[ultra-V]

Mail, iChat and iCal have all decided they will not start up. I'm not sure if my problems in the three are related, but they will begin to launch, then "unexpectedly quit."

I have spent the most time troubleshooting Mail. It gets as far as opening the main window before crashing. I have tried taking the preferences file and mailboxes folders out of the library, but no help. I have also tried copying a version of Mail itself from another machine. Is there some sort of global preferences file each app references that might be corrupted, causing all three to crash? Any other ideas?

Any help would be appreciated.

FYI: 1Ghz TiBook, OS 10.2.6

[Chuckit]

Try looking at the Console when it happens and see if it prints anything. That can help a lot in figuring out what's happening.

[nobitacu]

Originally posted by Chuckit:
Try looking at the Console when it happens and see if it prints anything. That can help a lot in figuring out what's happening.

In case the person don't know how or others might need to know as well... just how do you do that in the Console?

Ming

[ultra-V]

Thanks for the tip (FYI, just open the application called "Console" and read any error messages that come up).

I got the following message:

Code:
2003-09-29 11:13:05.916 Mail[2208] CFLog (0): 
CFPropertyListCreateFromXMLData(): plist parse failed; the data is not proper UTF-8. The file name for this data could be:
com.apple.iChat.plist -- /Users/  /Library/Preferences/
The parser will retry as in 10.1, but the problem should be corrected in the plist.

Thus, I took out the iChat pref file, and Mail and iChat work again. I wouldn't have thought Mail would look to iChat's file, but I guess it's because it looks to see who's online.

Problem is iCal still doesn't work. The console reads:

Code:
2003-09-29 11:19:33.696 iCal[2220] *** -[NSCalendarDate cdate]: selector not recognized
2003-09-29 11:19:33.697 iCal[2220] An uncaught exception was raised
2003-09-29 11:19:33.697 iCal[2220] *** -[NSCalendarDate cdate]: selector not recognized
2003-09-29 11:19:33.697 iCal[2220] *** Uncaught exception: <NSInvalidArgumentException> *** -[NSCalendarDate cdate]: selector not recognized
Sep 29 11:19:33 Laptop crashdump: Crash report written to: /Users/ /Library/Logs/CrashReporter/iCal.crash.log

What does that mean? The crash log makes no sense to me, but I can paste it in here, if it helps.

Thanks!

[Back up 15 and punt]

Have you tried repairing privilages? Do you know how?

[ultra-V]

Nope. What exactly does it do and when/why should one do it?
Thx.

[CharlesS]

Originally posted by ultra-V:
What does that mean? The crash log makes no sense to me, but I can paste it in here, if it helps.

It means that the application is trying to call some method named "cdate" which NSCalendarDate doesn't have. This could be caused by a number of things, but as it is it may or may not be related to the crash you're getting.

It might help if you post the crash log.

[CharlesS]

Actually, from looking around with class-dump, it appears that there is a private object in /System/Library/PrivateFrameworks/CALCore.framework named CALDate which is presumably the object that iCal uses to store dates. This object has a method named 'cdate', whereas the normal NSCalendarDate object does not. So apparently what's going on is probably that iCal is working with an NSCalendarDate and thinking it's a CALDate. Again, not having access to the source code, I couldn't tell you exactly why this is happening, but you may want to post the crash log. It may not be helpful, but it may have some clues...

[ultra-V]

Okey dokey, here's the full log. Thanks for the help, y'all rock.

Code:
Date/Time:  2003-09-30 10:46:53 -0400
OS Version: 10.2.6 (Build 6L60)
Host:       Laptop.local.

