Re: force quit?

2002-11-20 Thread Laurent Daudelin 
on 20/11/02 23:00, Donald Keenan at [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:

> Why does moving the preference file help?
> I occasionally have problems with OS 10.1.5 Mail app (annoying messages
> about mailboxes being locked, etc) and an Applecare tech guy suggested
> doing this, but I don't get why. For me, it didn't work.
> Thanks,
> Donald
> On Wednesday, November 20, 2002, at 10:54 PM, Amber Rhea wrote:
> 
>> On Tuesday, November 19, 2002, at 01:40 AM, (G-Books) wrote:
>>> I'm not sure about the file structure used by Mail since I haven't used
>>> it.
>>> I would be tempted to suggest you remove the preference file, don't
>>> throw it
>>> a way, just move it out of the Library/Preferences directory, in your
>>> home
>>> directory and launch Mail again. See what happens. I would imagine that
>>> the
>>> file would be named 'com.apple.Mail' or something similar.
>> 
>> This worked! (or at least, no problems again so far!) :) Thanks!

Glad it worked.

Why moving the preference file help? Good question! Most likely because the
file becomes corrupted. There are bogus values in it and when the
application tries to make sense of it, you can start seeing the application
getting busy and the busy cursor appears and the app never recovers. At that
point, the application, if it doesn't crash, might be loss in some kind of
endless loop, trying to get at non-existent or faked values. If you force
quit, sometimes it just makes things worst if the application was updating
that file. It can be left with even more bogus values. When you launch the
app, it might still be working because some parts of the file are still
fine, but as soon as the app tries to access the damaged part, all kind of
things might happen. It's hard to tell because there are some techniques
that you can sometimes use in order to detect something that doesn't make
any sense. However, due to the highly object-oriented nature of the system,
sometimes you don't have control over it since it's a private class or a
private piece of code that is executing. In that case, there isn't much you
can do, unless overriding those parts...

-Laurent.
-- 

Laurent Daudelin   AIM/iChat: LaurentDaudelin
Logiciels Nemesys Software   mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]

Gates's Law: "The speed of software halves every 18 months." This oft-cited
law is an ironic comment on the tendency of software bloat to outpace the
every-18-month doubling in hardware capacity per dollar predicted by Moore's
Law. The reference is to Bill Gates; Microsoft is widely considered among
the worst if not the worst of the perpetrators of bloat.


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Re: force quit?

2002-11-20 Thread Donald Keenan 
Why does moving the preference file help?
I occasionally have problems with OS 10.1.5 Mail app (annoying messages 
about mailboxes being locked, etc) and an Applecare tech guy suggested 
doing this, but I don't get why. For me, it didn't work.
Thanks,
Donald
On Wednesday, November 20, 2002, at 10:54 PM, Amber Rhea wrote:

> On Tuesday, November 19, 2002, at 01:40 AM, (G-Books) wrote:
>> I'm not sure about the file structure used by Mail since I haven't used
>> it.
>> I would be tempted to suggest you remove the preference file, don't
>> throw it
>> a way, just move it out of the Library/Preferences directory, in your
>> home
>> directory and launch Mail again. See what happens. I would imagine that
>> the
>> file would be named 'com.apple.Mail' or something similar.
>
> This worked! (or at least, no problems again so far!) :) Thanks!
>


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Re: force quit?

2002-11-20 Thread Amber Rhea 
On Tuesday, November 19, 2002, at 01:40 AM, (G-Books) wrote:
> I'm not sure about the file structure used by Mail since I haven't used 
> it.
> I would be tempted to suggest you remove the preference file, don't 
> throw it
> a way, just move it out of the Library/Preferences directory, in your 
> home
> directory and launch Mail again. See what happens. I would imagine that 
> the
> file would be named 'com.apple.Mail' or something similar.

This worked! (or at least, no problems again so far!) :) Thanks!

--
 Amber Rhea 
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
http://tangerinecs.com/~amber

/"\ ASCII Ribbon Campaign
\ / No HTML/RTF in email
  X  No Word docs in email
/ \ Respect Open Standards!


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Re: force quit?

2002-11-18 Thread Laurent Daudelin 
on 18/11/02 22:40, Amber Rhea at [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:

> As I posted a few days ago, lately I have been having to force quit OS X
> Mail a lot, due to randomly getting the incessant spinning beachball which
> will not stop, and the application will not respond to any keystrokes. No
> one replied to my post to offer any suggestions as to why Mail is suddenly
> behaving this way, but the cause doesn't bother me as much as the possible
> effects - how potentially damaging is it, really, to force quit often? I
> imagine it would be different under OS X than OS 9, but I know it's still
> not the ideal thing to do.

It's hard to tell for sure, but when you force quit an application, damages
to files can happen if the application was writing to disk. I would imagine,
although I don't have any certitude, that preference files and documents
could be damaged if the application is just in the middle of updating those.
Then, under some circumstances, the application might have problem
recovering from those conditions when launched again, which could result in
additional problems. It always depends on how the application was written to
deal with abnormal conditions. Some don't always behave gracefully...

I'm not sure about the file structure used by Mail since I haven't used it.
I would be tempted to suggest you remove the preference file, don't throw it
a way, just move it out of the Library/Preferences directory, in your home
directory and launch Mail again. See what happens. I would imagine that the
file would be named 'com.apple.Mail' or something similar.

-Laurent.
-- 

Laurent Daudelin  AIM/RV: LaurentDaudelin
Logiciels Nemesys Software   mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]

foo /foo/ 1. interj. Term of disgust. 2. [very common] Used very generally
as a sample name for absolutely anything, esp. programs and files (esp.
scratch files). 3. First on the standard list of metasyntactic variables
used in syntax examples. See also bar, baz, qux, quux, corge, grault,
garply, waldo, fred, plugh, xyzzy, thud.


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Re: force quit?

2002-11-18 Thread John Haumann 

On Monday, November 18, 2002, at 09:40 PM, Amber Rhea wrote:

> lately I have been having to force quit OS X
> Mail a lot, due to randomly getting the incessant spinning beachball 
> which
> will not stop, and the application will not respond to any keystrokes. 
> No
> one replied to my post to offer any suggestions as to why Mail is 
> suddenly
> behaving this way, but the cause doesn't bother me as much as the 
> possible
> effects - how potentially damaging is it, really, to force quit often? 
> I
> imagine it would be different under OS X than OS 9, but I know it's 
> still
> not the ideal thing to do.
>

Amber,

I think this is a permissions issue.  Update to at least OS-X 
(v10.1.5), then download and apply the "fix permissions" utility from 
Apple.  If you're using Jaguar (v10.2.x), this utility has been 
incorporated into the Disk First Aid panel instead of being a separate 
application.  The utility runs for more than 20 minutes.

John at Wood-n-Shavings, Inc.
San Antonio, Texas



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