Mac thunderbolt 2 drive dropping -- remember ScanSnap AOUMonitor and don't touch Amazon Cloud Drive.

After months of reliable use my Elgato Thunderbolt 2 hub is dropping my USB3 external SSD; just like the OWC T2 hub did in my initial testing.

We know Yosemite (and El Capitan) have issues with Thunderbolt hubs; there’s something frail in Apple’s infrastructure [1]. But it had been working… So after power cycling everything [3] it’s time to look for things that have changed recently.

The first place to look is my Login items. I find something called “Mountain”. It’s missing though. Weird. Part of something I’d tried then removed. Deleted that.

I also find AOUMonitor. That would be related to my recent ScanSnap update. Sounds familiar, so I use my Google Custom Search for everything I’ve published. I find Managing unwanted Mac startup apps: ScanSnap’s AOUMonitor and Citrix Receiver. Bang. AOUMonitor is a known bad actor. Delete it.

Next is Google Drive. It’s known to cause problems, but I’m still hooked on it and it’s an old-timer. Despite Google’s decreasing interest in iOS and OS X [2] I have to leave it.

But where’s Amazon Cloud Drive? It’s a newbie that’s also launching automatically. The fact that it’s absent from Login Items tells me it’s poorly written. Over to LaunchDaemons.

System Library\LaunchDaemons looks all Apple — as it should be.

Users\Library\LaunchDaemons has CCC (ok), Office (licensing and update, ugh), Skype (huh? - deleted!), Google keystone (old, part of their update infrastructure I think), TripMode (? delete for now), Barebones (trustworthy).

Users\me\Library is a bit odd.  Instead of LaunchDaemons we have LaunchAgents (really Apple?) [4] and no Startup Items. In LaunchAgents I find simple plists for Synology CloudStation (yeah, I’m suspicious of that one, but need it for now), 1Password (need it), Safari (ok I guess) and com.imobiesilentcleanserver.plist. The last was probably left over from testing imobie’s iOS cache cleaner (didn’t work), so I deleted it.

Alas, I still can’t figure out how Amazon Cloud Drive is starting up. Now I really want to kill it. Google is no help (which is another bad sign). Looking at Log files it looks like ACD is using some .NET infrastructure and it’s generated about 15 Console crash logs. 

Amazon Cloud Drive is a bugger to purge. EasyFind finds a folder in .local/share — yeah, a hidden directory. There’s app.com.amazon.clouddrive.mac.installer.playlist in friggin’ /private/var/db/BootCaches/2B1FD298-BBE8-4207-B1B0-ED420A2DAD74. There’s crap in Application Scripts, Application Support, and too many to mention. Try searching on “Amazon Cloud Drive”, “amazon.clouddrive” and so on. Take your time. 

Really, don’t touch Amazon Cloud Drive. Now I’m getting DOS TSR flashbacks in addition to my SCSI flashbacks.

Lastly, a safe boot to clear caches and then a restart. Now we’ll see what happens. I never did find what was launching Amazon Cloud Drive, but my Console isn’t showing any “Amazon” messages.

- fn -

[1] I’m getting PTSD flashbacks to MacOS Classic and SCSI chains.
[2] Apple is not doing well. 
[3] I’m going to start routinely power cycling my peripherals — they can go weeks without cycling whereas my Air gets cycled every week or two. 
[4] Update: jws explained -  "The difference between an agent and a daemon is that an agent can display GUI if it wants to, while a daemon can't. The difference between an agent and a regular application is that an agent typically displays no GUI (or a very limited GUI)… Agents run in a user context; daemons are userless and purely background, without any access to a window server or other user state. That’s why the daemon vs agent distinction in the Library folder names…

iOS 9.x spotlight bug explained: It's the RAM.

Spotlight has been failing for me since I updated to iOS 9 - no results appear. It got much worse with 9.3. Force-quitting background apps, especially Reeder.app,  helps. It acts like a limited RAM bug, but I think there are ways Spotlight may fail.

From Apple Discussions it doesn’t hit devices with 2GB of RAM, it’s a problem for 1GB devices with lots of indexed content and/or memory hogging apps.

Jason Heiser has figured out what’s wrong (emphases mine). It’s a capacity/RAM problem:

Apple discussions April 5, 2016

My iPhone 6 updated to iOS 9.3.1 an hour ago and Spotlight Search is still broken for me.

