Ah, this is very interesting information and it makes sense. I guess
the only real issue is figuring out what could be writing to the
Universal plist and at what point is it writing because I suspect
something is being writtten when the machine is shutting down or
going to sleep and that could be what is trashing the file. I imagine
this will take some time to watch and figure out what's going on.
THanks for the very valuable information, it really helps.
Scott
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
On Jun 9, 2006, at 2:56 PM, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
Scott,
The problem of preference lists (files with .plist extensions) for
applications getting corrupted is discussed at the MacFixIt site.
There's an article on yesterday's MacFixIt web page pointing out
that applications other than the host (owner) sometimes write to
the .plist files, so the problem is not only the possible corruption
due to an occasional error from lots of changes to preferences
over time, but also because some other apps that access the
.plist files may be doing so with buggy write routines.
For example, they point out that many mail-handling routines
might access and modify the Safari.plist file. As Travis said,
creating a test account helps to trouble-shoot: if you don't
find the same problem with the application from the second
user's account, then an archive and install won't help. Chances
are that you have a corrupted plist file.
This might be the source of Jacob's problem with Safari.
One way to check is to move the
~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.Safari.plist
file to the Desktop using the "mv" command under terminal.
If the application launches and performs without problems,
the plist file was probably the source of the difficulties.
If no change in behavior is seen, the plist file can be moved
back to ~/Library/Preferences from the Desktop and can
replace the new plist file that got created.
Here's the URL for the MacFixIt article:
http://www.macfixit.com/article.php?story=20060608083449600
Cheers,
Esther
On Friday, June 09, 2006, Scott Howell wrote:
Yeah the question is why it happens. I wonder if there's some
extensive information available that covers plists and their
functions.
