Hello everyone,

I stumbled across LRTimelapse yesterday and given its promising features immediately decided to give it a shot. However, I cannot start the software on my MAC (which I would prefer over my win7-64 Notebook (where it appears to be running smooth).

Upon trying to start LRT a greyish but empty window pops up and then nothing will happen for several minutes (until I get fed up and kill the process using console commands).

Is there a debug file I could have a look at/ publish here to help you (as the developer) and me as the user out?

System:
10.5.8 (or whatever the most recent Version in the 10.5 family is)
8 GB RAM
some form of Quadcore
No problems with any other java-applications known

What I tried:
-rename LT-Timelapse.app to LR-Timelapse (resulted in me being unable to start LRT at all)
-redownload it (just to be safe)
-restart the system once or twice (just to be safe)

Any help would be greatly appreciated. I too would be glad to help.

Cheers

Guido

Guido, please check you system log if you find anything. Try installing a fresh version of JAVA, take care to install the right Version (32bit vs. 64bit). Come back to me if the problems persist. I've never heard of such issues before, so let's get them solved ;-)

Gunther, thanks for getting back to me on such short notice. I'll try to check the system log tonight. However, installing a new version of Java is going to be tricky as there are no Java-versions for macs but those that are released by Apple - looks like I have to make the transition to 10.6.x afterall (the system is based on EfiX, reinstalling MacOS is always a bit of a pallaver...)

Guido, as you might have noticed I'm not that experienced with Macs - I think the System log should tell us more...

Allright, I finally got to it:

I got LRT to start and it appears to be working just fine.

However, I have attached a short description of what happed in the interest of helping other users and eventually providing feedback for the development of LRT.

I hope it is of some use - and if it is only for users that experience a similar problem. Please note that my remarks regarding Java@OSX served no other intention than to provide that certain bit of information to you.

I'm now looking forward to the next weekend where, hopefully, I will have the time to produce material for a time lapse and to try out LRT.

Here goes:

Short HowTo:
First: How to access the Syslog?
Open a Terminal Window;
cd /var/log
tail -f system.log
(close it mit ctrl+c)
You will get the last ten lines of your system.log and it will display all folllowing entries into the terminal
Second: Start LR-Timelape (as you normally would). Upon start LRT will dump a lot into your system.log (Note: log4j.xml is initially sought in an entirely wrong place - path-mismatch?)
Third: See what happens.

What happened in my case after trying to start LRT (some error as before; LRT showed nothing but a grey window)
I noticed multiple entries from Little Snitch (a small piece of software to control which applications accesses any network interface) which indicated that the application is troubled. I decided to look for it in the process list.
ps aux | grep Little
I found two relevant entries:

Code:

uid         719   0.0  0,1   397144   4480   ??  S    10:48pm   0:00.07 /Library/Little Snitch/Little Snitch UIAgent.app/Contents/MacOS/Little Snitch UIAgent
root       717   0.0  0,0    97692   2280   ??  Ss   10:47pm   0:00.05 /Library/Little Snitch/lsd

I killed both the Little Snitch UIAgent as well as the lsd one (you might need root access for the second one (commadn: sudo kill <pid>)

Upon killing the second process (lsd) LRT continued to start and appeared to be working fine afterwards (see log entries: Jun 27 22:47:58 - bottom three lines).

This is what the SysLog said when I tried to start LRT; afterwards you will find the results of my kill command

Code:

