix it further.
  --Maniac

---

Request for Answer Clarification by rnd13-ga on 23 Jul 2003 01:46 PDT

Maniac --

Thanks so much for your help!

Quick follow-up:

> or I can suggest a few safe commands / procedures to follow if
you want to do this yourself.

... If you'd care to, please do, and I'll check into them & start to
get more familiar with Unix.  Sounds like it could come in handy from
a preventative standpoint in the future.

Thanks again!

---

Clarification of Answer by maniac-ga on 23 Jul 2003 05:30 PDT

Hello Rnd13,

Ok. Here's a brief look at viewing the system files for Unix as well
as some pointers to more information. Assuming your system disk is
named "Mac HD", use the finder to go to
  Mac HD -> Applications -> Utilities
In this directory, there are some interesting applications including:

  Apple System Profiler - for this particular problem, check the Logs
which include system crash logs as well as logs from application
failures. The console log is listed first - that shows the current
system console log. A lot of detailed information that can be helpful
for a software developer, but I would look briefly for "new trends" to
see where problems may occur. You can save the data for comparison
later if needed.

  Console - a simpler application that displays just the log
information. By default, the console log, but it can also display
application log files.

  CPU Monitor - the default is a very simple CPU load indicator. On a
large screen, put it in the corner to see if an application uses a lot
of CPU time. A number of other more detailed information screens; they
should be pretty simple to bring up and view.

  Disk Utility - I'll skip this because I believe you are familiar
with this one :-).

  Netinfo Manager - use to modify user / system settings. You need to
use an administrator account / password to make changes. For example,
clicking on users / root, you can see if a password is set for the
"root user". You can add users here, but there are other tools as
well.

  Terminal - brings up a text terminal window using your account. For
example, on my system it comes up with

Last login: Wed Jul 23 06:55:49 on ttyp1
Welcome to Darwin!
[Maniacs-Computer:~] maniac% 

The percent sign at the end indicates I am a non-root user. The ~
refers to my home directory. A few interesting commands / locations
include:

  cd ~
change directory to my home directory
  cd /var/log
change directory to the system log area
  cd /
change to the "top directory"

Note that the prompt changes after each of these to indicate the
current working directory.

  ls
list names of files in the current directory
  ls -l
list names / details of files (size, date, owner, ...)
  ls *.log
list names of log files (ending in .log)

  more /var/log/system.log
view the contents of the current system log. Press ? for a list of the
options available; I usually use the space key to page through the
file while viewing it. You can also use / followed by a string to
search for a string.

Older versions of the files have .gz added to the end - this means it
has been compressed using gzip. You can do something like
  zcat /var/log/system.log.1.gz | more
to view them. That sequence uncompresses the file and that output goes
to the more command.

And of course...
  man man
to get documentation about the man command (on line documentation)
  man ls
  man cd
  man zcat
  man more
and so on for command documentation. I also use
  apropos (some phrase here)
to search for the "man page" that has that phrase. For example,
  apropos log
will display a couple pages of choices including syslogd (the
application used to generate log system log files).

Some of the files / operations may require you to be the "root user".
The ones I did above did not, but if you need to change a system file,
it will be necessary to be root. Change to the root user in a terminal
window using
  su -
(and enter your root password)

the prompt will change to
[Maniacs-Computer:~] root# 
which shows that root is the current user and # indicates it is a
privileged user.

Be careful with anything you do as root - you can certainly ruin the
system as well as fix it. I usually open a separate terminal window
when I use the root user and close it when I am done to reduce
mistakes.

This will get you started. There are several good tutorials /
introductions at
  http://www.ee.surrey.ac.uk/Teaching/Unix/unixintro.html
  http://qed.econ.queensu.ca/pub/students/leacha/unixhelp/index.html
  http://vertigo.hsrl.rutgers.edu/ug/unix_help_menu.html
and many more by searching with phrases such as
  Unix introduction
  Unix tutorial
and so on.

I hope this helps you with your work - giving you some additional
alternatives to look for and fix problems when they occur.

  --Maniac

---

Request for Answer Clarification by rnd13-ga on 25 Jul 2003 17:44 PDT

Maniac --

Thanks so much for all the extra info.  Will look forward to exploring
this in more detail once I get past my imminent project deadlines. 
THANK YOU AGAIN!

-- R.

---

Clarification of Answer by maniac-ga on 25 Jul 2003 17:53 PDT

Hello Rnd13,

Glad to help.

  --Maniac

Excellent advice, despite being a somewhat non-specific problem.  I
particularly appreciate that Maniac gave solid advice, with ideas for
follow-up; and did it all intelligently, and without patronizing.