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Troubleshooting Suitcase X1 (#2): Deleting .lst files, caches for proper operation
Yesterday we noted a number of issues with Suitcase X1 under Mac OS X 10.3.x ranging from an inability to properly preview fonts, to application crashes.
Joe Schram, who has been battling Suitcase font auto-activation issues since Mac OS X 10.2, offers a workaround that has worked for several of his clients:
- Quit all programs except the Finder.
- Open Suitcase's main window and deactivate all non-system fonts.
- Quit Suitcase.
- Do a Finder search for any files ending with ".lst" in the filename. Delete as many as your user permissions will allow.
- Run Cocktail (shareware utility) to Repair Permissions, Delete all Cache files, and auto restart. Another way to do the same thing is to Repair Permissions from Disk Utility, then Delete all Cache file using Panther Cache Cleaner (shareware utility). Then Restart the computer.
- When the user logs back in, 95% of the time, the problems are gone. Adobe apps work properly and Suitcase previews all fonts correctly. In the remaining 10% of the cases, we'll delete all the Suitcase preference files first, then repeat steps 1-5. After rebooting, the user will then have to re-add their font set the the Suitcase database, but so far adding the extra step has always worked if the first run-through did not.
Schram adds "Apparently, activating and deactivating multiple fonts beyond some unknown and inconsistent threshold causes the operating system to become unable to release or add further font information in memory. The font cache files for the user and the system become corrupted, causing application crashes, the 'hundreds and hundreds of blank preview squares' in Suitcase, and other Suitcase display glitches. The only solution I have found is to delete these files and have the operating system regenerate them."
Resources
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A.) AdobeFnt files
Simply do a search on your system for 'AdobeFnt' (without parenthesis) and remove any AdobeFnt.lst files that you find. If you find an AdobeFnt.db file, do not remove it, only the .lst files.
B.) Office v.X font cache
Remove the file /Users/<home>/Library/Preferences/Microsoft/Office Font Cache (10)
C.) System font caches
To delete the system font caches in Mac OS X 10.2 Jaguar, do the following:
First, launch the Terminal (found in /Applications/Utilities).
These instructions are CASE SENSTIVE. This means that UPPERCASE and lowercase are important to remember. In the Darwin environment of Mac OS X, two files can be named identically but be different files if the case of the filename is different, (i.e., 'FILENAME' and 'FileName' would be two different files.)
After each command be sure to press Return. These instructions assume that you are an Admin user in OS X. If you are not, or this is a shared use machine, please contact your administrator for assistance.
You'll be presented with a prompt similar to:
Welcome to Darwin!
[hostname:~] username%
At the % prompt type the following (followed by Return): cd ~/Library/Caches
The prompt should change and say:
[hostname:~/Library/Caches] username%
Next, at the % prompt type in: sudo rm *.FCache*
You should be prompted for a password. Go ahead and enter your password followed by Return. You'll be presented with the prompt if it was successful.
Next, at the % prompt, type in: sudo rm *.FODB*
Now at the % prompt type in: cd /Library/Caches
The prompt should change and say:
[hostname:/Library/Caches] username%
Again, type in: sudo rm *.FCache*
And also: sudo rm *.FODB*
Now, our last stop for cache files: cd /System/Library/Caches
The prompt should change and say:
[hostname:/System/Library/Caches] username%
Now type in: sudo rm *.FCache*
And of course: sudo rm *.FODB*
And the last file to remove: sudo rm fontTablesAnnex*
Now you can select 'Quit' from the Terminal menu and restart your computer.
---
To delete the system font caches in Mac OS X 10.3 Panther, do the following:
First, launch the Terminal (found in /Applications/Utilities).
These instructions are CASE SENSTIVE. This means that UPPERCASE and lowercase are important to remember. In the Darwin environment of Mac OS X, two files can be named identically but be different files if the case of the filename is different, (i.e., 'FILENAME' and 'FileName' would be two different files.)
After each command be sure to press Return. These instructions assume that you are an Admin user in OS X. If you are not, or this is a shared use machine, please contact your administrator for assistance.
You'll be presented with a prompt similar to:
Welcome to Darwin!
[hostname:~] username%
At the % prompt type the following (followed by Return): cd ~/Library/Caches
The prompt should change and say:
[hostname:~/Library/Caches] username%
Next, at the % prompt type in: sudo rm *.fcache*
You should be prompted for a password. Go ahead and enter your password followed by Return. You'll be presented with the prompt if it was successful.
