Reinstall just Sherlock?

[camz28]

While running the Sherlock app to search for files, it crashed. Since then, I cannot run the application at all. I don't get any error messages....it just doesn't do anything when I select the icon.

I assume I need to reinstall Sherlock...but I can't seem to find it on any of the OS X discs.

If you have heard of this problem before, I would appreciate any help to fix it. If not, can you provide me instructions to reinstall the Sherlock app WITHOUT having to reinstall the entire Mac OS X.

[Craig R. Arko]

The first step would be to run (not walk) over to <this page> (http://homepage.mac.com/csrstka/) and download the latest version of Pacifist. The ReadMe file with it explains much of what you'll need to know.

You'll need to extract Sherlock from essentials.pax.gz, which is in /System/Installation/Packages/Essentials.pkg on the install CD. Show Package Contents on this and you'll quickly find essentials.pax.gz. Open this in Pacifist, find Sherlock in /Applications, and extract.

It's easier to do than to explain.

[CharlesS]

Originally posted by Craig R. Arko
You'll need to extract Sherlock from essentials.pax.gz, which is in /System/Installation/Packages/Essentials.pkg on the install CD. Show Package Contents on this and you'll quickly find essentials.pax.gz. Open this in Pacifist, find Sherlock in /Applications, and extract.

Actually, all you need to do is drop Essentials.pkg onto Pacifist. No showing package contents necessary. :)

[Craig R. Arko]

Very cool, Charles. Pacifist has become an indispensable tool in the arsenal. Thank you.

-- PS - Thanks for the plug elsewhere, too. :D

[CharlesS]

Originally posted by Craig R. Arko
Very cool, Charles. Pacifist has become an indispensable tool in the arsenal. Thank you.

Glad you enjoy it. :-)

-- PS - Thanks for the plug elsewhere, too.

If you're talking about MacFixIt, yeah. I don't usually do things like that - plug someone's competition on their own web board - but MFI is on my list right now...

It's a pity - they used to be such a great site. Now they're slow as hell, have really irritating flashing casino-style ads, and don't let you search their archives without paying them first, even if you've contributed to the archives. I can't read my own posting about my own program on their site anymore. :mad: Maybe if I eventually decide to put a shareware fee on Pacifist when it gets out of beta, I could bribe them to let me search their archives by giving them a free registration code or something.

Ah well. MacOSXHints looks like a great site, and perhaps it will become the successor to MacFixIt. It's OS X-only, which looks like an advantage if you're trying to figure out how to do something in X, you don't get all kinds of OS 9 tips that are irrelevant to what you are trying to do.

Would you believe that the idea for Pacifist was actually inspired by this site? I saw some hints where people were posting how to extract things from the pax files manually using the command-line. I saw how inconvenient it was, and then I realized I had an idea for my first Cocoa program... :-D

[edit: this seems to only allow one smiley in a post! Is that normal?]

[Craig R. Arko]

Originally posted by CharlesS

Would you believe that the idea for Pacifist was actually inspired by this site? I saw some hints where people were posting how to extract things from the pax files manually using the command-line. I saw how inconvenient it was, and then I realized I had an idea for my first Cocoa program... :-D

[edit: this seems to only allow one smiley in a post! Is that normal?]

Yeah, I was using Scott Anguish's OpenUp for the process, and then taking the expanded archive out of /Volumes and using Stuffit Deluxe to make my own archive.

The real nice thing would be to have a pax utility that runs under OS 9, for those times when OS X is hosed and can't boot and extracting and replacing a single file would fix it. Is there any such critter (even an MPW tool)?

-- PS - about the smilies: we have it set to allow only a single image because of bandwidth concerns; maybe that will change down the road.

[CharlesS]

Originally posted by Craig R. Arko


Yeah, I was using Scott Anguish's OpenUp for the process, and then taking the expanded archive out of /Volumes and using Stuffit Deluxe to make my own archive.

The real nice thing would be to have a pax utility that runs under OS 9, for those times when OS X is hosed and can't boot and extracting and replacing a single file would fix it. Is there any such critter (even an MPW tool)?

I'm not aware of any such utility. The .pax files are usually actually in CPIO format, so what I would look for would be a utility for expanding CPIO files for 9. Does StuffIt do this, I wonder?

[mervTormel]

boy! i would really like to know if whacking those pesky ~/library/preferences/LS* & .LS files would have solved this Sherlock brain death.

not to knock Charles' magnificent contribution :D

any thoughts?

[thatch]

I wish I would have thought of that back when my Sherlock went berserk a couple of months back. Maybe that would have saved me from reinstalling it although finding Pacifist was a pleasure and did fix things up nicely for me.

Too bad the original poster, (camz28), has not replied to let everyone know what the outcome was for him and for the benefit of others too. CamZ, if you're listening, I'm over heatin on a fast idle waitin to burn rubber for your answer man. :cool: Okay, maybe that was kinda lame but I'm just trying to spread a little fun around here. Hasta la bye-bye for now.

[jx]

Originally posted by mervTormel
boy! i would really like to know if whacking those pesky ~/library/preferences/LS* & .LS files would have solved this Sherlock brain death.

not to knock Charles' magnificent contribution :D

any thoughts?

I've lost Sherlock since installing 10.1.3. How would I go about whacking these pesky prefs? The .LS files are invisible, right? How do I get 'em? (Keeping in mind that I'm very dim when it comes to using the command line.)

[thatch]

Avoiding the command line, you can use TinkerTool to show invisible files and then navigate to ~/Library/Preferences/ to find three .LS* and three LS* files, a total of six files.

[rongor]

Hello

I have the same crashing problem with Sherlock. I trashed the hidden ".LS"and "LS" files ( with some tepidation) to no avail and then used Pacifist to replace sherlock; again to no avail. Each time and infact prior to all this, I trashed the sherlock prefs (com.apple.Sherlock copy.plist) and Sherlock folder in (home) prefs.

No luck Sherlock is virtually unuable.

I'm stumped

Thanx

Ron Goren

[thatch]

rongor,

Do you have any custom .src files associated with Sherlock? If so, you may want to move them out of the ~/Library/'Internet Search Sites' folder and try your install again.

Also, make certain you do not have the automatically index preferences set in Sherlock. There are two of them.

Please let us know how, where and at what point you are experiencing the crash.

An alternative to Sherlock is a program called Locator which works very well. You can find it on versiontracker.com for X.