TinkerTool System Release 2
Known Issues
There are currently no known issues for this product.
Frequently Asked Questions
Q: Can the Standalone Utility of TinkerTool System coexist with other tools that are also designed to be used in Single User Mode? Do I need to uninstall other tools first?
A: You don't need to care about the existence of other Single User Mode applications on your hard drive. As long as Mac OS X is capable of starting in Single User Mode to a command-line prompt, you can select between any commands or programs you might have installed. There are no conflicts to expect.
You only should avoid to use the multi-tasking capabilities of Mac OS X to run several of such tools really in parallel. If you like to use the features of different tools, it will be recommended to reboot the system each time before starting an alternative application.
Release Notes
Using the standalone tool to explicitly repair the system disk might not work with Mac OS X 10.7 Lion: When trying to use the function Quick Repair Features > Repair System Disk of the tts Standalone Utility of TinkerTool System Release 2, the program always reports that the disk's file system is defective and the repair operation failed. In addition, the report contains the contradicting warning messages “Verifying volume when it is mounted with write access. Journal need to be replayed but volume is read-only.”
Workaround: This is known bug of Mac OS X 10.7 Lion. The operating system's repair tool fsck_hfs does not work correctly when the system is in full single user mode. Note that the first implicit check and repair of the system disk, executed by the tts Standalone Utility before its main menu appears, is working correctly. Only subsequent attempts to check the disk are failing, so you can usually ignore this issue. Apple is aware of this problem. However, it is unknown when or if they will fix this defect.
When removing language support packages from software components, the presence of more than one package for the same language will cause removal of one package only: Some specific software components shipped as part of Mac OS X may contain a subtle packaging error regarding their support for different languages. In this particular case, a software product comes with more than one language package for exactly the same language variant. For example, an application could contain two packages to support the Japanese language, one with the label “Japanese”, the other with the ISO 631 language code “ja”. In this case, neither Mac OS X nor TinkerTool System can decide which package is the correct one when the user wishes to remove Japanese language support. TinkerTool System will automatically select one of the affected packages and remove it, but not the extra ones. Typically, some communication drivers for EPSON® printers, the EPSON EPI Jet Printer Driver Library Version 2 (EPIJPrDrvLib2), and the Java Applet Launcher show this type of packaging problem.
Workaround: Run a second pass of the language removal procedure for the affected components. The excess packages will be removed as well.
The daily periodic task may not start correctly in Snow Leopard. Opening the report of the daily task may not work as expected: When trying to launch the daily periodic task of Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard, no matter if you are using TinkerTool System or if you start the task by other means, the scripts may not run correctly, but crash or hang instead. Using the Open button to review the reports of the daily task in TinkerTool System may also not work. The program might need an extremely long time to open the report or might also hang.
Workaround: This problem is caused by a corrupted daily task entry created by the Mac OS X updater under certain circumstances when migrating from Mac OS X 10.5.x Leopard to Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard. In addition to the effects already mentioned, this can also cause parts of the system log to be copied into the daily report which can then grow to a size of several hundred megabytes or even several hundred gigabytes, wasting storage space. To repair your system, perform the following steps:
- Use the Finder, selecting the menu item Go > Go to Folder to open the folder /etc/periodic/daily.
- Delete the file 500.daily.applesaved in this folder. Administrator permission is needed to perform this step.
- Use the Finder, selecting the menu item Go > Go to Folder to open the folder /var/log.
- Delete the file daily.out in this folder. Administrator permission is needed to perform this step.
Inheritance settings in Access Control Lists might be ignored when creating document-like files via an application on the graphical user interface: If you have defined an Access Control Entry for a folder and this entry uses one of the ACL inheritance features, the settings will be inherited correctly onto new files created in that folder when a low-level program, for example a command-line utility, is used to create the files. However, the inheritance will fail when a high-level application using the typical document features of Mac OS X is used to create the files.
Workaround: This is a known defect in all current versions of Mac OS X 10.6. Although this is a serious, security-relevant problem, it is currently unknown when Apple will fix this bug. No workaround is known.
If you are using one of the options to exclude disk volumes from specific features, the automounter processes of Mac OS X Snow Leopard will regularly record warning messages in the system logs: After adding at least one volume at System > Volumes > Special Mount Options for Volumes you will see messages of the form “Mount for UUID=x has no path for the directory to mount” being logged by the automounter processes autofsd and automountd.
Workaround: This is a known defect of Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard. You can safely ignore these messages. It is currently unknown if and when Apple will resolve this problem.
When using a MacBook Pro of the “Early 2011” model series (having identification codes beginning with “MacBookPro8”), the system might return invalid hardware information: Apple computers of the model series MacBook Pro 13-inch (Early 2011), MacBook Pro 15-inch (Early 2011), and MacBook Pro 17-inch (Early 2011) are originally shipped with a special release of Mac OS X, known as version 10.6.6 Build 10J3210, and the firmware version MBP81.88Z.0047.B04. Both components appear to be immature, not supporting all aspects of the MacBook Pro computers correctly yet. The systems might return incorrect information about technical details of the processor package and contain invalid entries in their System Management data. Applications such as TinkerTool System Release 2 depend on the operating system to respond correctly on hardware information requests. The following details could be display incorrectly: number of processor cores per processor package, system bus clock frequency, bus widths of memory chips, onboard devices, available expansion slots. This list might not be complete.
Workaround: There is no known workaround. Apple might or
might not resolve these problems with future versions of Mac OS X and the
MBP81 firmware. It is Apple's policy not to comment on any technical details
of Intel-based computers.