I have posted about this before (post1, post2, post3, and post4) – yep, the dreaded PubSubAgent crash and Mac OS X 10.5 (Leopard) (Amazon Link)…

The upgrade from 10.5 to 10.5.1 (Amazon Link) fixed the crash on my home network, but I was still getting crashes on a clients networks (post4).

PubSubAgent just keeps on quitting…

The problem was also limited to a MacBook Pro (MacBook Pro at Amazon) and was not seen on a MacBook (MacBook at Amazon) – post2.

Well, good news. After upgrading to 10.5.2 the MacBook Pro (MacBook Pro at Amazon) is no longer giving PubSubAgent crashes when connected to the clients network which use a fairly strict firewall and a proxy… at last… no more annoying crash windows popping up…

In two earlier posts (post 1 and post 2) I commented on how I had installed Mac OS X 10.5 (Leopard) (Amazon Link) on a MacBook (MacBook at Amazon) and kept getting a ‘PubSubAgent’ quitting error. Well, I am now getting them on a MacBook Pro MacBook Pro at Amazon).

The install on the MacBook Pro (MacBook Pro at Amazon) was a completely clean install of Mac OS X 10.5 (Leopard) (Amazon Link). The disk was erased, re-partitioned, and 10.5 installed from scratch. The OS was upgraded to 10.5.1, and only selected software was installed (see earlier post – Mac OS X 10.5 (Leopard) – software that I use…). After all the installations I run a disk permissions fix, and just for good measure the daily, weekly and monthly cron jobs (sudo periodic daily, sudo periodic weekly and sudo periodic monthly).

All looked great. No more ‘PubSubAgent’ quitting problem, whilst on the MMISoftware network.

PubSubAgent just keeps on quitting…

That is until today… today I was visiting a client and whilst at their office I was connected to the internet from behind their firewall and proxy, and what did I get (multiple times)? Yep, the old ‘PubSubAgent Quit’ problem…. this was odd. No sign of the problem whilst at MMISoftware on the MacBook Pro, and yet I get the ‘quit’ on a MacBook Pro when on a ‘strange’ network. I do hope Apple soon rolls out a fix for this as it was certainly not in 10.5.1.

In an earlier post I commented on how I had installed Mac OS X 10.5 (Leopard) (Amazon Link) on a MacBook (MacBook at Amazon) and kept getting a ‘PubSubAgent’ quitting error.

I have now upgraded the MacBook (MacBook at Amazon) to 10.5.1 (Mac OS X 10.5 at Amazon) and so far I have not seen any…

PubSubAgent just keeps on quitting…

Could this be good news?

I have also done a completely clean install of Mac OS X 10.5 (Leopard) (Amazon Link) on a MacBook Pro (MacBook Pro at Amazon). All looks OK. One thing that is odd though is since upgrading 10.5 to 10.5.1 on the MacBook Pro I have been unable to get ‘Repair Disk Permissions’ to work.

Update: Running the daily, weekly and monthly cron jobs (sudo periodic daily, sudo periodic weekly and sudo periodic monthly) seemed to fix the ‘Repair Disk Permissions’ problem mentioned above/

Four days with Mac OS X 10.5 (Leopard), and what have I found?

First, I have got used to the look, and I must admit it makes sense. All the grey is a bit of a shock, but when compared to a machine running 10.4… the look of 10.5 is good…

I like ‘Time Machine’ – it may not be the most customizable back-up solution out there, but it is pretty slick. Just plug in a new external hard-drive and forget it. It has already ‘saved-my-bacon’ after I accidently over-wrote a website setting file – just did a search in Time Machine, found the file, and rolled back to it.

I am still getting the ‘PubSubAgent’ message, which is driving me nuts. In the earlier post Nate commented:

“I tracked my PubSubAgent quitting errors to my Safari Bookmarks being sync’d to my .Mac account. With that one checkbox unchecked, the “Sync” runs fine. With it checked, PubSubAgent quits.”

May be this is the problem? Must give a try….

Other moans? Something happened to my Keychain and I keep getting asked for passwords…

Work on checking out MMISoftware programs (PhotoGPSEditor and iCalMaker) is continuing… The new Xcode looks good (although the changes to Interface Builder were a shock!).

The install DVD for Mac OS X 10.5 (Leopard) (Amazon Link) arrived about 3 hours ago… and here are some ‘first thoughts’

Install was a breeze… I did an install directly over 10.4 (not really recommended in my opinion, but I was in a hurry to test the MMISoftware programs). One bit alarmed me was the ‘time to complete’ – 3 hours 30 minutes… As usual with Apple installs this time went down, and the install was completed within 50 minutes.

Things I like (so far):

• Cover flow in the Finder
• ‘Data Agents’ in Mail (already used them!)
• WiFi connections that are secure show a lock against them in the WiFi menu

(I am sure this list will grow!)

Things I don’t like:

• I don’t like the default ‘space’ screen. Very dark.
• The Dock is a shock, but I am getting used to it.
• I find the white dots under running applications on the dock hard to see. Bring back the triangles!
• Entries in iCal are now ‘pale’, even when the calendar is selected

Problems:

• I have had several warnings about a process quitting called PubSubAgent – I must find out what this is!!!

PubSubAgent just keeps on quitting…

• All my UK addresses in the Address Book failed to Sync properly as they were in ‘UK’ format, and the Sync server was in ‘United Kingdom’ format (or it may have been the other way around). I had Synced everything before the install so in the ‘Sync Conflict’ I let the Sever setting override all the Address Book settings and this seems to have fixed the problem.
• TextMate, my favourite blogging tools seems to no longer be able to post to blogs (although this may be due to a flakey WiFi connection on the train) My error! Helps if you use the right password…
• SpamSieve has stopped working
• DockStar (puts little ‘Unread’ stars with counts on your Mail icon, dead handy because you can set it for Unread counts in Smart folders)
• I keep getting a warning of an ‘out-of-date’ security certificate on a server – this would be a good thing, except it is my server and I know I can trust it – there seems to be no way to tell the system to ignore this
• All birthdays were repeated multiple times on a given day. This was fixed by deleting the Birthday calendar and then reactivating the ‘Birthday’ option in the iCalendar preferences.

Things to watch out for:

• Spotlight does a rebuild
• Mail rebuilds the Mail system (can take some time)

More details to come…