I am having problems running my Garritan software on Mac OSX. What can I try?

Macs have gone through a difficult transition from OS9, to OSX to Jaguar, Panther and now Tiger. Audio specs have changed along the way and have caused difficulties for many audio software companies. CPU and RAM usage is reputedly three times as much for Panther/Tiger, and some GPO users have either added more RAM or have gone back to Jaguar. There are some growing pains but the worse is behind us.

USER SUGGESTIONS – submitted by dcornutt on the GPO forum ( http://www.garritan.com/forum.html ):

– Repairing Permissions:
Everybody has heard this one. But, what you may not know is, that most “installers” from 3rd party companies frag your permissions to some degree. You should always rebuilt permissions after “every” install of any software to be safe. And you should religiously repair them about once a week or so. Once permissions start to go wacky, folders will dim out in the finder and not be accessible, you’ll start getting file not found errors, any sort of wierdness, that eventually, could lead to file corruption, disk corruption. Most installs you wont’ find much corruption. But, I’ll just mention, that I’ve seen some 3rd party installers that fragged permission “royally”. Took about 20 mins to repair the damage the installer did to file permissions. So, “always” run this. And do it religiously, it won’t hurt your machine to “over” do this. (think of this as the equivalent of rebuilding your desktop file on OS9…do it, and do it often to prevent catastrophic file loss or irreparable damage). To repair permissions: applications/utilities/disk utility. Select the volume your OSX is is installed on. Select the “repair permissions” button. If anything is wrong, it will list it. You can, for an even more complete job, run the utility from the OSX CD after rebooting from the CD. If you can’t get permissions repaired just running the utility locally, you might try this method.

– RAM Incompatibility:
OSX is “very” sensitive to RAM incompatibilities. The issues from this can turn up in any number of ways..from subtle, to severe. And it will get worse the more load you put on it. There have been more than a “few” people who purchased Macs with OSX who put aftermarket ram in it from the start, who have had more than their fair share of issues (apps quitting, kernel panics, etc), who tried to solve the issue by adding more ram, only to find the situation get worse. If you have any doubts, remove all the ram but what came with your mac. Start putting load on it (doesn’t matter how you do it), and see if it crashes or you get unexpected quit ..poof. There are ram checkers and they sometimes work…sometimes not. The best way is to yank the aftermarket ram and see if the problem goes away. I’ll mention here, if this is the case (or bad logic board) you’ll have this same behavior in any app. Not just GPO or etc. It will be constant crashing across the board. You may find your machine freezes just sitting there. These are all symptoms of bad ram or logic board.

– Hardware Failures:
To add to that, Apple has had more than their fair share of hardware failures (QC) lately. There are people who even after removing all the ram except for the apple branded ram that came with the machine, had the same sort of behavior, who ended up having their logic boards replaced. More than a few. And I’ve worked on a few of them. The frustration here is, when you have the same hardware, OS revision, software revision, etc, and “you” have problems that the other person does not have my be worth checking some of this out.

– Do not run in classic mode:
Here’s some other things that can cause wierd behavior in OSX and apps: the “blue box” or “classic” compatibility environment. It’s set to boot at startup by default (even if you are not using it). And, after you run a “classic app” under OSX the bluebox remains running until you quit it. It doesn’t quit with the app. You can get to the “classic” control panel in OSX and set it to not start automatically on boot AND you can also kill it if it’s running actively. I recommend NOT using classic …ever, if you can help it…specifically if you are on a dual boot, single drive system (such as a powerbook).

– Disable Journaling:
Here’s some other things/differences that could be out there, Panther uses a new updated file system addition to HFS+ called “journaling”. Journaling, works something like Disk Warrior that runs all the time. It rearranges your file system based on priority and it will auto defrag any file over 20 megs that’s fragmented. It will also reduce your disk response and load capability by about 10%. When you install OSX, you have the option to “not” activate journaling. I recommend that if you are going to use audio apps on your Panther install. You can also turn it off. (active journaling). But, regardless of which option you choose, when you install panther on a drive you have erased with the drive setup that comes with Panther install, you will note your drive now reads xxxxx hfs+ (journaling).

