I recently noticed that QRecall wasn?t backing up and combined with my System HD getting corrupted I decided to reinstall 10.12.6 and migrate the data back. However now QRecall wont run citing "Failed to start privileged helper".

I have recently changed from SMB to AFP for my back up shares as I?m running 10Gbe on my Freenas server and it is much faster than using SMB. I thought that maybe the switch in protocols was the issue however i switched back to SMB shares and still the same result.

If I turn off "Capture and recall items using administrative privileges" it runs.

I have done a complete uninstallation of QRecall as well and it just wont work. I may create a new user account and have a go with that as a test but in the meantime here is a screenshot and a log of the issues if that can help?

Darryl,

Thanks for letting us know about this. First, send a diagnostic report: in the QRecall application choose Help > Send Report…. Screen shots of the log are great, but there's a lot more details behind the scene that the report will capture.

But even before I see the report, I'm going to guess that QRecall is having problems installing its privileged helper. This is a privilege escalation service managed by macOS, and sometimes it get "stuck" for unknown reasons. The result is that macOS doesn't install the new service, yet the service won't run.

When you turn off Capture and recall items using administrative privileges what you're doing is telling QRecall to run without privileges, so it doesn't try (and doesn't get any errors). But without privileges, it also can't capture and restore your system files, take snapshots, make power management requests, and so on.

Try this:

Perform a a quick uninstall of QRecall: In the QRecall app, hold down the Option+Shift keys and choose QRecall > Quit and Uninstall.

Delete the file /Library/PrivilegedHelperTools/com.qrecall.hoist

Delete the file /Library/LaunchDaemons/com.qrecall.hoist.plist

Restart your computer.

Launch QRecall and reinstall it; make sure you've turned Capture and recall items using administrative privileges back on.

If either of those two files existed, then I suspect that was your problem. If that doesn't fix it, we'll know more when your diagnostic report arrives.

Finally, admin privileges and the volume format or protocol used for you archive volume are largely unrelated.

That didn?t work... As soon as I launched QRecall and then went to change the preferences the app just locked up. I just removed all mentions of QRecall, rebooted and the installed.

So far in my test I created a 12Gb archive and it was verified in 18 seconds... the joy of 10Gbe!

One thing I failed to mention is that I did adjust the Available memory to 8192... I have 32Gb of RAM.

I paused schedules for a day whilst I copied my drives to a new location. However I was greeted by the privileged helper error when I resumed. Again I removed everything bar prefs but this time it won?t run because the indentured key was missing. I put it back in and then says that the key is different although it isn?t. Still doesn?t work even with it. I will create a new user account and test with that. I have a feeling that when I reinstalled the system migrating all the old user data wasn?t a good idea.

I wouldn't recommend creating a new user. After entering your identity key, if you have problems capturing just try restarting your system.

This is a long-standing issue with the way macOS now shares (or doesn't share, to be more precise) preference changes between different applications.

Darryl Tooth wrote:That didn?t work... As soon as I launched QRecall and then went to change the preferences the app just locked up.

Also be aware that when trying to fix installation issues, QRecall my fail to connect with (deleted) services still registered with macOS. This may result in stalls and timeouts, so be patient. During startup or when changing the service configuration, give QRecall a minute or two to fix the problem.

Was this ever resolved? I'm having failure of Capture but successful Verify even after taking steps mentioned above.

Diagnostic report sent, but access errors in that too according to the results of the shell script you mentioned.

Jon,

Got your diagnostic report. And yes, QRecall cannot start its privileged helper. You also have a lot of "not found" errors on your archives, but we'll need to straighten out the helper first.

This problem is always an installation problem. To gain elevated privileges, QRecall must request that macOS install a "privileged helper" on its behalf. Sometimes (and I'm not always sure why) this doesn't happen or it gets messed up. Once messed up, a new helper can't be installed and QRecall can't un-install itself (because un-installing requires the privileged helper). A true catch-22.

The fix is simply to manually uninstall QRecall. This takes a little bit of work, but I'll give you a shortcut.

The steps are in the help under QRecall > Help > Guide > Advanced > Uninstall > Uninstall QRecall (the hard way). There's also a copy on the web.

As a shortcut, start by performing just steps 3 and 4. (I suspect this is the root of the problem.) After restarting, launch QRecall. It should prompt for you admin credentials and reinstall QRecall. If it doesn't prompt you, make sure QRecall > Preferences > Authorization > "Capture and recall using administrative privileges" setting is turned on.

If that doesn't solve the problem, perform the entire un-install procedure (make sure you skip the ? "dagger" steps and step 9, as you don't want to start over when you re-install). Restart again and then launch QRecall.

If this still doesn't solve the "can't launch privileged helper" problem, please send another diagnostic report (QRecall > Help > Send Report) and we'll dig deeper.

James,

Thanks for your prompt reply (as usual).

Had to run through the entire protocol (omitting daggers steps) to get components installed. According to log, components installed without issue.

The diagnostic report looks like then I sent you yesterday (even running as root). Sent.

That being said, I started the capture script and it seems to be running. We'll see how that turns out as it may be a while for it to catch up.

Running Mojave with all current updates including XProtect, Gatekeeper and MRT. QRecall given full disk access privileges in System Preferences/Security&Privacy

I'll let you know how it turns out.

Jon

Had to go through the entire protocol (apart from thew dagger items and #9. Components then installed

Running the shell script for the diagnostic reports gave nearly the same results as the previous one.

That being said, all five items were captured without apparent issue. I'll verify the archive overnight.