Next, at the % prompt, type in: sudo rm *.FODB*
Now at the % prompt type in: cd /Library/Caches
The prompt should change and say:
[hostname:/Library/Caches] username%
Again, type in: sudo rm *.fcache*
And also: sudo rm *.FODB*
Now, our last stop for cache files: cd /System/Library/Caches
The prompt should change and say:
[hostname:/System/Library/Caches] username%
Now type in: sudo rm *.fcache*
And of course: sudo rm *.FODB*
And the last file to remove: sudo rm fontTablesAnnex*
Now you can select 'Quit' from the Terminal menu and restart your computer.
I tried your suggestions for troubleshooting, but I still have a problem
with the display fonts on my Mac . I am running 10.2.8 on two different
Macs. On one the appearance is as it always was from the time I bought
it. On the other, the labels below icons have letters which appear run
together. When I click on one of these labels to change it, I then get a
very plain, non-proportional font as my editable label. None of the
suggestions in your article made a difference. I suspect that my
LucidaGrande system font is at fault, but I have no idea how to fix that.
The Suitcase preferences are located at /Users/<home>/Library/Preferences in a folder named 'Suitcase Preferences'. If you throw this folder out and relaunch Suitcase, the database will be empty.
I would recommend diagnosing your fonts not only with Suitcase X1's built-in font repair functionality, but with the included copy of FontDoctor as well. If you find fonts that apppear to be damaged that are not diagnosed as such by Suitcase X1 or FontDoctor, please contact us (http://www.extensis.com/support/contact/) so that we can obtain a copy of the font from you for investigation. Also, if you have original copies of the fonts you own (i.e. on CD/DVD, or some other archival media) I would recommend reloading them.
Thank you for your notes on this matter Chris.
Some questions/comments:
1.) Basically it seems that the workarounds we both provided accomplish
the same things. The Adobe font cache files are deleted, Suitcase
preferences can be deleted if need be, OS X system font caches are
deleted. My first question is, what is the long term solution to this
problem? What can Apple/Adobe/Extensis do to stop this problem from
occurring? Clearly some of the onus falls on users who are activating bad
fonts, but the underlying systems at work here seem to be quite fragile
as to be completely destabilized by what could be called "normal
operation" by users who may unknowingly have a bad font or two. It is
troublesome that between the new Adobe CS applications, the new
Suitcase X1, and Mac OS X 10.3.1, we are seeing the same issue that
existed when using the same combination of programs in their previous
versions (Mac OS X 10.2.x, Suitcase 10.x.x, and Adobe Photoshop 7.0.1/
Indesign 2.0.2/Illustrator 10.0.3). The hope was that updates of the
various components would somehow address whatever the underlying
problem was, but the lack of progress here either says the parties
involved are not communicating about the issue, or it may speak to your
point that it is all about bad fonts. This leads me to my second subject-
2.) I can honestly find no reliable way to diagnose bad fonts. A scan of
our 2700-item font set using Font Doctor appears to reveal fonts that
are damaged or will reveal other font issues perfectly. The problem is,
running the same set of fonts through an earlier or later version of Font
Doctor will miss some of those fonts or will find new problems with fonts
that were previously diagnosed as "OK". So, this tool seems inconsistent
at best if its results change when scanning the exact same set. Add into
this equation the new "Scan and Repair Fonts..." that X1 brought over
from Font Reserve, and using that I get hits for bad fonts that amazingly
did not show up in the scan from Font Doctor or visa-versa. How can this
be? Scan and Repair found 58 bad fonts, but Font Doctor 5.5.3 with all
Diagnosis Options turned on found only 6 bad fonts. There were no
common hits between the two programs, so is that telling me I have 64
bad fonts? The bottom line is that trying to use the utilities provided by
Extensis for finding bad fonts is unreliable and inconsistent. If the font
cache corruption issues that Suitcase users are experiencing is a result of
bad fonts, it would seem logical to shore up the tools provided to
identify said bad fonts, and make those tools rock-solid. This is not the
case at all. If these programs are each using some different kind of
analysis, what are the differences between their criteria for a so-called
"bad font"? Perhaps putting that knowledge out there for the users could
help them narrow things down with bad fonts and understand what these
programs are doing. In addition to the inconsistencies mentioned above,
Suitcase crashes every time when I ask it to "Scan and Repair" the entire
2700-item font set. Similarly, adding the entire font set via drop and
drag crashes the application if the "Scan for corrupt fonts when adding"
box is checked in the preferences. That tells me I have a bad font
somewhere right? Perhaps, but then if I select one alphabetical letter
group at a time and run "Scan and Repair", I can slog through it and get
the scans completed without crashing the app. That makes no sense.
Outside of the problems with the software itself, what we have here is
also some bigger problems between the three companies. What would be
great would be an in-depth technical explanation of what is going on
here. A detailed explanation of the purpose, structure, function and
interoperability of the Adobe ".lst files, the operating-system level cache
files, and Suitcase's APIs for turning fonts on and off would be extremely
valuable for users to understand how the font cache corruption problem
occurs. Users need rock-solid font diagnosis tools, and a crystal clear
explanation of how bad fonts are busting all these applications, and
assurances that Apple, Adobe, and Extensis are looking at this issue.