Jun 27 22:45:59 localhost [0x0-0x85085].lrtimelapse.LRTimelapseApp[665]: Newest version: <not available>, current Version: 1.3.1 (2011-06-19)
Jun 27 22:47:38 localhost [0x0-0x8d08d].lrtimelapse.LRTimelapseApp[709]: 27.06.2011 22:47:38 it.tidalwave.imageio.util.Logger info
Jun 27 22:47:38 localhost [0x0-0x8d08d].lrtimelapse.LRTimelapseApp[709]: INFO: Installing RAWProcessor...
Jun 27 22:47:38 localhost [0x0-0x8d08d].lrtimelapse.LRTimelapseApp[709]: 27.06.2011 22:47:38 it.tidalwave.imageio.util.Logger info
Jun 27 22:47:38 localhost [0x0-0x8d08d].lrtimelapse.LRTimelapseApp[709]: INFO: Installed RAWProcessor
Jun 27 22:47:38 localhost [0x0-0x8d08d].lrtimelapse.LRTimelapseApp[709]: RAWProcessor succesfully installed
Jun 27 22:47:38 localhost [0x0-0x8d08d].lrtimelapse.LRTimelapseApp[709]: log4j:ERROR Could not parse file [log4j.xml].
Jun 27 22:47:38 localhost [0x0-0x8d08d].lrtimelapse.LRTimelapseApp[709]: java.io.FileNotFoundException: /Applications/log4j.xml (No such file or directory)
Jun 27 22:47:38 localhost [0x0-0x8d08d].lrtimelapse.LRTimelapseApp[709]:     at java.io.FileInputStream.open(Native Method)
Jun 27 22:47:38 localhost [0x0-0x8d08d].lrtimelapse.LRTimelapseApp[709]:     at java.io.FileInputStream.<init>(FileInputStream.java:106)
Jun 27 22:47:38 localhost [0x0-0x8d08d].lrtimelapse.LRTimelapseApp[709]:     at java.io.FileInputStream.<init>(FileInputStream.java:66)
Jun 27 22:47:38 localhost [0x0-0x8d08d].lrtimelapse.LRTimelapseApp[709]:     at sun.net.www.protocol.file.FileURLConnection.connect(FileURLConnection.java:70)
Jun 27 22:47:38 localhost [0x0-0x8d08d].lrtimelapse.LRTimelapseApp[709]:     at sun.net.www.protocol.file.FileURLConnection.getInputStream(FileURLConnection.java:161)
Jun 27 22:47:38 localhost [0x0-0x8d08d].lrtimelapse.LRTimelapseApp[709]:     at com.sun.org.apache.xerces.internal.impl.XMLEntityManager.setupCurrentEntity(XMLEntityManager.java:653)
Jun 27 22:47:38 localhost [0x0-0x8d08d].lrtimelapse.LRTimelapseApp[709]:     at com.sun.org.apache.xerces.internal.impl.XMLVersionDetector.determineDocVersion(XMLVersionDetector.java:186)
Jun 27 22:47:38 localhost [0x0-0x8d08d].lrtimelapse.LRTimelapseApp[709]:     at com.sun.org.apache.xerces.internal.parsers.XML11Configuration.parse(XML11Configuration.java:772)
Jun 27 22:47:38 localhost [0x0-0x8d08d].lrtimelapse.LRTimelapseApp[709]:     at com.sun.org.apache.xerces.internal.parsers.XML11Configuration.parse(XML11Configuration.java:737)
Jun 27 22:47:38 localhost [0x0-0x8d08d].lrtimelapse.LRTimelapseApp[709]:     at com.sun.org.apache.xerces.internal.parsers.XMLParser.parse(XMLParser.java:119)
Jun 27 22:47:38 localhost [0x0-0x8d08d].lrtimelapse.LRTimelapseApp[709]:     at com.sun.org.apache.xerces.internal.parsers.DOMParser.parse(DOMParser.java:235)
Jun 27 22:47:38 localhost [0x0-0x8d08d].lrtimelapse.LRTimelapseApp[709]:     at com.sun.org.apache.xerces.internal.jaxp.DocumentBuilderImpl.parse(DocumentBuilderImpl.java:284)
Jun 27 22:47:38 localhost [0x0-0x8d08d].lrtimelapse.LRTimelapseApp[709]:     at javax.xml.parsers.DocumentBuilder.parse(DocumentBuilder.java:208)
Jun 27 22:47:38 localhost [0x0-0x8d08d].lrtimelapse.LRTimelapseApp[709]:     at org.apache.log4j.xml.DOMConfigurator$1.parse(DOMConfigurator.java:676)
Jun 27 22:47:38 localhost [0x0-0x8d08d].lrtimelapse.LRTimelapseApp[709]:     at org.apache.log4j.xml.DOMConfigurator.doConfigure(DOMConfigurator.java:789)
