[Temporarily Closed] Dorico hangs the system at startup or file dialog due to system privacy settings.

Dorico
1

[This is a bug-tracking thread. Please refrain from criticizing “why use incompatible version on new OS” in this thread.]

Current Title: Dorico hangs the system at startup or file dialog due to system privacy settings.

Original Title: Suspecious system-wide freeze when starting Dorico 2.1.10 on macOS Mojave.

Status: Temporarily Closed; Waiting for Steinberg to do either of the following:

  1. Do further tweaks to Dorico, making it unable to prompt for controlling the computer.
  2. Post an article to tell Dorico users to uncheck Dorico from the listed apps under “Security & Privacy → Privacy Tab → Accessibility → Allowing the apps below to control your computer.”

Symptoms:

Everytime I start Dorico (or trigger the file open / save dialog in Dorico), the entire system freezes for approx. 5-10 seconds; everytime the audio engine launches, the entire system freezes for approx. 5-10 seconds.

This glitch doesn’t hinder my work but is just annoying.

// Daniel is participating in a discussion (of this issue) under this thread: https://www.steinberg.net/forums/viewtopic.php?f=246&t=142284

In previous days (around October 2018) I reported what I encountered above to Daniel through Twitter.
I thought that it might be a compatibility issue with Microsoft OneDrive, but today I found that it isn’t.

On June 20, 2019 I found that this issue also triggers with the file open / save dialog.

------The following logs are related to 32-bit eLicenser drivers, but eLc driver may not be the only definite factor that triggers this issue.-------

This issue comes again on 09 Oct 2018, and I grabbed some information from the system built-in Console.app utility.

I found that the system.log made these records every-time the system-wide freeze happens:

Oct  8 06:55:07 uMBP15-ShikiSuen Dorico 2[802]: DEPRECATED USE in libdispatch client: dispatch source activated with no event handler set; set a breakpoint on _dispatch_bug_deprecated to debug
Oct  8 06:55:53 uMBP15-ShikiSuen Dorico 2[832]: DEPRECATED USE in libdispatch client: dispatch source activated with no event handler set; set a breakpoint on _dispatch_bug_deprecated to debug
Oct  8 06:56:45 uMBP15-ShikiSuen Dorico 2[854]: DEPRECATED USE in libdispatch client: dispatch source activated with no event handler set; set a breakpoint on _dispatch_bug_deprecated to debug
Oct  8 06:57:46 uMBP15-ShikiSuen com.apple.xpc.launchd[1] (com.steinberg.dorico2.40688[854]): Service exited due to SIGTERM
Oct  8 06:57:51 uMBP15-ShikiSuen Dorico 2[878]: DEPRECATED USE in libdispatch client: dispatch source activated with no event handler set; set a breakpoint on _dispatch_bug_deprecated to debug
Oct  8 07:25:55 uMBP15-ShikiSuen Dorico 2[1007]: DEPRECATED USE in libdispatch client: dispatch source activated with no event handler set; set a breakpoint on _dispatch_bug_deprecated to debug
Oct  8 07:28:41 uMBP15-ShikiSuen Dorico 2[638]: DEPRECATED USE in libdispatch client: dispatch source activated with no event handler set; set a breakpoint on _dispatch_bug_deprecated to debug
Oct  8 07:28:52 uMBP15-ShikiSuen com.apple.xpc.launchd[1] (com.steinberg.dorico2.40688[638]): Service exited due to SIGTERM
Oct  8 07:29:42 uMBP15-ShikiSuen Dorico 2[712]: DEPRECATED USE in libdispatch client: dispatch source activated with no event handler set; set a breakpoint on _dispatch_bug_deprecated to debug
Oct  8 07:30:40 uMBP15-ShikiSuen Dorico 2[760]: DEPRECATED USE in libdispatch client: dispatch source activated with no event handler set; set a breakpoint on _dispatch_bug_deprecated to debug
Oct  8 07:30:56 uMBP15-ShikiSuen com.apple.xpc.launchd[1] (com.steinberg.dorico2.40688[760]): Service exited due to SIGTERM
Oct  8 07:31:11 uMBP15-ShikiSuen Dorico 2[788]: DEPRECATED USE in libdispatch client: dispatch source activated with no event handler set; set a breakpoint on _dispatch_bug_deprecated to debug

I attached all my crash logs of Dorico 2 and VSTAudioEngine since September 1 till now (2018-Oct-08) for developers’ reference.
VSTAudioEngineCrashLogs_20180911-20181008.zip (173 KB)
Dorico 2_2018-09-26-172923_uMBP15-ShikiSuen.crash.zip (24 KB)

2

[Follow-Up]

I googled the following string:

DEPRECATED USE in libdispatch client: dispatch source activated with no event handler set; set a breakpoint on _dispatch_bug_deprecated to debug

And I found something interesting from a reply in this hackintosh-related thread:
https://www.insanelymac.com/forum/topic/334898-pre-release-macos-mojave/?do=findComment&comment=2626642

Though not related to Dorico, that reply indicates that this message pushes to the system.log file everytime such freeze happens to a running process.
Since a hackintosh does not have to modify the “airportd” executive binary, this indicate that the executive file itself may have no issue.

Still, this issue is worth investigating.

I also found this bug report of another app that freezes the macOS Mojave:

It pushes exactly the same error message to the system.log when the freezing happens.

EOF.

3

Just tested that the freezing issue at the startup of the application still exists in Dorico 2.1.20 update.

Meanwhile, the following issue appears to be missing:

Since Dorico starts, the first time I drag an element through the Setup screen, the Dorico app freezes for approx. 5-10 seconds.

4

[Follow-Up]

I checked the following system preferences and saw the Dorico 2 is shown and ticked in the list:

Screen+Shot+2018-10-04+at+14.04.01.png
Screen+Shot+2018-10-04+at+14.04.01.png669×575 71.5 KB

As soon as I untick the Dorico 2 in this list, the startup freezing issue of Dorico 2 application (also with the VSTAudioEngine) is gone.

These are what happened on my side. Gonna ask others who encountered this issue to try this trick.

5

I am gonna mark this thread as “temporarily closed”.

Meanwhile, I am waiting for Steinberg to do further tweaks to Dorico, making it unable to prompt for controlling the computer.

I feel that this isn’t an urgent matter. Maybe Steinberg would post an article instead, telling Dorico users to uncheck Dorico from the listed apps under “Security & Privacy → Privacy Tab → Accessibility → Allowing the apps below to control your computer.”

6

FWIW Dorico does not get added to the ‘Accessibility’ list in Security & Privacy on any version of macOS, so this is not an issue that will be encountered by other users. If for some reason you have chosen to add Dorico to the list of applications allowed to control the computer for accessibility, you can safely remove it from that list.