I’m running Photoshop CS2 9.0.2 on a Mac Pro 2.66GHz, 6GB RAM, Mac OS X 10.4.7 with all current updates. Frequently, when PS is launched, the Adobe LM Service process crashes, and PS is then hung. I have to force quit PS and restart the Mac. This is intermittent. If the Adobe LM Service opens without crashing, or if it is already open, PS launches and works fine.
I filed a report and crash log on Adobe’s bug reporting page. Is anyone else seeing this one?
Other possibly relevent facts:
I am not running Version Cue. Before installing and activating PS on the Mac Pro, I deactivated it successfully on a PowerMac G4. RAM was tested with memtest – no errors. Disk Utility HD repair and permissions repair found no errors. So far I have found only one suspicious item. I checked the permissions on the dat (license) file:
Knowledgebase document 331418 states that the Owner of this file should be system. But on my Mac, the file’s owner is set to my admin account (same as my user account). Should I change it?
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Mac Pro 2.0ghz; 2MB ram; Creative Suite (- Version Cue) with all the latest updates.
I was having major stability problems (multiple daily crashes) with all my Rosetta apps – especially the Adobe suite – until a helpful software developer (Default Folder’s Jon) examined some of my crash logs and put me on the track of font problems.
Although I had clean reports from 2 different font diagnostic utilities, I decided to use the "Clean System Font Folders" function in Linotype FontExplorer to:
1. Move (to a desktop folder) & deactivate all the fonts NOT installed by OS X from:
Since doing that, I’ve had only 3 InDesign crashes in a week of heavy system/Adobe use (and those 3 are due to a very specific, repeatable problem trying to create a PDF or print a Photoshop EPS duotone file from InDesign).
The Linotype software is an excellent – and free – font management utility. I’d install that on your system and spend some time testing your system with the bare minimum of fonts. Now that my system is stable, I’m adding the deactivateds back a few at a time, hoping to nail the culprit.
Knowledgebase document 331418 states that the Owner of this file should be system. But on my Mac, the file’s owner is set to my admin account (same as my user account). Should I change it? >>
/Library/Preferences/Adobe Systems/Product licenses_120/B2B86000.dat is set for Owner = System on my installation.
Did you run "Repair Permissions both BEFORE AND IMMEDIATELY AFTER installing Photoshop CS2?
Despite a lot of hot air on this subject in another thread in this Forum (!), I believe that you omit this step at your peril if you are installing software that uses an Installer.
As far as I know, the only fonts on this Mac are those installed by OS X 10.4.7 and MS Office 2004. Perhaps Photoshop CS2 installs fonts, but I don’t think any of my other apps do. Note that I installed only Photoshop/Bridge/ACR, not the full creative suite, and no other Adobe apps yet. I can try deactivating the MS Office fonts, but it seems like this would be a standard config tested by Adobe.
I did repair permissions before and after (but not immediately after) installing PS. I have no idea why the owner permission on the .dat file is different from what is in the KB note, and I don’t know if it would be wise for me to change it.
I’ll give tech support a call. Debugging this one might not be easy, since it only show up intermittently, and only once per boot.
Two files that will almost certainly be flagged as corrupted by FAP are AppleCasual.dfont and VT102font.
What’s very important is to also look for duplicate fonts. FAP is pretty good at that too.
Over time, you’re very likely to accumulate duplicates of a lot of fonts. FAP has already quarantined well over a thousand duplicate fonts on my system.
I installed FontExplorer X, and it does not show either of the fonts that Ramón mentioned. It does not report any conflicts, even though I can see two entries for some fonts. For example, Andale Mono is present in both /Library/Fonts and ~/Library/Fonts. Does this count as a duplicate or a conflict?
When Photoshop launches, FontExplorer displays an alert that "Photoshop needs the font Myriad-Roman which is not installed or activated". That font does not show up in FontExporer X. I don’t know if it should have been installed, and if so, by what.
It seems odd to me that missing or corrupt fonts would cause Adobe LM Service to crash intermittently when PS is launched. Looking at the status line in the PS splash screen, it looks like the crash occurs well before PS goes looking for fonts.
I’ll see if I can figure out how to set FontExplorer or FontAgent Pro to disable all non-OS X fonts. I’m a bit hesitant to do this because I’m afraid that I will mess this system up even worse than it is already. My work only requires a few of the standard fonts, and I don’t have a very solid understanding of how these utilities "import" and "manage" fonts.
I disabled all fonts other than those originally installed by OS X in /System/Library/Fonts and ~/Library/Fonts, and in the latter folder I disabled all the foreign language fonts that I don’t plan to use. I also changed the owner permission on the .dat file to system, as described in the KB note.
The crash is still occurring.
Today I called Adobe and spoke with a tech support rep. He said that the maintenance and tests that I have already done are similar to what they would recommend, and had no further suggestions. He is forwarding the case to engineering.
Yes, Ramón, I did try both FontExplorer X and Font Agent Pro. But I can’t tell if they are providing me with any useful information. FAP found one corrupt font: Bauhaus 93 (probably installed by MS Office). However, I have seen the crashes of Adobe LM Service even when that font was removed, and I was running only a small subset of the original fonts installed by OS X.
The documentation for both FAP and FontExplorer are quite opaque to me. They seem to assume that users already know a lot about fonts. For example, I don’t know if I am supposed to import the fonts in /System/Library/Fonts. FAP documentation is not clear on this. It just says "do not move or alter them". I tried to import, without moving them, and FAP reports that they are all corrupt or duplicates. Does this mean anything? I have no idea. Seems unlikely that they are all corrupt, since other apps (besides PS) are behaving normally.
I don’t feel comfortable trying to configure font management apps by guesswork. Sorry if this sounds flippant or irritated, but right now I am under a lot of pressure from work and family issues and I don’t have time to become a font geek. I just hope that I can figure out how to uninstall FAP without hosing my Mac.
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