– Fonts:
This is one area that I think I’ve seen “more” instability from than anything else. Some of these utilities “auto activate” fonts and over time, the font cache gets corrupted and will cause a crash in just about any app you open. To clean this up, there are instructions from most of these font util makers on how to delete all the font cache files (whcih might be strewn about your drive in numerous folders), and deleted the font database and prefs to they can be rebuilt fresh. DeepSix is a free utility that will search for such adobe and other font cache files across drives and wack them in one shot. The other thing related to this, when you install Panther, it does not search your drives for fonts. But, it “will” pull in everything in your OS9 sys/fonts folder. So, if you’ve been hording fonts from OS9 in your OS9 fonts folder, they are now in your OSX install. Having multiple fonts of same type or name is also a cause of problem. A bad or corrupt font as well can cause issues. If you are using a font management system (even the built in one in Panther) make sure you have it set to DO NOT manage system fonts. If a font util removes one of the base system fonts or replaces it with a different version sub, OSX will buck like a mustang. There are only a few base system fonts that come with Panther, but one of them is “helvetica” a common font. If you are into DTP you might have 4 different versions of this font. Your font utility might see these as duplicates and remove or deactivate all but one. What I’m saying is, if it’s managing your system fonts, it may “remove” that font and try to sub a different helvetical font..which would cause OSX and apps to crash. So, that’s another area to just be wary of.

– External Devices
As a last bit, “any” USB, firewire device could be the source of trouble. If you are troubleshooting, and having problems, remove all of them you can (save the apple keyboard/mouse). Use of FW HDs has become so previlant that many people no longer even consider it a 3rd party add on. More than once I’ve been on phone with client instructing them to remove ALL connected devices save the keyboard/mouse and somewhere down the line they mention their files are on the FW hd. Removing the HD cleared up the issues. There have been some updates along the way (firmware, etc) that have fixed some of these issues. Some people never have any issues with them. And others..seem determined to chain as many FW devices together as they can, and just consider it part of their mac and never think to remove any of it when they have trouble. That means, hubs, everything. Here’s a very interesting one, client had perfectly working system suddenly go south. I asked what had changed…nothing of course. Finally I asked him to remove all 3rd party devices. That fixed it. We traced it to the USB hub…but he swore it worked just fine for months..how could it just go bad. I asked him what he had changed in regards to what hardware he had plugged in. He had removed one of the USB devices a week before to take with him on a trip..but left the USB cable plugged into the hub..with no device attached to it. To test this, we plugged the hub back in, but removed the dangling cable. Problem gone. It was probably the strangest issue I’ve run across, in that regard, but I post it here to show when you get to trying to isolate the issue, make sure you unplug “everything”…and don’t leave any cables plugged in. Some people do this, because it makes it easier to reattach the device..ie..leave the USB/FW cable lying out etc. Be aware that this “could’ be a possible source of conflict.

– Do Not Use Utilities
Do not use Norton…specifically an OSX install. It’s just asking for it. And I’ve had plenty of experience repairing drives and otherwise that have had Nortons running on it. They usually do more harm than they fix things. You should ‘only” run such 3rd party apps, IF you have problems and have tried all OSX means to get things up and need the files on the drive. After you get the files (if you do) using such a utility, wipe the drive with OSX install disk and reinstall fresh. Same goes for DiskWarrior, techtool, etc. They are handy in emergencies, but I would not trust them for daily maintenance. (just my experience). They chances are likely that they will cause more harm than they will fix if used over time. Run Cron Jobs to keep OXSX clean.

– Cron Jobs.
These are the maintenance scripts that run every night at 3:10am on your OSX machine that clear out unused cache, rotate logs, etc. The problem is, they ONLY run if your machine is on and awake at that time. If you are like most people your machine is asleep..and the jobs won’t run. This means, you need to run this jobs “yourself”. There are daily scripts, a weekly script and a monthly script. Out of those, the weekly is the most intense and takes the most time..a few mins. You have a couple of options here. One is to get a free utility that makes this easy to run them at will. I tend to frown on using any 3rd party utility for such things, but people report they work ok. The issues are, if you upgrade your OS, they may have changed some of the things about how this works, and your utility that kept your machine fresh, might suddenly make things a mess without you knowing it. You can run them simply /manually, thru the terminal app. applications/utilities/terminal. You’ll see your user name/login with a square next to it. This is the command prompt. type “sudo periodic daily” with no quotes and hit return. It will ask for your password. (admin password you setup on OSX). It will run very quickly and return the prompt. Next type “sudo periodic weekly” again, no quotes and hit return. This one will take a few mins and you’ll hear your drives crunching away. Eventually, it will return the command prompt. Type “sudo periodic monthly” and hit return. That’s it. Done.

Doing these 2 things, (repair permissions and cron jobs) will keep your OSX install fresh. Anyway, that’s it for now…hopefully, this info might prove useful to some who are having problems.

(from www.garritan.com)

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