Command:    iCal
PID:        2411

Exception:  EXC_BREAKPOINT (0x0006)
Code[0]:    0x00000001Code[1]:    0x97e5497c

Thread 0 Crashed:
 #0   0x97e5497c in _NSRaiseError
 #1   0x97e54804 in +[NSException raise:format:]
 #2   0x97e00bbc in -[NSObject(NSForwardInvocation) forward::]
 #3   0x9068c130 in _objc_msgForward
 #4   0x95485734 in -[CALDate initWithTimeInterval:sinceDate:]
 #5   0x95434068 in -[CALTimeRange initWithStartDate:withDuration:]
 #6   0x0000a3c4 in 0xa3c4
 #7   0x0000a704 in 0xa704
 #8   0x9312f9e4 in -[NSClassSwapper initWithCoder:]
 #9   0x97df48b4 in _decodeObject
 #10  0x97df50e8 in _decodeValueOfObjCType
 #11  0x97e02ed8 in -[NSUnarchiver decodeValueOfObjCType:at:]
 #12  0x97e0c6a4 in -[NSArray initWithCoder:]
 #13  0x97df48b4 in _decodeObject
 #14  0x97df50e8 in _decodeValueOfObjCType
 #15  0x97df667c in -[NSUnarchiver decodeValuesOfObjCTypes:]
 #16  0x930ade88 in -[NSView initWithCoder:]
 #17  0x9312fb50 in -[NSClipView initWithCoder:]
 #18  0x97df48b4 in _decodeObject
 #19  0x97df50e8 in _decodeValueOfObjCType
 #20  0x97e02ed8 in -[NSUnarchiver decodeValueOfObjCType:at:]
 #21  0x97e0c6a4 in -[NSArray initWithCoder:]
 #22  0x97df48b4 in _decodeObject
 #23  0x97df50e8 in _decodeValueOfObjCType
 #24  0x97df667c in -[NSUnarchiver decodeValuesOfObjCTypes:]
 #25  0x930ade88 in -[NSView initWithCoder:]
 #26  0x9314a628 in -[NSScrollView initWithCoder:]
 #27  0x97df48b4 in _decodeObject
 #28  0x97df50e8 in _decodeValueOfObjCType
 #29  0x97e02ed8 in -[NSUnarchiver decodeValueOfObjCType:at:]
 #30  0x97e0c6a4 in -[NSArray initWithCoder:]
 #31  0x97df48b4 in _decodeObject
 #32  0x97df50e8 in _decodeValueOfObjCType
 #33  0x97df667c in -[NSUnarchiver decodeValuesOfObjCTypes:]
 #34  0x930ade88 in -[NSView initWithCoder:]
 #35  0x9314a470 in -[NSCustomView initWithCoder:]
 #36  0x97df48b4 in _decodeObject
 #37  0x97df50e8 in _decodeValueOfObjCType
 #38  0x97e02ed8 in -[NSUnarchiver decodeValueOfObjCType:at:]
 #39  0x97e0c6a4 in -[NSArray initWithCoder:]
 #40  0x97df48b4 in _decodeObject
 #41  0x97df50e8 in _decodeValueOfObjCType
 #42  0x97df667c in -[NSUnarchiver decodeValuesOfObjCTypes:]
 #43  0x930ade88 in -[NSView initWithCoder:]
 #44  0x9314a470 in -[NSCustomView initWithCoder:]
 #45  0x97df48b4 in _decodeObject
 #46  0x930e2f58 in -[NSResponder initWithCoder:]
 #47  0x930ad8c0 in -[NSView initWithCoder:]
 #48  0x9314a470 in -[NSCustomView initWithCoder:]
 #49  0x97df48b4 in _decodeObject
 #50  0x930e2f58 in -[NSResponder initWithCoder:]
 #51  0x930ad8c0 in -[NSView initWithCoder:]
 #52  0x9314a470 in -[NSCustomView initWithCoder:]
 #53  0x97df48b4 in _decodeObject
 #54  0x97df50e8 in _decodeValueOfObjCType
 #55  0x97df667c in -[NSUnarchiver decodeValuesOfObjCTypes:]
 #56  0x930d50d4 in _old_initWithCoder
 #57  0x97df48b4 in _decodeObject
 #58  0x93124524 in old_loadNib
 #59  0x930eaa2c in +[NSBundle(NSNibLoading) _loadNibFile:nameTable:withZone:ownerBundle:]
 #60  0x93149a5c in +[NSBundle(NSNibLoading) loadNibFile:externalNameTable:withZone:]
 #61  0x9314981c in +[NSBundle(NSNibLoading) loadNibNamed:owner:]
 #62  0x9315fbfc in NSApplicationMain
 #63  0x00004a58 in 0x4a58
 #64  0x000048d8 in 0x48d8

PPC Thread State:
  srr0: 0x97e5497c srr1: 0x0202f030                vrsave: 0x00000000
   xer: 0x00000000   lr: 0x97e54958  ctr: 0x97df3e2c   mq: 0x00000000
    r0: 0x00000000   r1: 0xbfffe190   r2: 0x24000248   r3: 0xa7e02644
    r4: 0x9068d51c   r5: 0x20000000   r6: 0xbfffde70   r7: 0x00000000
    r8: 0x00110010   r9: 0xa7df0294  r10: 0x00000003  r11: 0x00000000
   r12: 0x24000248  r13: 0x00000000  r14: 0x00000000  r15: 0x00000000
   r16: 0x001d6930  r17: 0xa309a6d4  r18: 0xa309a6d4  r19: 0xa309a6d4
   r20: 0xa309a6d4  r21: 0x001d79b0  r22: 0xa309a5c8  r23: 0x000000e0
   r24: 0x01cbd1f0  r25: 0x9549cc80  r26: 0x01cbf6a0  r27: 0xa7df02ac
   r28: 0x01cbd1f0  r29: 0x01cbf750  r30: 0x01cbf130  r31: 0x97e5489c

[CharlesS]

That's really strange... it looks like it's crashing while loading the nib.

Maybe the nib is corrupt? What happens if you try to reinstall iCal using Pacifist?

Charles

[JKT]

Originally posted by ultra-V:
Nope. What exactly does it do and when/why should one do it?
Thx.

Launch Disk Utility and under the First Aid Tab, after highlighting your boot disk in the left hand pane, press the Repair Permissions button. This can take a good few minutes to finish.

Each file created in OS X is given a set of "permissions" that tells the system who has access to the file, who can write to the file and who can execute the file. The who in this instance is the system itself and various other processes, yourself as the admin user, and if you share the computer, other users. The System files should each have a specific set of permissions which, if necessary, the Repair Permissions procedure will reset them to if it finds any problems.

Why is it necessary to do this? These permissions settings can sometimes be messed up by some third party software installations and this can cause issues such as applications failing to launch correctly/folders suddenly not allowing drag and drop etc.

As a precaution, you should always run the procedure after an installation of any software that requires you to enter your admin password. Otherwise it isn't necessary (e.g. after a simple drag and drop install).

HTH