I downloaded iOS Console and looked at the console output when trying to perform a Spotlight Search. Here is what I saw:

Apr 5 15:42:18 jPhone searchd[286] : (Error) IndexGeneral in si_playBackMobileRecords:2343: played back 0 records
Apr 5 15:42:19 jPhone searchd[286] : (Error) IndexGeneral in si_playBackMobileRecords:2343: played back 0 records
Apr 5 15:42:19 jPhone diagnosticd[83] : unable to find offset 0x81448aac in shared cache for arch 'arm64'
Apr 5 15:42:19 jPhone diagnosticd[83] : unable to find offset 0x814467cc in shared cache for arch 'arm64'
Apr 5 15:42:19 jPhone diagnosticd[83] : unable to find offset 0x81649da8 in shared cache for arch 'arm64'
Apr 5 15:42:19 jPhone diagnosticd[83] : Invalid offset 2170854824 into shared cache for arch 'arm64'
Apr 5 15:42:19 jPhone ReportCrash[288] : platform_task_update_threads failed 1
Apr 5 15:42:19 jPhone ReportCrash[288] : Formulating report for process[286] searchd
Apr 5 15:42:19 jPhone ReportCrash[288] : report not saved because it is non-actionable
Apr 5 15:42:21 jPhone UserEventAgent[26] : jetsam: kernel termination snapshot being created
Apr 5 15:42:21 jPhone ReportCrash[289] : Saved type '298(298)' report (2 of max 25) at /var/mobile/Library/Logs/CrashReporter/JetsamEvent-2016-04-05-154221.ips

According to this, the searchd crash log is not being saved because it is "non-actionable." However, a log for "JetsamEvent" is being created at roughly the same time. I looked at this file on my iPhone and JetsamEvents appear to be a low-memory (RAM) issue. Here is the top portion of the crash report.

{"timestamp":"2016-04-05 15:42:21.21 -0500","bug_type":"298","os_version":"iPhone OS 9.3.1 (13E238)"}
{
"crashReporterKey" : "88540025a9600afa364c269a2c5bc8a91370b1ca",
"kernel" : "Darwin Kernel Version 15.4.0: Fri Feb 19 13:54:49 PST 2016; root:xnu-3248.41.4~28\/RELEASE_ARM64_T7000",
"product" : "iPhone7,2",
"incident" : "D0ED493F-7687-49D9-AFB9-BEE80BD93082",
"date" : "2016-04-05 15:42:21.21 -0500",
"build" : "iPhone OS 9.3.1 (13E238)",
"timeDelta" : 95,
"memoryStatus" : {
"compressorSize" : 50489,
"pageSize" : 4096,
"compressions" : 824422,
"memoryPages" : {
"active" : 101577,
"throttled" : 0,
"fileBacked" : 37711,
"wired" : 49311,
"anonymous" : 114469,
"purgeable" : 0,
"inactive" : 48272,
"free" : 2459,
"speculative" : 2331
},
"uncompressed" : 172172,
"decompressions" : 362924
},
"largestProcess" : "searchd",

According to this, the "largestProcess" was searchd when the crash report was generated. Further down in the crash report is searchd's information:

{
"rpages" : 129777,
"states" : [
"daemon"
],
"name" : "searchd",
"pid" : 286,
"reason" : "highwater",
"fds" : 100,
"uuid" : "7b301993-286d-3da5-a497-b729984d3229",
"purgeable" : 0,
"cpuTime" : 2.481274,
"lifetimeMax" : 84765
},

Apparently the maximum for searchd is "84,765" but it reached "129,777." The reason is "highwater" which I assume means searchd exceeded its RAM allotment. So maybe my Spotlight index is too large. Too many iMessages, too many songs, too many emails... Who knows.

The "report not saved because it is non-actionable" for searchd's crash report is worrisome. I fear this bug is nowhere on Apple's radar. We might be marginal outliers without recourse for a long time.

There are two workarounds for the bug:

1. Force-quit background apps — may help free RAM. Try again.
2. Siri works for launching apps even when spotlight fails.

I think setting all Spotlight indexing option to On helps — I have a feeling there’s a bug with rendering results that is worse if the rendering process has to manage exclusions. Restarting your phone daily probably helps too.

Update 7/30/2016

A correspondent who saw the same behavior as mine reported that Spotlight was working 8 days after he did a phone wipe and restore. I did the same and it’s working now 7 days later.  That doesn’t mean it will work forever, but 7 days is a long time. I’m now on iOS 9.3.3. I have seen a trustworthy report that the upgrade to 9.3.2 fixed the problem for some, for me it took the OS update and a wipe/restore.

 

iOS 9 secure notes with Touch ID are no more secure than your device passcode

If you enable Touch ID access to an iOS 9.3 Note.app Secure Note, the password on the note doesn’t matter. The note is no more secure than your device passcode.

Because if you know the device passcode, you can just add a new fingerprint to Touch ID. That will unlock the secure note.

So if you want to truly secure a Note with a strong password you can’t enable Touch ID access. Otherwise you might as well leave the note unsecured. You are better off using a strong password for your phone and using Touch ID for fast phone access.

Bandwidth use over 5 min video call: FaceTime << Facebook Messenger < Skype

As part of my Father longterm care iPad videoconferencing project I compared cellular data use during an approximately 5 minute videoconferencing call made from my iPhone (LTE) to an iPad Air 2 (WiFi). To measure data use I “reset statistics” for Cellular data before, then refreshed the view after concluding the call. I turned microphones off.

The results were:

FaceTime: 7.5MB (repeated, this is correct)s

Messenger: 32MB

Skype: 46MB

FaceTime gave the best image quality. The data use with FaceTime was so low I repeated the measurement with a similar results. Data use can vary with image activity by up to 25%.