With regards to the Font Doctor issues, I would hypothesize that the bad
fonts that FD didn't discovered were cached in Suitcase's DB badly?
That's a total guess though. I do know that running FD usually cures
what ails my users. Recently had a guy who was crashing left and right in
InDesign 2. Since it was our first job in it, we assumed that was how
things were supposed to work until he started trying to track it down and
discovered it would always crash on pages containing a certain font.
After FD 5.5.3 ran through his job set, he hasn't managed to crash
InDesign a single time.
With regards to who is at fault, I maintain it is largely Apple's fault.
Anything that isn't in the /System/Library/Fonts folder should be treated
as a possible terrorist threat to the entire OS. Apple should have built-in
routines to verify the fonts in any other fonts folder and run them on
over all Fonts folders every time a font is added to any Font folder.
Basically, it's time to stop treating fonts as trusted citizens and more like
the miscreants they usually are... :-)
Despite the smiley face above, I'm really not joking that much--90% of
my tech support calls can be traced back to
font issues of one kind or another and I cannot physically be there to
force the project managers to FD their font sets before they distribute
them to 5 or 10 people where they begin wreaking havoc and system
instability...
After receiving no reply from Extensis regarding my second post above, I
emailed it to them directly. For the sake of completion to this thread, I'm
posting their reply to me here.
Below is the reply I received via email from Extensis. I feel it does not
address the most important issues I outlined in my previous post, but it
does provide additional information.
Reply from Extensis Support:
***************
There's no collaborative effort between Apple, Adobe and ourselves in
terms of managing damaged fonts, and font cache files. Each of us
independently develop our products, and some systems are reliant upon
others. Suitcase relies upon the type rendering services in Mac OS X
when previewing fonts. Mac OS X writes font data to it's cache files when
a font is used. Therefore if a damaged font is previewed, the damaged
data is written to the cache.
There are tools like Morrison SoftDesign's FontDoctor that can assist in
this manner, by diagnosing and fixing damaged fonts. However,
FontDoctor is not perfect so there are fonts that it may flag as fine, but
the font may still be damaged. Likewise for Suitcase X1, which has the
same ability to diagnose damaged fonts (using FontDoctor's technology).
In these cases it's incredibly helpful to us, Extensis and Morrison
SoftDesign, if we are able to get a copy of the font and try to determine
why it was not marked as corrupt and see if there are improvements that
can be made to our products.
This is probably why you see different results with different versions of
FontDoctor. Changes and improvements are made that are likewise
reflected in it's detection and repair ability. Of course, the best way to
'fix' a font is to replace the damaged copy with an original copy from the
font foundry or a backup.
Adobe's products use their own internal type rendering engine which
writes the AdobeFnt.lst files, which are more or less lists of what fonts
are in what folders on disk. Deleting AdobeFnt.lst files is a regular
troubleshooting step for many Adobe product font related troubles. If
you go to http://www.adobe.com/support/products/illustrator.html and
type 'adobefnt' in the Search box you'll see what I mean. There are lots
of font related errors, caused by damaged AdobeFnt.lst files which are
damaged by bad fonts.
I'd recommend going to our feedback page (http://www.extensis.com/
feedback/) and echoing much of your same problems as you did in your
posting. Feedback goes back to product management who like to see
customer feedback, as it can help us make better products. I will also
forward this along.
I've tried version 10.2.1, 10.2.2 and X1 and each time I
go to start the program (after each successful install), I
get the lovely "unexpectedly quit" greeting. This also
happens when I restart my G4 (sawtooth dual 450, OS
10.2.8).
If anyone can point me in the right direction, that would
be helpful. I'm deciding whether I should just archive &
reinstall Jaguar or make the move to Panther. Also if
you think my fonts are straight-up corrupted, is there a
utility/program that can check?
Can anyone help? Thanks.
Hevan
I've got the same error upon startup of Suitcase X1 (PM G4 - dual 1 Ghz - Panther 10.3.2)
I followed the topics concerning deleting .Ist files/Caches, but nothing works.
Before Panther I had the same error with Jaguar!!!
Pleeease help me, - i'm going nuts!
yes and my suitcaseX1 crashes when it launch
- by artemis826 January 15, 2004 12:20 PM PST
>This is a reply to a previous comment by Thirst
- Like this Reply to this comment
-
(10 Comments)I'm sorry to say, I'm experience the same problem (G4; Mac OS X 10.4.3). I can get X1 (upgrade version from v10) to launch but as soon as I try to bring up the main window or run FontDoctor it crashes.