[Arolte]

Does anyone have any experience with manually swapping OS X frameworks? The reason I ask is because I may have a corrupted WebKit framework in my System folder.

I've been having serious problems with Safari (latest version for OS X 10.3.9) whereby it gives me about 2 or 3 minutes of the spinning beachball of death upon startup and unexpectedly quits on me. It does this every single time I attempt to run it. It won't even give me enough time to type in a url before it unexpectedly quits to the desktop. And oddly enough this is literally something that happened overnight. Safari just decided to crap out on me.

I've tried everything to resolve this issue. I've tracked down every single file related to Safari on hard drive, deleted it, completely reinstalled both new and old versions of Safari. But I always got the same result. So I suspect that an OS level corruption may have occurred to cause this problem. Someone suggested that I look into replacing WebKit.

Now, before I get into that I'd like to share you a bad experience I had with frameworks in the past. Back when OS X 10.1.2 or 10.1.3 was released, I went in and did a little bit of trimming in my system folder. I just thought it would be harmless to take out certain files which I didn't need at all, to save up space for my iMac (6GB HD). Well in the process of trimming all the excess files, drivers, and applications I didn't need... I finally ran into the frameworks folder.

Little did I know that deleting the ImageCapture framework folder would cause my system to completely hang on me upon the next startup. I deleted Image Capture from my applications folder (don't ask me why, I was an idiot), so I figured why would I need its framework folder? Welp, next thing I knew I was staring at a blank screen on my next startup. I'm sure it had nothing to do with deleting anything else, because I made sure to restart before delving into the frameworks folder. So with that experience I'm a little weary of going in and replacing WebKit from another Mac that has Panther installed (10.3.8).

Is there any advice anyone would like to offer? Do you think WebKit is responsible for Safari crashing? I've even tried Shiira, a similar browser that uses Safari's rendering engine, and oddly enough it has given me the spinning beachball of death too. So obviously whatever is being shared between the two programs (at an OS level) is causing this. Or at least I think. I guess I should also note that Camino works flawlessly. But when I heard both Shiira and Safari share the same rendering engine, I figured something in the OS may be causing it.

If you do think it is WebKit that may be responsible, what would be the safest approach to resolving this problem? I don't want to screw up anything in the root System folder. I don't want to end up staring at a blank startup screen again. But at the same time I want to see if replacing WebKit would solve the problem. What would you suggest I do in a situation like this? Because like I said I've tried reinstalling everything from scratch, and that hasn't helped. I want to see if I can get Safari to work again!

[Chris O'Brien]

It does indeed sound like it's webkit causing the problem. I suppose you could download the combo updater for 10.3.9 and install from that (maybe have to use CharlesS' Pacifist) or you could get ahead of the curve and follow instructions at http://webkit.opendarwin.org/

p.s. deleting frameworks? lesson learned, eh?

[Arolte]

Thanks for the help, Black Book, but unfortunately that didn't do it. I downloaded Pacifist, replaced WebKit in root System completely, ran through the whole prebinding process, reinstalled Safari 1.2 from Apple's web site, and it still hangs on me.

I guess I should note one other thing. Software Update doesn't work either. I've been getting the following error ever since Safari died out on me:

A networking error has occurred: zero byte resource (-1014). Make sure you can connect to the Internet, then try again.

Could these two things be related somehow? Everything else in OS X works fine: Mail, iCal, iTunes, QuickTime, etc. And as I said before Camino runs flawlessly. What is going on here? Are there any other ideas on what could be the problem? Sigh... this really sucks.

[Person Man]

Originally Posted by Arolte

Thanks for the help, Black Book, but unfortunately that didn't do it. I downloaded Pacifist, replaced WebKit in root System completely, ran through the whole prebinding process, reinstalled Safari 1.2 from Apple's web site, and it still hangs on me.

I guess I should note one other thing. Software Update doesn't work either. I've been getting the following error ever since Safari died out on me:

A networking error has occurred: zero byte resource (-1014). Make sure you can connect to the Internet, then try again.

Could these two things be related somehow? Everything else in OS X works fine: Mail, iCal, iTunes, QuickTime, etc. And as I said before Camino runs flawlessly. What is going on here? Are there any other ideas on what could be the problem? Sigh... this really sucks.

Try an archive and install. Also, stay out of the /System folder entirely.

[cybergoober]

Check the Console log. It may hold a clue as to why Safari craps out on launch...

Good luck

[Arolte]

Good call. Didn't think about the console. Here's what I'm getting in terms of both Safari and Software Update errors:

2005-07-20 10:20:28 -0400
2005-07-20 10:22:40.778 Safari[395] An uncaught exception was raised

2005-07-20 10:22:40.895 Safari[395] *** -[NSConcreteFileHandle readDataOfLength:]: Input/output error

2005-07-20 10:22:40.913 Safari[395] *** Uncaught exception: <NSFileHandleOperationException> *** -[NSConcreteFileHandle readDataOfLength:]: Input/output error

2005-07-20 10:25:39.078 Software Update[468] connection:didFailWithError: zero byte resource

I doubt this'll help though. It sounds pretty arbitrary to me. But I figured it was worth a shot to post it here anyway.

Originally Posted by cybergoober

Check the Console log. It may hold a clue as to why Safari craps out on launch...

Good luck

[proton]

From that console log I'd guess at there being a damaged preference file or something along those lines. The full crash log (from ~/Library/Logs/CrashReporter/) for Safari may help determine what file it is that's causing the problem.

Have you tried running Safari / Software Update from another account on the machine? It is quite possible that the damaged file is in your home folder.

- proton