QRecall

Steven M. Alper

The AppleJack single-user repair tool is at long last available for Leopard. I ran its set of routines for the first time yesterday. When I restarted the icons for my external Firewire hard drive's two partitions had been changed to generic icons. All seemed fine on the disks though. However this morning I was notified that QRecall was unable to find its archives on that disk. When I redirected it to the archives they verified as okay.

I realize that the fault here is likely not QRecall's, but perhaps you could help track down the problem. I went to AppleJack's creators before turning here. They wrote:

Thanks for the report. I'm concerned about AppleJack modifying *anything*
on an external drive.

Where does QRecall store it's application support/cache files? I'm
wondering if deleting cache files makes the application lose track of its
archive files (even though they should be saving that to a preference file
rather than a cache file).

It's possible that it may have been over-exuberant in its routines, or that some cache or other that needed to be rebuilt was not done so automatically. Here's an edited version of the log files, detailing what AppleJack does:

AppleJack 1.5, Revision: 1.123 



Gathering information... Running in automatic mode, with automatic restart 

- User ID: 0, NAME: root ||  

- OS Version: 10.5.4 

- Looking for virtual memory directory in dynamic_pager 

- Virtual memory directory appears to be /private/var/vm. 



Disk repair Success! Either your disk had no errors, or it was repaired  successfully. Done with disk repairs



Permissions repair Let's mount the startup file system for write access... 

Done.

Checking for /tmp directory: 

/tmp directory exists.

Done.

Configuring minimal Leopard services...

Done.



Started verify/repair permissions on disk disk1s10 Macintosh G5 HD

Permissions differ on "private/var/log/secure.log", should be -rw------- , they are -rw-r----- 

Group differs on "Library/PreferencePanes", should be 0, group is 80

Permissions differ on "Library/PreferencePanes", should be drwxr-xr-x , they are drwxrwxr-x 



[The rest of the permission problems were all with Webserver/Documents and Developer/Examples.]



Finished verify/repair permissions on disk disk1s10 Macintosh G5 HD

Permissions have been repaired.



Cache file cleanup

Removing system cache files: 

/System/Library/Caches/com.apple.Components2.SystemCache.Components

/System/Library/Caches/com.apple.Components2.SystemCache.QuickTimeComponents

/System/Library/Caches/com.apple.IntlDataCache

/System/Library/Caches/com.apple.IntlDataCache.kbdx

/System/Library/Caches/com.apple.IntlDataCache.sbdl

/System/Library/Caches/com.apple.IntlDataCache.tecx

/System/Library/Caches/com.apple.bootstamps/CC07BD95-1C66-39A7-B866-EC05E7E4262A

/System/Library/Caches/com.apple.bootstamps

/System/Library/Caches/com.apple.kernelcaches/kernelcache.716A1708

/System/Library/Caches/com.apple.kernelcaches

/Library/Caches/Google/SoftwareUpdates/Downloads/alper-com.Google.GoogleEarthPlus-4.3.7204.836-1

/Library/Caches/Google/SoftwareUpdates/Downloads/alper-com.Google.GoogleEarthPlus-4.3.7284.3916-1

/Library/Caches/Google/SoftwareUpdates/Downloads

/Library/Caches/Google/SoftwareUpdates/Installs/alper-com.Google.GoogleEarthPlus-4.3.7204.836-1

/Library/Caches/Google/SoftwareUpdates/Installs/alper-com.Google.GoogleEarthPlus-4.3.7284.3916-1

/Library/Caches/Google/SoftwareUpdates/Installs

/Library/Caches/Google/SoftwareUpdates/manifest.xml

/Library/Caches/Google/SoftwareUpdates/PendingInstalls

/Library/Caches/Google/SoftwareUpdates

/Library/Caches/Google

/Library/Caches/com.apple.Components2.LocalCache.AudioComponents

/Library/Caches/com.apple.Components2.LocalCache.Components

/Library/Caches/com.apple.Components2.LocalCache.QuickTimeComponents

/Library/Caches/com.apple.DeveloperTools.501/3.1/Property List Editor/PlugInCache.xcplugincache/PlugInCache.mom

/Library/Caches/com.apple.DeveloperTools.501/3.1/Property List Editor/PlugInCache.xcplugincache/PlugInCache.xcpfdb

/Library/Caches/com.apple.DeveloperTools.501/3.1/Property List Editor/PlugInCache.xcplugincache

/Library/Caches/com.apple.DeveloperTools.501/3.1/Property List Editor

/Library/Caches/com.apple.DeveloperTools.501/3.1

/Library/Caches/com.apple.DeveloperTools.501

/Library/Caches/com.apple.ImageCaptureExtension2.ICADeviceDatabase.501

/Library/Caches/com.apple.ImageCaptureExtension2.ICADeviceDatabase.504

/Library/Caches/com.apple.QuickTime.StreamingBandwidth

/Library/Caches/com.apple.SystemMigration.plist

/Library/Caches/com.apple.psnormalizer.fontcache.501

/Library/Caches/com.apple.psnormalizer.fontcache.501.lock

/Library/Caches/com.makemusic.audiounit.smartmusicsoftsynth/synthgms.sf2.midnam

/Library/Caches/com.makemusic.audiounit.smartmusicsoftsynth

/private/var/db/volinfo.database

/private/var/db/BootCache.playlist

/System/Library/Extensions.mkext

Done removing system cache files.



Done with cache file clean up task.



Validating preference files



Root file system already mounted. Continue.

Checking mach init preference files (/etc/mach_init.d)): 

Done.



Checking root preference files (/var/root/Library/Preferences)): 

Done.



Checking system preference files (/Library/Preferences)): 

Done.



Virtual memory cleanup



Removing swap files: 

/private/var/vm/swapfile0

/private/var/vm/swapfile1

/private/var/vm/swapfile2

/private/var/vm/swapfile3

/private/var/vm/swapfile4

/private/var/vm/swapfile5

/private/var/vm/swapfile6

/private/var/vm/swapfile7

/private/var/vm/swapfile8

Done.

Restarting Steven-M-Alpers-Computer.local

I don't see anything QRecall related in there, but what do I know.

I hate to bug you with this, but perhaps it will turn up something useful to you?

Many thanks,

James Bucanek

Steven M. Alper wrote:When I restarted the icons for my external Firewire hard drive's two partitions had been changed to generic icons.

That's suspicious.

However this morning I was notified that QRecall was unable to find its archives on that disk.

QRecall remembers the location of both archives and items to be captured using aliases. These are the same alias records created by the Finder when you make an Alias file.

I suspect that AppleJack has changed something that OS X was using to identify known volumes. This would also explain why your icons changed (since OS X now thinks these are new, never before seen, volumes). You might check to see if you have any other aliases to items on your external volume. They might be suffering from the same problem.

You can probably rectify this by editing your actions. Open the action, reselect the same archive (creating a new alias to the archive) and save the updated action.

/private/var/db/volinfo.database

Yikes! /var/db/volinfo.database is not a transient file. I would definately alert the AppleJack authors about this one.

One of the important bits of information stored here is which volumes use POSIX Ownership and Privileges and which ones don't. Erasing this file could cause volumes that previously enforced file ownership and privileges to suddenly stop using them and visa versa.

I don't see anything QRecall related in there, but what do I know.

I don't either. I think AppleJack just gave OS X a case of amnesia and it no longer remembers volumes that it's seen in the past.