S.D. always fails with Mac OS 10.4.8

[danM]

I just can not get S.D. to work with Mac OS 10.4.8. on an Intel Mac Mini.

A full clone always stops when the blue progress band is about 75% of the way along to the end. The S.D. display just vanishes and the clone is incomplete.

I'm told there is a graphical problem which affects S.D. sometimes - but I always have the problem.

Has anyone any solution - otherwise Super Duper is unusable.


Dan.

[dnanian]

This is, unfortunately, a bug in 10.4.8 that's not SuperDuper! specific, and seems to be affecting some users. It's intermittent for most, but obviously not you.

We've reported it to Apple and are trying to come up with a workaround internally, too... I'm sorry for the frustration!

[danM]

While I accept the above - I was hoping some member might have found a solution, if indeed one is possible. Does any other forum member have similar trouble ?

dan

[dnanian]

The real solution, for now, is to go to 10.4.7 instead (if you're not using a Sandbox, you can archive-and-install to your base version and update to 10.4.7 with a download).

I realize this is frustrating and annoying; we're doing our best at this end to come up with a workaround.

(The problem seems to be with threaded access to window updates; our progress indicator is set to update on its own thread, and the "main thread" updates too. But Core Graphics -- which handles the low level updating -- looks to be having a new problem with locking, and crashes either the main thread or the progress indicator thread when there's contention...)

[danM]

I do hope you succeed. In the meantime I'm surprised that more users are not reporting the same trouble - is the type of Mac a factor, or is the problem
likely on any Mac running 10.4.8 ?

dan

[dnanian]

Honestly, I don't know -- it doesn't happen to me on any of my Macs, but it definitely seems to be Intel-specific.

[Budgie]

Hi

No problems here, on any of my Mac's, G5 PPC 2ghz, iMac (4.1) 2ghz Intel, G4 PPC 800 mhz, and my OSX Server, all machines are running 10.4.8 with SD and doing it sweetly.

Budgie

[danM]

Tried again this morning to use Super D. to clone all - came back to discover a black screen containing this ----

"Darwin/BSD (Dan-0.local)(console)
login oct 18 09:19:05 Dan-0 diskarbitrational [41]:
SD copy[366]:32935 not responding"

Now what is the matter ? (Dan-0 is computer name.)

[dnanian]

It sounds like your Mac crashed, Dan, likely because the destination drive failed pretty badly during the copy.

[edalzell]

Originally Posted by dnanian

(The problem seems to be with threaded access to window updates; our progress indicator is set to update on its own thread, and the "main thread" updates too. But Core Graphics -- which handles the low level updating -- looks to be having a new problem with locking, and crashes either the main thread or the progress indicator thread when there's contention...)

I wonder if it has something to do with the shared video memory of MacBook? Have you noticed any commonality on the machines that they are being run on?

I have a MB so I will try a backup this week and let you know how it goes.

[dnanian]

It doesn't seem to have to do with that, Ed -- we've seen it on MacBook Pros, too, and they have a dedicated video card.

[glenn]

Originally Posted by dnanian

It doesn't seem to have to do with that, Ed -- we've seen it on MacBook Pros, too, and they have a dedicated video card.

I've tried SD 2.1.3 on these Intel Macs: Mac Mini, MacBook and Mac Pro and it fails each time. It was working well under 10.4.7 on Intel Mac systems but now it crashes about 75% before completing.

SD 2.1.3 and Mac OS 10.4.8 on any PowerPC system works without any issues for me...

[dnanian]

Right. I'm not having the problem here -- so it's not consistent -- but we are aware of the issue, we've reported to Apple, and they know about it. It is not SuperDuper! specific. How long it might be before they address the underlying problem is anyone's guess.

We're looking into workarounds on our end.

[danM]

I tried using an alternate cloner, (sorry Super D.)! - it worked OK, but took about 3 times as long to do the clone - so is not usable in the longer term.

dan

[dnanian]

The problem is not in file copying as such, dan -- it's a graphics problem in Core Graphics...