iWeb '06 install issue

Jeff noted on ExtraBITS today that iWeb kept asking him to quit iWeb before updating, except iWeb wasn't running.

What's the problem? Well, it's because Jeff was running Omniweb or some other application which had "iweb.app" in its name. Looks like some lazy Apple developer forgot how to do his grep syntax and looked for processes with "iweb.app" in their name. Nice job, Apple.

So, if you run into this, just quit Omniweb, and you'll be good to go.

--Nik

At 10:38 -0800 UTC, on 2006-02-17, Nik wrote:

> Jeff noted on ExtraBITS today that iWeb kept asking him to quit iWeb
> before updating, except iWeb wasn't running.
>
> What's the problem? Well, it's because Jeff was running Omniweb or
> some other application which had "iweb.app" in its name. Looks like
> some lazy Apple developer forgot how to do his grep syntax and looked
> for processes with "iweb.app" in their name. Nice job, Apple.

Yes, I've seen the same thing happen several times with different Apple apps.
If some other process is running that contains the name of the to be
installed app in its name, the installer fails. (There are plenty of
third-party utilities whose names contain "itunes", "ichat", etc.)

I don't think the problem is bad grepping. Apple should simply not be relying
on strings at all for this sort of thing. Creator codes are much better
suited for this.


--
Sander Tekelenburg, <http://www.euronet.nl/~tekelenb/>

On Feb 20, 2006, at 8:21 AM, Nik wrote:

> On Feb 18, 2006, at 10:51 AM, Sander Tekelenburg wrote:
>
>> I don't think the problem is bad grepping. Apple should simply not
>> be relying
>> on strings at all for this sort of thing. Creator codes are much
>> better
>> suited for this.
>
> That's an excellent point. I wonder if that's impossible, for some
> reason, in Apple's installer? I understand it uses Unix-based tools
> rather than, say, Applescript, which would make this an easy one
> line query of:
>
> tell application "System Events" to get processes whose creator
> type is "iWeb"
>
> That's both simpler and less prone to error than grepping the
> process name.

Whether we like it or not, creator codes are the old, early-Mac-
centric way to do such things.

It's not hard to write a script that properly finds the needed
strings. Apple periodically forgets to (leading, among other things,
to the notorious wiping out of some volumes with spaces in their
names by an early installer script).

   --John

Using creator codes would also (presumably) allow us to move our Apple-Installer-dependent apps where we want them to be, rather than forcing us to keep them in the top level of the Applications folder. That limitation has kept me underwhelmed with Apple's Installer since I first moved to OS X with 10.1.

Pres

Adam,

In the article, you suggest finding processes with "ps -aux | grep iWeb". Unfortunately, this doesn't match everything it should, because (even when used in a pipeline) ps truncates its output to match the window width (typically 80 columns). To match the full ps output without truncation, use add "-ww", as in "ps -auxww | grep iWeb".

[Curses, foiled again! :-) My Terminal windows are very wide. -Adam]

<http://db.tidbits.com/getbits.acgi?tbart=08428>

-- Chris Pepper: <http://www.reppep.com/~pepper/> Rockefeller University: <http://www.rockefeller.edu/>

On 22 Feb 2006, at 13:57 , Chris Pepper wrote:
> In the article, you suggest finding processes with "ps -aux |
> grep iWeb". Unfortunately, this doesn't match everything it should,
> because (even when used in a pipeline) ps truncates its output to
> match the window width (typically 80 columns). To match the full ps
> output without truncation, use add "-ww", as in "ps -auxww | grep
> iWeb".

Much better to be even more sure, as that test would still hit "OmniWeb"

ps auxww | grep -ie "\/iweb " | grep -v grep | awk {'print $11'}

The first grep looks for "/iweb " regardless of case, the second
excludes the grep itself, and the third prints out the 11th
'field' (the path name of the process).

/Applications/iWeb.app/Contents/MacOS/iWeb

Alternately, you could grep specifically for iweb.app:

ps auxww | grep -i "iweb.app" | grep -v grep | awk {'print $11'}

or even

ps auxww | awk {'print $11'} | grep -i "iweb.app" | grep -v grep


I have the following in my .bashrc

function psa () {
   ps auxww | grep -i $* | grep -v grep
}

function psaa () {
   ps auxww | grep -ie "\/$*" | grep -v grep | awk {'print "pid: "
$2" "$11'}
}

which gives me:

$ psaa itunes
pid: 17232 /Applications/iTunes.app/Contents/MacOS/iTunes
pid: 403 /Applications/iTunes.app/Contents/Resources/iTunesHelper.app/
Contents/MacOS/iTunesHelper