peculiar half-installed state

Which version of Mac OS X are you using? To the best of my knowledge, there are only three places where "System Preferences" are looking for Preference Panes:

• /System/Library/PreferencePanes
• /Library/PreferencePanes
• ~/Library/PreferencePanes

If you do not have "AlmostVPN.prefPane" in either of these 3 locations, you most certainly should not see any kind of "re-install/upgrade" message.

I am really curious to find out what exactly is your problem. If you want, you can try to IM me one one of following accounts and we can do little bit of on-line debugging:

• AIM: leapingbytes
• Google: leapingbytes@gmail.com
• ICQ: 151229319

Extracted from e-mail:

It's 10.4.3

emma>uname -a Darwin emma.callmeike.net 8.3.0 Darwin Kernel Version 8.3.0: Mon Oct 3 20:04:04 PDT 2005; root:xnu-792.6.22.obj~2/RELEASE_PPC Power Macintosh powerpc

emma>ls /Library/PreferencePanes/
emma>ls -a ~/Library/PreferencePanes/
.                     .DS_Store             RCDefaultApp.prefPane
..                    GnuPG.prefPane
emma>ls -a /Library/PreferencePanes/
.  ..
emma>ls -a /System/Library/PreferencePanes/
.                                 Localization.prefPane
..                                Mac.prefPane
Accounts.prefPane                 Network.prefPane
Appearance.prefPane               PrintAndFax.prefPane
Bluetooth.prefPane                Processor.prefPane
Classic.prefPane                  QuickTime.prefPane
DateAndTime.prefPane              ScreenSaver.prefPane
DesktopScreenEffectsPref.prefPane Security.prefPane
DigiHubDiscs.prefPane             SharingPref.prefPane
Displays.prefPane                 SoftwareUpdate.prefPane
Dock.prefPane                     Sound.prefPane
EnergySaver.prefPane              Speech.prefPane
Expose.prefPane                   Spotlight.prefPane
Ink.prefPane                      StartupDisk.prefPane
Internet.prefPane                 UniversalAccessPref.prefPane
Keyboard.prefPane
emma>

Blake Meike,

Thanks a lot for quick response. The best way to answer to this automatically generated ticket tracking e-mails is to follow link at the bottom of e-mail to the ticket (Ticket URL) and then add your reply in "Add/Change" section of the ticket. Also, you can attach files (like logs, screenshots, ... ) using "Attach File" button.

Now back to the problem. I have 2 more questions:

• What will happen if you manually copy AlmostVPN.prefPane from distribution disk image to ~/Library/PreferencePanes?
• While all this things happening, can you see any suspicious messages in the console (Applications/Utilities/Console)?

What will happen if you manually copy AlmostVPN.prefPane from distribution disk image to ~/Library/PreferencePanes?

That did it! It appears to work perfectly now.

While all this things happening, can you see any suspicious messages in the console (Applications/Utilities/Console)?

Here's an excerpt from the Console Log that may be of interest. Alas, the crash report logs no longer exist:

Nov 12 12:14:16 emma crashdump[452]: crash report written to: /Users/blake/Library/Logs/CrashReporter/almostVPNTool.crash.log
Nov 12 12:14:16 emma crashdump[455]: almostVPNTool crashed
Nov 12 12:14:17 emma crashdump[455]: crash report written to: /Users/blake/Library/Logs/CrashReporter/almostVPNTool.crash.log
Nov 12 12:14:24 emma crashdump[467]: System Preferences crashed
Nov 12 12:14:25 emma crashdump[467]: crash report written to: /Users/blake/Library/Logs/CrashReporter/System Preferences.crash.log
2005-11-12 12:15:10.144 System Preferences[469] [NSPrefPaneBundle instantiatePrefPaneObject] (/Volumes/Home/Users/blake/Library/PreferencePanes/AlmostVPN.prefPane): principalClass is nil.
2005-11-12 12:15:14.555 System Preferences[469] [NSPrefPaneBundle instantiatePrefPaneObject] (/Volumes/Home/Users/blake/Library/PreferencePanes/AlmostVPN.prefPane): principalClass is nil.
2005-11-12 12:15:17.698 System Preferences[469] [NSPrefPaneBundle instantiatePrefPaneObject] (/Volumes/Home/Users/blake/Library/PreferencePanes/AlmostVPN.prefPane): principalClass is nil.
)))

Blake Meike

What will happen if you manually copy AlmostVPN.prefPane from distribution disk image to ~/Library/PreferencePanes?

That did it! It appears to work perfectly now.

While all this things happening, can you see any suspicious messages in the console (Applications/Utilities/Console)?

Here's an excerpt from the Console Log that may be of interest. Alas, the crash report logs no longer exist:

Nov 12 12:14:16 emma crashdump[452]: crash report written to: /Users/blake/Library/Logs/CrashReporter/almostVPNTool.crash.log
Nov 12 12:14:16 emma crashdump[455]: almostVPNTool crashed
Nov 12 12:14:17 emma crashdump[455]: crash report written to: /Users/blake/Library/Logs/CrashReporter/almostVPNTool.crash.log
Nov 12 12:14:24 emma crashdump[467]: System Preferences crashed
Nov 12 12:14:25 emma crashdump[467]: crash report written to: /Users/blake/Library/Logs/CrashReporter/System Preferences.crash.log
2005-11-12 12:15:10.144 System Preferences[469] [NSPrefPaneBundle instantiatePrefPaneObject] (/Volumes/Home/Users/blake/Library/PreferencePanes/AlmostVPN.prefPane): principalClass is nil.
2005-11-12 12:15:14.555 System Preferences[469] [NSPrefPaneBundle instantiatePrefPaneObject] (/Volumes/Home/Users/blake/Library/PreferencePanes/AlmostVPN.prefPane): principalClass is nil.
2005-11-12 12:15:17.698 System Preferences[469] [NSPrefPaneBundle instantiatePrefPaneObject] (/Volumes/Home/Users/blake/Library/PreferencePanes/AlmostVPN.prefPane): principalClass is nil.

Blake Meike

If you will have a chance, could you please to try to do it again "old way". Remove AlmostVPN.prefPane and then try to install it by double-clicking and see if we can get crash report. If you do get it, could you please attach it to this ticket as a file.

I regret that, after trying several times, I am unable to generate the crash report. I can easily duplicate the behavior, but I can't get the panel to abort.

please let me know if there is any way I can help sort this...

-blake