Shirt Pocket Discussions - [info] AppleScript to Work Around SD & Intel 10.4.8 Issues

As a recent purchaser of a copy of SuperDuper destined to do nightly backups on a Mac Pro server I had read all about the strange issues with 10.4.8 on Intel systems. In the end I decided on going with SD anyway... it's just so good that even with the risk of crashes it's better than the alternatives. :D Plus, I'd already bought it ;)

In any case, not wanting to bother Dave with some more support requests for an issue that's basically out of his control, I decided to finagle a workaround that would avoid the crashes to begin with. It uses the prescribed "hide the app" fix and while the AppleScript is pretty basic (to say the least) it gets the job done when SuperDuper is on a scheduled run late at night and nobody's around:

Code:

(* SuperDuperHider (v01) by Matt Tracey

        - A workaround to SD crashes on Intel 10.4.8 systems

        - Start it up, leave it running, and walk away :*)



on idle

        try

                tell application "System Events" to (name of processes) contains "SuperDuper!"

                set superduper_running to result

                tell application "System Events"

                        if superduper_running is true then

                                if visible of process "SuperDuper!" is true then

                                        set visible of process "SuperDuper!" to false

                                        activate

                                        display dialog "SuperDuper! was hidden to prevent a possible crash!" buttons {"Stop Doing That!", "Thanks!"} default button 2 giving up after 5

                                        if button returned of result is "Stop Doing That!" then

                                                tell application "SuperDuper!" to activate

                                                tell me to quit

                                        else

                                                return 8

                                        end if

                                end if

                        end if

                end tell

        end try

end idle

In order to get this to work (and run natively on Intel systems) just copy and paste the above code into Script Editor (located in /Applications/AppleScript) and then "Save As..." with file format "application bundle" and only the "Stay Open" box checked. Whatever name you give it will work fine, although SuperDuperHider has a nice ring to it :cool: Then just launch the resulting program (whatever its name may be) and let it do its thing in the background. I've also added it to the login items on my server so it'll start automatically if the system ever unexpectedly restarts.

Anyways, I hope this helps anybody that may be encountering the same issues :)