Send your "corrupted" preferences files

[polanoid]

Referring to a topic I started in the "Logic 10.7.5 is out" thread: I'm asserting there's no such thing as a "corrupted prefs file" that leads to strange behaviours in Logic. My claim: some combination of preferences from a perfectly fine prefs file causes - maybe unexpectedly - that behaviour. I'm really curious if anybody can prove me wrong by posting an actual corrupted prefs file (that is still read by Logic). So, let's see what you have 😉 !

[fisherking]

i will wait till this happens, of course. but what makes you so sure of this, when people here (and on the apple logic forum, for example), along with other app developers, etc... believe that a preference file can get corrupted?

i mean, is this your 'feeling', or is it based on something factual? just curious...

[polanoid]

For a start, I wonder how Logic would even be able to read a corrupted plist file. Also, in my experience helping other users (not online) I have never ever encountered a "corrupted" prefs file. 

3 minutes ago, fisherking said:

is this your 'feeling', or is it based on something factual

I could ask you the same thing 😉 Look I don't want to step on anyones toes here, but I guess we can learn much more about Logic's inner workings if we don't always say "corrupted prefs, delete them" but instead analyze why Logic behaves in a certain way.

I'm also not "sure of this", I'm just questioning if this "corrupted prefs" meme is real. Nothing wrong with questioning things from time to time...

Edited November 9, 2022 by polanoid

[des99]

It's probably a wider issue, as what "corruption" really means could be quite wide, all the way from files that are garbled or scrambled, up through settings that are correct but later Logic versions contain buggy handling of those settings (there's *plenty of evidence for that*), up to internal data structures being damaged due to program bugs/memory leaks or whatever and writing bad data into the file.

"Corrupted preferences" certainly has been a traditional Mac thing for a long time, so it's not like the possibility is unprecedented - hence the "trash your prefs" troubleshooting advice, generally. (But I agree, in most of those cases, it's probably more about resetting your settings to a known state, in case the user has done something they didn't realise, than "corruption" as such.)

I've certainly had CS prefs that were known good in particular versions, but a small minor version update  couldn't read them properly and resulted in the controller assignments breaking and causing other non-working behaviours - I know, because in this one case, I think it was somewhere between 10.4.0 and 10.4.5 - I had to rebuild a fairly complicated set of controller assignments *from scratch* in the newer version to get a CS prefs file that would work correctly.

I think corrupted prefs in this case is more likely to be old cruft that later versions might handle poorly - I've certainly looked through the main Logic prefs in the past and been amazed at what's in there, so it doesn't surprise me.

But I think *actual* preferences corruption happens a lot less than, say, project corruption, where the data structures are fair larger and more complex, and sadly project corruption does tend to be fairly common, from following troubleshooting threads here over the years.

Edited November 9, 2022 by des99

[polanoid]

41 minutes ago, des99 said:

I've certainly had CS prefs that were known good in particular versions, but a small minor version update  couldn't read them properly and resulted in the controller assignments breaking and causing other non-working behaviours - I know, because in this one case, I think it was somewhere between 10.4.0 and 10.4.5 - I had to rebuild a fairly complicated set of controller assignments *from scratch* in the newer version to get a CS prefs file that would work correctly.

 

I'm not talking about CS prefs here. With those, strange things tend to happen indeed.

42 minutes ago, des99 said:

less than, say, project corruption

and of course I'm also not talking about projects (which are not stored in a plist to begin with, and have, as you say, a much more complicated structure than a simple list of keys and values). So let's stick to the topic shall we.

[polanoid]

44 minutes ago, des99 said:

"Corrupted preferences" certainly has been a traditional Mac thing for a long time

Yes, that's my suspicion - this "meme" as I call it dates back from a time when plists weren't even a thing, and somehow is still believed in without questioning it. That's why I started this thread. To find out if this is really still valid.

46 minutes ago, des99 said:

up through settings that are correct but later Logic versions contain buggy handling of those settings (there's *plenty of evidence for that*)

Of course but that would definitely not be a "corruption" of the prefs file

[des99]

5 minutes ago, polanoid said:

So let's stick to the topic shall we.

Snarky!

Actually, I generally agree with you, in that prefs corruption as in file/data corruption (as in garbled data, unreadable, truncated or scrambled files etc) isn't really a thing, and as I mentioned in the other thread, that's not what people are generally referring to when they use that term.