Jun 27 22:47:38 localhost [0x0-0x8d08d].lrtimelapse.LRTimelapseApp[709]:     at org.apache.log4j.xml.DOMConfigurator.doConfigure(DOMConfigurator.java:682)
Jun 27 22:47:38 localhost [0x0-0x8d08d].lrtimelapse.LRTimelapseApp[709]:     at org.apache.log4j.xml.DOMConfigurator.configure(DOMConfigurator.java:811)
Jun 27 22:47:38 localhost [0x0-0x8d08d].lrtimelapse.LRTimelapseApp[709]:     at lrtimelapse.LRTimelapseApp.startLogger(Unknown Source)
Jun 27 22:47:38 localhost [0x0-0x8d08d].lrtimelapse.LRTimelapseApp[709]:     at lrtimelapse.LRTimelapseApp.startup(Unknown Source)
Jun 27 22:47:38 localhost [0x0-0x8d08d].lrtimelapse.LRTimelapseApp[709]:     at org.jdesktop.application.Application$1.run(Application.java:171)
Jun 27 22:47:38 localhost [0x0-0x8d08d].lrtimelapse.LRTimelapseApp[709]:     at java.awt.event.InvocationEvent.dispatch(InvocationEvent.java:209)
Jun 27 22:47:38 localhost [0x0-0x8d08d].lrtimelapse.LRTimelapseApp[709]:     at java.awt.EventQueue.dispatchEventImpl(EventQueue.java:678)
Jun 27 22:47:38 localhost [0x0-0x8d08d].lrtimelapse.LRTimelapseApp[709]:     at java.awt.EventQueue.access$000(EventQueue.java:86)
Jun 27 22:47:38 localhost [0x0-0x8d08d].lrtimelapse.LRTimelapseApp[709]:     at java.awt.EventQueue$1.run(EventQueue.java:639)
Jun 27 22:47:38 localhost [0x0-0x8d08d].lrtimelapse.LRTimelapseApp[709]:     at java.awt.EventQueue$1.run(EventQueue.java:637)
Jun 27 22:47:38 localhost [0x0-0x8d08d].lrtimelapse.LRTimelapseApp[709]:     at java.security.AccessController.doPrivileged(Native Method)
Jun 27 22:47:38 localhost [0x0-0x8d08d].lrtimelapse.LRTimelapseApp[709]:     at java.security.AccessControlContext$1.doIntersectionPrivilege(AccessControlContext.java:87)
Jun 27 22:47:38 localhost [0x0-0x8d08d].lrtimelapse.LRTimelapseApp[709]:     at java.awt.EventQueue.dispatchEvent(EventQueue.java:648)
Jun 27 22:47:38 localhost [0x0-0x8d08d].lrtimelapse.LRTimelapseApp[709]:     at java.awt.EventDispatchThread.pumpOneEventForFilters(EventDispatchThread.java:296)
Jun 27 22:47:38 localhost [0x0-0x8d08d].lrtimelapse.LRTimelapseApp[709]:     at java.awt.EventDispatchThread.pumpEventsForFilter(EventDispatchThread.java:211)
Jun 27 22:47:38 localhost [0x0-0x8d08d].lrtimelapse.LRTimelapseApp[709]:     at java.awt.EventDispatchThread.pumpEventsForHierarchy(EventDispatchThread.java:201)
Jun 27 22:47:38 localhost [0x0-0x8d08d].lrtimelapse.LRTimelapseApp[709]:     at java.awt.EventDispatchThread.pumpEvents(EventDispatchThread.java:196)
Jun 27 22:47:38 localhost [0x0-0x8d08d].lrtimelapse.LRTimelapseApp[709]:     at java.awt.EventDispatchThread.pumpEvents(EventDispatchThread.java:188)
Jun 27 22:47:38 localhost [0x0-0x8d08d].lrtimelapse.LRTimelapseApp[709]:     at java.awt.EventDispatchThread.run(EventDispatchThread.java:122)
Jun 27 22:47:38 localhost [0x0-0x8d08d].lrtimelapse.LRTimelapseApp[709]: [2011-06-27 22:47:38] Properties-file not found.
Jun 27 22:47:38 localhost [0x0-0x8d08d].lrtimelapse.LRTimelapseApp[709]: [2011-06-27 22:47:38] LR-Timelapse 1.3.1 (2011-06-19)
Jun 27 22:47:38 localhost [0x0-0x8d08d].lrtimelapse.LRTimelapseApp[709]: [2011-06-27 22:47:38] (c) 2011 Gunther Wegner
Jun 27 22:47:38 localhost [0x0-0x8d08d].lrtimelapse.LRTimelapseApp[709]: [2011-06-27 22:47:38] http://lrtimelapse.com
