Certain Classic apps no longer start ...

[bdruth]

I'm out of ideas as far as what is going on with my Classic environment (or OS 9.x in general, on my computer). I have a 400MHz iMac (Summer 2000, slot-loading) with OS X v.10.1.4; build 5Q125. I believe I have OS 9 upgraded to the latest and greatest as well, 9.2.2 if memory serves. In general, I've been getting along great. Recently, however, I can no longer launch certain Classic apps (either in Classic or natively in OS 9 if I reboot). Amongst these apps are: Dreamweaver 4 and Acrobat 5 (the full app, not the reader). I haven't gone through *all* my Classic apps to see which others are affected, but at the very least, it appears that not *all* apps ARE affected. For testing purposes, I still have NS4.7x and this appears to load w/o a hitch.

Here's what happens: I go to launch the Classic application (either via the Finder or via the Dock) and the application's icon appears in the Dock for a second then disappears. No error messages are presented whatsoever. When I boot into OS 9 directly, the application gets as far as blanking the menu bar and writing the app name in it (e.g. "Dreamweaver 4") and then just returns me to the Finder. Again, no error messages whatsoever.

DW 4 is key to my work. I've had to use another computer to get some work done, so this is affecting me quite severely. I've reinstalled DW4, going as far as removing all traces (including anything in the Preferences folder), but to no avail. The behaviour is absolutely identical. Until recently, I thought DW4 was at fault somehow, that was until I tried to launch Acrobat 5 this morning ... and noted the exact same behaviour. What's going on?!?

Any help would be greatly appreciated!!

Sincerely,
Brice Ruth

[Phil St. Romain]

Brice, try eliminating everything in your OS 9 system folder that reads "Classic" and then booting directly into OS 9. That might allow you to work in Dreamweaver.

If you need to boot into Classic, OS X will place all the Classic files back in your system folder.

[hschickel]

That's a permissions related problem. There are some rather serious bugs in Apple's Classic implementation as far as security is concerned and this is further exacerbated by the fact that some Classic apps need write access to: /, places in /System\ Folder, /Applications (Mac OS9), and the application's own folder.

Apple's default installation provides no security for the 3 Classic folders and admin write access to /. Security conscious users quickly change the default install. This can muck up some Classic apps as you are seeing. If you're an admin user and staff users on the machine don't need Classic this problem is fairly easily fixed with a slight loss in security.

From the terminal:

sudo chown -R root:admin /Documents
sudo chmod -R 775 /Documents
sudo chown -R root:admin /Applications\ \(Mac\ OS\ 9\)
sudo chmod -R 775 /Applications\ \(Mac\ OS\ 9\)
sudo chown -R root:admin /System\ Folder
sudo chmod -R 775 /System\ Folder
sudo chown root:admin /
sudo chmod 775 /

The last line grants admin write access to root. This is apple's default and it is a minimal to small security risk depending upon how the machine is networked and which services you are using. If you're running sendmail you will have to modify it's properties to keep using it.

If you are not an admin and/or staff users need Classic access you will need to make some tradeoffs between security and usability. Test what areas the applications in question needs write access to and decide whether or not providing it is worth the security risk in your environment. Then provide the access or find a new application.

Hugh