I was very surprised by my results. FaceTime had excellent image quality despite exceptional compression. Skype is a real data hog.

The user interfaces were quite similar; names on the left, a details pane on the right. I liked Messengers easy messaging integration, but FaceTime was a 1 touch call from the left side.

My sister and I can do FaceTime, but my brother has an Android phone. I’ll suggest he try Facebook Messenger as he uses Facebook and the data usage was less than Skype.

Can I send an iTunes gift card to someone in another country? How about buy an app through iTunes?

No.

At least not as far as I can tell between the US and Canada. Unless you have both an Apple ID and a credit card and a billing address in the other country.

In my case I’m trying to buy Picmatic.app, a $2 app, for my father’s (Canadian Apple Store) iPad. I think the only way to do this from the US is to have someone in Canada buy an iTunes gift card (contrary to Apple’s weirdly dated online documentation this works for apps too) and send me the card number. Then I can enter the information.

I don’t think I can buy an iTunes Gift Card in the US and use that; cards are country store specific and Apple IDs are country specific (changing countries is a royal pain — yeah, DRM sucks).

Anyone know differently?

Father longterm care iPad videoconferencing project: Securing the iPad

My father has been doing well in a Quebec long term care facility for veterans (in Canada that has historically meant WW II, he’s in his 90s). Things are getting tougher though — the facility is shifting from federal to provincial control. Great staff are leaving and programs will be stressed.

I see him every 3-4 months, but in between I was surprised how well Skype worked with him. He does much better speaking when he can see me than he does on the phone. It seems to be related to knowing when to try speaking and when to listen. He also seems to hear Skype sound better than mobile phone sound. (It’s likely much higher quality.)

Even with the old regime though the Skype conferences often failed. Tech complexity and organizational issues forced us to discontinue them.

So now I’m going to try bringing him an LTE iPad Air 2. I’ll get a Rogers SIM card when I visit in a few weeks and we’ll see if it works from his room. If all goes well it will cost him an extra $10-$15/month — and the iPad cost [1].

Dad’s lost a few wallets from his room. I think most longterm care facilities see this kind of problem. Visitors can have issues. So we need to secure his iPad. Other than photo display I think he’ll only be using it for conferencing. So it needs to be secure [2], continuously powered up, stored somewhere he can sit, and not take up much room. The secure device needs to leave speakers and camera clear.

After some thought I ordered the $33 CTA Digital Universal Anti-Theft Security Grip with POS Stand for Tablets - iPad Air 2, iPad mini 4, Galaxy Tab, Note 10.1, 7-10-inch Tablets (PAD-UATGS) (grip and stand). It seems solid enough, it will keep the iPad off his desk, and there are screw holes (but no screws included). It may screw into his (antique) desk, but, even though it’s not shown in the picture, the lock comes with a cable. So I might be able to secure it to his desk in a less damaging and harder to remove way.

Of course the iPad Air 2 is way too thin for this device. It flops around. There’s supposed to be an included adapter strip, but mine was missing. I don’t think it would have worked — this home made setup seems a lot better. I had some TrueValue gripping pads (549104, TV23148) lying around…

I put those inside the corner retainers:

and it works pretty well:

So the first step is complete. Next step will be to test some of the conferencing options for data use and usability with various iPad accessibility features enabled: Skype vs. FaceTime vs. Facebook Messenger (Hangout is not very useable.)

I don’t expect Dad will use it by himself, we’re hoping a friend who helps with him will get things set up. I want it to be useable for them though.

- fn -

[1] (Rant) Incidentally, the iPad Air reminds me what a mixed bag Apple is these days. Nice device in many ways, but when I brought my mother an iPad six years ago one of the features she loved most was it could be used as a high quality digital photo frame. It was easy to launch from the lock screen. She loved that.

So, of course, Apple pulled it from the lock screen around iOS 7 and then ditched the replacement with iOS 9. There’s exactly one half-decent alternative, an app called Picmatic. Not to be confused with spammy copycat apps of the same name in the kinda broken App Store.

I don’t know if Apple is merely senile, or if the app had to be reworked for iOS 9 and it got ditched in a last minute panic to get that half-baked release out the door. Either way, the good news is that now that Ive has retired there’s only Cook to launch.

[2] Would it have killed Apple to incorporate some sort of secure lock feature in the iPad? Ok, yes, it would have.

Synology Time Machine backups: How to increase a user quota

After my Synology NAS updated itself to version 6 one of my Time Machine backups stopped working. It might have been coincidental. Time Machine claimed I only had 350GB free and it needed 1TB, but Synology claimed I had enough free space.

Whatever.

The fix was to increase the quota size for the user who owned the Time Machine disk image belonging to my MacBook Air.

Except I couldn’t do it. I could edit the user easily, but the quota information couldn’t be edited. Clicking on the row did nothing. 

Click-click.

Google helped. It’s a UI issue. There’s nothing in Synology’s UI to tell you to click specifically on the quota number. If you do that you can edit it.

It’s probably a good idea to turn Time Machine backup off while you’re doing this. In any case it’s fixed my problem.