OS X 10.9.5 stops responding with OpenZFS on OS X 1.4.5

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http://web.archive.org/web/20151107061126/https://openzfsonosx.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=26&t=2373 for a snapshot of the topic that preceded this post. (Some of that content disappeared, so I continued here.)

2009 MacBookPro5,2 with 8 GB memory and Mavericks:

Maybe related: ARC Duelling with OS X File Cache · Issue #292 · openzfsonosx/zfs · GitHub

Also remarkable, although I never experimented with a ZVOL: After heavy reads on zvols and datasets, the system hangs with 1.4.5 · Issue #419 · openzfsonosx/zfs

Re https://openzfsonosx.org/wiki/Performance I experimented with a tune away from the defaults. If I recall correctly:

  • 2 GB ARC
  • 1 GB ARC meta.

Then, for a pool named zhandy on a Transcend StoreJet 25M (25 mobile) (probably TS640GSJ25M) with a USB 2.0 connection, I used PC-BSD 11.0-CURRENTNOV2015 on a different notebook to:

  • begin a scrub
  • unmount the one file system of the pool
  • export the pool.

Saturday 2015-11-07 sometime around 06:30 I reconnected that mobile hard disk drive to the MacBookPro5,2 and commanded:

sudo zpool import zhandy

Soon after entering the password, I could no longer see an on-screen pointer so, suspecting a problem, I keyed Control-T (SIGINFO) then, at 06:39:11, the chord for sysdiagnose(1).

The on-screen clock stopped at 06:40:54 but activity (the scrub, presumably) remained visible at the mobile hard disk drive. So at the nearby notebook with PC-BSD, I began writing these notes and attempted a connection to the Mac:

ssh bbsadmin-l@192.168.1.3

The GUI of the Mac was almost completely at a standstill – very slow blinking of the rectangular cursor at the command line – and at 07:30 in real time, the clock in the menu bar of the Mac appeared stuck at 06:43:40.

No response to the ssh command so I could not tell, remotely, whether spindump had begun.

At the mobile HDD, activity remained visible.

At the command line, still, the result of SIGINFO:

load: 130.55  cmd: zpool 8006 running 0.00u 45.04s

I keyed Control-T once more, no response. I continued drafting this post, then with the real time around 07:32 I saw that the clock on the Mac had progressed to 07:31:45.

Around 08:00, with the clock still stuck at 07:31:45, I keyed Command-Control-Power to force a restart of the OS.

Soon afterwards, mobile HDD activity ceased to be visible but the forced restart was unsuccessful, so after 08:05 I forced off the Mac and then used single user mode, hoping to find a directory –

/private/var/tmp/sysdiagnose_…

– if found, I would have moved it to a non-volatile area before proceeding with multi-user mode.

Unfortunately, the unresponsive state of the OS had not allowed the stackshot(1) daemon to run the sysdiagnose tool – so there was no spindump, and so on. A single user mode view of /private/var/log showed that the most recent write was to system.log at 06:38 – before the key chord for sysdiagnose was used.

Alongside system.log one other file – org.openzfsonosx.zed.err – was also modified at 06:38.

Later, I made a copy of that .err file but there are no time stamps; I can’t guess which lines were the last before the OS stopped responding. I might paste the content of that file to a pastebin (and link from this post), but I doubt that it’ll help towards a bug report …

Making Safari and other browsers on Mac OS X compatible with ZopeEditManager and with .zem files that may be served by Zope/Plone

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I have submitted the following hint to http://www.macosxhints.com/.

Feel free to test/comment…

Safari compatibility with .zem and ‘Edit with external application’ features of Plone/Zope

For .zem files, sometimes offered by Plone content management systems, to be treated as safe by Safari and similar applications, you may add three strings to your DownloadAssessment preferences.

1) in Terminal,

plutil -convert xml1 ~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.DownloadAssessment.plist

2) in Terminal,

pico ~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.DownloadAssessment.plist

3) include the three strings shown in the example at http://pastebin.ca/792460 then save and close the plist

4) get ZopeEditManager from the Urbanape software area

5) ZopeEditManager menu | Preferences… | Helper Apps

  • you may wish to add helpers such as 
    • application/msword | NeoOffice | .doc

6) quit then re-launch Safari.

Continue reading →

Microsoft Office Live Workspace Beta system requirements problem

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According to Microsoft,  Office Live Workspace works with … Firefox 2.0 on Mac OS X 10.2.x and later.In fact, when I use Firefox 2.0.0.7 on Mac OS X 10.4.10, Microsoft’s free sign-up routine fails at an early hurdle. Office Live complains:

In order to use Microsoft Office Live, you will need to have Microsoft Internet Explorer 6 or later running on Microsoft Windows 2000, Windows XP, Windows Vista, or Microsoft Windows Server 2003.

misbehaving applications and update_prebinding in Mac OS X

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If applications on your Mac are misbehaving, and a fix is elusive, try this:

  1. use Disk Utility to verify your disks
  2. launch Terminal
  3. quit from all other applications
  4. at the command line, run the following command

    5. sudo update_prebinding -force -root /

  5. whilst that command runs, be very patient
  6. whilst waiting for the command to complete, do absolutely nothing — it’s essential to not touch your Mac until after the run is complete
  7. any errors presented during the run are typically negligible, but if you like you can take a note of them after the event.

Credit to Unsanity for casting light on related issues.