Jun 27 22:47:38 localhost [0x0-0x8d08d].lrtimelapse.LRTimelapseApp[709]: [2011-06-27 22:47:38] ------------------------------------
Jun 27 22:47:41 localhost Little Snitch UIAgent[699]: 2.0.4.385: forced termination because: (NSInvalidArgumentException) [NOTE: this exception originated in the server.]\n*** -[NSCFDictionary setObject:forKey:]: attempt to insert nil value (key: path)
Jun 27 22:47:42 localhost ReportCrash[710]: Formulating crash report for process Little Snitch UIAgent[699]
Jun 27 22:47:42 localhost com.apple.launchd[190] (at.obdev.LittleSnitchUIAgent[699]): Exited abnormally: Bus error
Jun 27 22:47:42 localhost ReportCrash[710]: Saved crashreport to /Users/gh/Library/Logs/CrashReporter/Little Snitch UIAgent_2011-06-27-224741_Cuboid.crash using uid: 501 gid: 20, euid: 501 egid: 20
Jun 27 22:47:42 localhost Little Snitch UIAgent[711]: 2.0.4.385: forced termination because: (NSInvalidArgumentException) [NOTE: this exception originated in the server.]\n*** -[NSCFDictionary setObject:forKey:]: attempt to insert nil value (key: path)
Jun 27 22:47:43 localhost ReportCrash[710]: Formulating crash report for process Little Snitch UIAgent[711]
Jun 27 22:47:44 localhost ReportCrash[710]: Saved crashreport to /Users/gh/Library/Logs/CrashReporter/Little Snitch UIAgent_2011-06-27-224742_Cuboid.crash using uid: 501 gid: 20, euid: 501 egid: 20
Jun 27 22:47:48 localhost /System/Library/CoreServices/backupd[693]: Deleted backup /Volumes/TM/Backups.backupdb/Cuboid/2011-06-26-223913: 3.60 GB now available
Jun 27 22:47:44 localhost com.apple.launchd[190] (at.obdev.LittleSnitchUIAgent[711]): Exited abnormally: Bus error
Jun 27 22:47:44 localhost com.apple.launchd[190] (at.obdev.LittleSnitchUIAgent): Throttling respawn: Will start in 9 seconds
Jun 27 22:47:53 localhost Little Snitch UIAgent[714]: 2.0.4.385: forced termination because: (NSInvalidArgumentException) [NOTE: this exception originated in the server.]\n*** -[NSCFDictionary setObject:forKey:]: attempt to insert nil value (key: path)
Jun 27 22:47:54 localhost ReportCrash[715]: Formulating crash report for process Little Snitch UIAgent[714]
Jun 27 22:47:54 localhost ReportCrash[715]: Saved crashreport to /Users/gh/Library/Logs/CrashReporter/Little Snitch UIAgent_2011-06-27-224753_Cuboid.crash using uid: 501 gid: 20, euid: 501 egid: 20
Jun 27 22:47:54 localhost com.apple.launchd[190] (at.obdev.LittleSnitchUIAgent[714]): Exited abnormally: Bus error
Jun 27 22:47:54 localhost com.apple.launchd[190] (at.obdev.LittleSnitchUIAgent): Throttling respawn: Will start in 9 seconds
Jun 27 22:47:58 localhost sudo[716]:       gh : TTY=ttys001 ; PWD=/Users/gh ; USER=root ; COMMAND=/bin/kill 697
Jun 27 22:47:58 localhost com.apple.launchd[1] (at.obdev.littlesnitchd[697]): Exited: Terminated
Jun 27 22:47:58 localhost [0x0-0x8d08d].lrtimelapse.LRTimelapseApp[709]: Newest version: <not available>, current Version: 1.3.1 (2011-06-19)

Hello Guido,
it seems that one of your processes blocked the connection to my server to check for a new version of LRTimelapse and thus froze the LRTimelapse process.
Regarding the log4j configuration fault - I have no Idea why it tries to load the XML from /Applications/log4j.xml - maybe one of the experienced Mac users could try to sort that out.
Thank you for your input and I'm glad it is working for you now!

Best
Gunther