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Blank dialog at startup = no autolaunch?


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Hi there.

 

I've been having trouble with Retrospect 5.0.238 failing to autolaunch. Found a thread titled, "Autolaunch in 10.2.5" and followed the advice in the last post there (trashing the Retrospect application and /Library/StartupItems/RetroRun/)... worked fine for about a week, but now I'm back to the same problem: no autolaunch, but if I manually launch Retrospect, scheduled scripts begin immediately.

 

One thing that wasn't mentioned in the other thread has been consistent with me. I've noticed that some mornings when I turn on the computer, I get a blank dialog with the title, "Retrospect," and an "OK" button, but no other text; that dialog appears even before any user is logged in. It seems to be on days when that dialog appears that the autolaunch fails.

 

Any ideas, anyone?

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I've been having trouble with Retrospect 5.0.238 failing to autolaunch. Found a thread titled, "Autolaunch in 10.2.5" and followed the advice in the last post there (trashing the Retrospect application and /Library/StartupItems/RetroRun/)... worked fine for about a week, but now I'm back to the same problem: no autolaunch, but if I manually launch Retrospect, scheduled scripts begin immediately.

 


 

Whatever it is that corrupts the retrorunfile document, and thus causes the retrorun process to fail to launch Retrospect, can still come back. Perhaps knowing your specific configuration might lead to clues.

 

>>One thing that wasn't mentioned in the other thread has been consistent with me. I've noticed that some mornings when I turn on the computer, I get a blank dialog with the title, "Retrospect," and an "OK" button, but no other text; that dialog appears even before any user is logged in. It seems to be on days when that dialog appears that the autolaunch fails.<<

 

Again, knowing your specific configuration will help here. Are you backing up to tape? Do you have Retrospect set to Shut Down after scripts run?

 

Dave

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Oops. Sorry. Of course. I'm running Retrospect 5.0.238 on a Powerbook G4 under OS 10.2.6. I do tend to have a lot of "extra" programs running all the time (e-mail, AIM, menu bar weather, etc), so Retrospect frequently finds "errors" when it compares the backup to the "real-time" copy of my e-mail database, etc. (I haven't found a way yet to disable the "compare" cycle of a back-up--is there one?)

 

I'm backing up nightly to CD-R using the PowerBook's internal Combo Drive, and yes, Retrospect is set to shut down after completing the back-up.

 

In fact, now that I think about it, when I happen to catch Retrospect running and interrupt the automatic shutdown for some reason, things seem fine the next day.

 

Any other information that might help?

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Hi

 

You can turn off verification in the options of your script.

 

To follow up on your "interrupted shutdown" comment, how about trying this:

Set retrospect to quit but not shutdown the machine. Then change your sleep settings so the machine nods off after a few hours. If the problems persist change the settings in Retrospect so that it stays open after the backup. Maybe the problem is in the quit?

 

Nate

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Okay, we're making progress....

 

 

 

Disabled the verification in the script options (thanks for that tip, Nate!), and at least got a dialog with TEXT when I turned on the machine this morning. It indicated that automatic execution had been interrupted because Retrospect had "unexpectedly quit"--even though I sat here and watched Retrospect shut down the computer last night, all of its own volition. crazy.gif

 

 

 

So apparently the problem IS in the shutdown routine; I'll set it to "Quit" tonight and see if I have the same problem....

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So apparently the problem IS in the shutdown routine; I'll set it to "Quit" tonight and see if I have the same problem....

 


 

Retrospect 5.0 used the bsd "shutdown" command to shutdown or restart. If you open a terminal window (either locally or from another machine) you'll see the system warn logged in users of impending shutdown. I know this causes problems for tape drives, but I didn't think it did for optical drives too. I guess it does.

 

Retrospect 5.1 uses an AppleEvent to tell the machine to shutdown or restart (terminal window no longer warns users). It should be better behaved.

 

Dave

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CallMeDave said:

 

Retrospect 5.1 uses an AppleEvent to tell the machine to shutdown or restart (terminal window no longer warns users). It should be better behaved.

 


 

Hm. So because Dantz didn't finish debugging 5.0, I get the privilege of shelling out another $60, just so the program will do what it claims it already can do? < chuckle > It's like buying another car, just 'cause they forgot to test the radio at the factory.... I don't think so.

 

I set Retrospect to Quit last night, and programmed a macro to shut down the machine when it was finished. All is well.

 

Thanks for your help, all!

 

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