Tools

Authoring Tools

The power of tools (especially Instruments.app)

For a couple of weeks the Console application on my laptop has been crashing every time I started it up. This was a bit weird, and also very annoying, since I use it from time to time whilst developing, and to check that the system isn't doing anything particularly heinous.

The stack for the crash log appeared to be in a call to the file system, so I figured that the problem was file related in some way. I tried removing the Console preferences, to no avail.

After a bit of thought, I realised that I could probably use Instruments (part of Apple's Developer Tools suite) to work it out.

So I launched it, chose the "File Activity" template, and set it up to run Console. This is a great way to see what an application is doing with files.

Lo and behold, the last thing Instruments did was open a file in /var/log/, then repeatedly try to open some file in /.vol/.

Doing a quick ls of /var/log/ revealed a symbolic link to something that I thought that I had removed (some crappy VPN software called SecureClient that I used to rely on but don't any more as it doesn't work on 10.6 anyway). Further investigation revealed that the symbolic link pointed to another symbolic link, which pointed... to itself. That would do it!

All in all it took about 5 minutes to find and fix this crash once I realised that using Instruments was more sensible than just sitting around guessing what might be causing Console to crash...

Sam Deane's picture

Tools that I use

Inspired by a similar page on Boah's website, I decided to start listing the tools that I use. Apart from anything else, it gives me a handy place to keep my tool related notes and links.

Sam Deane's picture

Tools

Mac

Adium

Multi-protocol chat client.

http://www.adiumx.com

Bwana

Read man pages in your browser.

http://bruji.com/bwana/

Chicken of the VNC

Mac OS X VNC client.

http://sourceforge.net/projects/cotvnc/

Flip4Mac

WMV support for the Mac.

http://www.flip4mac.com/

Google Notifier

Quick access to your Google mail and calendars.

http://toolbar.google.com/gmail-helper/notifier_mac.html

Growl

Nice notifications - integrates with lots of other apps.

http://growl.info/

iScrobbler

Mac iTunes support for last.fm.

http://iscrobbler.sourceforge.net/

LastFM

Mac player application for last.fm

http://last.fm

MySQL Tools

User interfaces for browsing and administering SQL databases.

http://dev.mysql.com/downloads/gui-tools/5.0.html

NetNewsWire

RSS feed aggregator.

http://www.newsgator.com/Individuals/NetNewsWire/

OmniGraffle

Great diagram drawing application.

http://www.omnigroup.com/applications/omnigraffle/

OmniOutliner

Hierarchical lists galore.

http://www.omnigroup.com/applications/omnioutliner/

Parallels

Run Windows on the Mac.

http://www.parallels.com/en/products/desktop/

SharePoints

Nice little UI for configuring AppleShare and SMB file sharing.

http://hornware.com/sharepoints/

SubEthaEdit

Snappy collaborative text editing.

http://www.codingmonkeys.de/subethaedit/

The Filter

Music recommendation service.

http://www.thefilter.com/

Twitterific

Desktop Twitter client.

http://www.apple.com/downloads/macosx/email_chat/twitterrific.html

xCHM

A Mac CHM reader.

http://xchm.sourceforge.net/ http://www.macupdate.com/info.php/id/13750

Windows

ObjectDock

Sam Deane's picture
Syndicate content