Mac OS X 10.5.6: optical drive noise after installation; Suitcase problems

Optical drive noise After installing the Mac OS X 10.5.6 update, some users have found that their optical drives make random loading or ejecting noises, as if the drive is trying to manage some disc media.

Apple Discussions poster Paradoxial writes:

"Ever since the 10.5.6 install, my black Macbook optical drive is randomly making noises like it's searching for a disc inside."

This problem affects some MacBook and MacBook Pro owners with "Matshita" optical drives, but most MacBooks are shipped with drives from this manufacturer and the problem is not widespread. Luckily, although this problem is annoying, it is not associated with any loss of function. Users are able to burn and read optical media.

One user was able to stop the noise by removing the command line version of Disk Utility (diskutil) from his computer. While this may stop the problem, doing so is not recommended because "diskutil" is exceptionally useful for system maintenance and is required by some utilities and software packages. Removing it may introduce other problems.

The issue may be caused by an incompatibility between the notification software package "GROWL" and the Mac OS X 10.5.6 update.

Fix: Remove "GROWL" software Users with the "GROWL" notification software have noticed the sounds disappear after removing it. Therefore, it is recommended that affected users remove this software if they have it installed. Hopefully the GROWL developers will issue an update soon to address the problem.

Extensis Suitcase Fusion not launching Mac OS X 10.5.6 introduces code changes to many aspects of the operating system and, as such, is more than simply a patch to problematic code. These changes have resulted in a number of software packages not working properly, if at all. One such package is Extensis Suitcase Fusion font management software, which has failed to start for some Leopard users after the update.

Apple Discussions poster Bernardo314 writes:

"Just updated to 10.5.6 thinking that it would be as safe for me as others in the past have been. However, ever since installing this update, version Suitcase Fusion 2 no longer works. It now crashes every time you launch it (no reason why it crashes, it just starts and stops almost immediately)."

This problem has affected many users; for those with multiple computers the software may work on one computer and not on another even though the operating system and installed software is identical for both. This behavior indicates some specific system setting as opposed to hardware configurations that's not working with the software, especially when identical machines and software versions will work for one user but not for another.

Representatives from Extensis have tackled this problem, and with the help of affected users have narrowed it down to a bug with long computer names. It seems that any Bonjour networking name that is longer than 32 characters or has complex characters in it will prevent Extensis Suitcase from working. By user reports, this seems to be true for multiple versions of the software.

Until Extensis releases patches to their software to properly address this problem, the following workaround should allow the software to work again.

Workaround: shorten and simplify the computer name In the "Sharing" system preferences, change the computer name to a short and basic name. By default, the system will name it something like "John Smith's Power Macintosh G5", and give it a bonjour name of "John-Smiths-Power-Macintosh-G5.local". Instead of these names, it might be best to give the computer a name "Hal2000" or otherwise remove punctuation (dashes are ok), and shorten the length to 20 characters or less as per Extensis' recommendation. While this problem has been reported to be with the Bonjour name, it is recommended that both the computer and Bonjour names be set to the same.

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