[polanoid]

The thing is, after the prefs are trashed, all chances to actually understand what was really going on are gone...

So maybe we can even use this thread to collect those prefs files (together with a description of what issues they caused) before deleting them

[fisherking]

1 minute ago, polanoid said:

The thing is, after the prefs are trashed, all chances to actually understand what was really going on are gone...

how would it be that logic preferences (an app on your mac) can not become damaged, but adobe preferences (an app on your mac), can be? 🤔

anyway, i think most people want their apps, and macs, to work, and this is far more important to them then finding out why there's an issue (unless it keeps cropping up).

[polanoid]

3 minutes ago, fisherking said:

how would it be that logic preferences (an app on your mac) can not become damaged, but adobe preferences (an app on your mac), can be?

"Adobe prefs can become damaged, therefore Logic prefs can too" sounds like a locical fallacy to me 😉 

3 minutes ago, fisherking said:

anyway, i think most people want their apps, and macs, to work, and this is far more important to them then finding out why there's an issue (unless it keeps cropping up).

Some people on this forum (including me) seem to be much more open to learn how Logic works though (can we move to the separate thread I started on this topic please? Just saw we already did 😉)

Edited November 9, 2022 by polanoid

[fisherking]

2 minutes ago, polanoid said:

"Adobe prefs can become damaged, therefore Logic prefs can too" sounds like a locical fallacy to me 😉 

Some people on this forum (including me) seem to be much more open to learn how Logic works though (can we move to the separate thread I started on this topic please?)

if you want to contain the discussion on this thread (which makes sense), you should let it go on the 10.7.5 thread.

my point was... any file on a computer can become damaged.

if the general consensus is, logic preference files can become damaged, and there's evidence that deleting that file often fixes a problem... why is it so hard to believe? and again, what's your evidence to contradict this? 

anyway, am going back to work. i've learned that these discussions just go in circles, and that people will believe what they want, facts or no facts. 

[polanoid]

10 minutes ago, fisherking said:

and again, what's your evidence to contradict this? 

I'm asking for evidence to contradict my claim, actually 😉 

[fisherking]

Just now, polanoid said:

I'm asking for evidence to contradict my claim, actually 😉 

someone has a problem in logic; apple (or someone on this forum perhaps), suggests they delete logic's preference file. they do this, reboot, and things are working again. similarly, i've experienced this in final cut (also an apple app), and photoshop. 

but you're the one making a claim that contradicts the general consensus. so, again, is this based on a fact, something you know? or it is a feeling, a belief? 

[polanoid]

Just now, fisherking said:

but you're the one making a claim that contradicts the general consensus. so, again, is this based on a fact, something you know? or it is a feeling, a belief?

I just don't know how a simple plist file can become corrupted in a way that it will still be read by Logic but causess "some kind of" strange behaviour. Hence I'm asking to post examples here. I'd like to learn something, you know.

2 minutes ago, fisherking said:

someone has a problem in logic; apple (or someone on this forum perhaps), suggests they delete logic's preference file. they do this, reboot, and things are working again.

Yes. And, again: the chance to actually find out what exactly caused the problem is gone now.

[fisherking]

2 minutes ago, polanoid said:

I just don't know how a simple plist file can become corrupted in a way that it will still be read by Logic but causess "some kind of" strange behaviour. Hence I'm asking to post examples here. I'd like to learn something, you know.

Yes. And, again: the chance to actually find out what exactly caused the problem is gone now.

and yet adobe, for example, acknowledges that such a thing can happen. and apple will suggest deleting preferences as a fix for some issues.

so, if that IS what's causing the problem, there's nothing else to find out (unless, as you would want to, someone wants to read thru the file, looking for something 'damaged').

i've asked you what your claim is based on; will you answer the question? (preferable to my making the assumption that it's just a 'theory'...)

[polanoid]

7 minutes ago, fisherking said:

i've asked you what your claim is based on; will you answer the question?

my claim is mainly based on the fact that I never encountered a really corrupted (the only corruption I can imagine with a plist, BTW, is that it is incompletely written, which should cause Logic to assume default values for the missing settings IMO, if it reads the file at all) prefs file, and I have looked at quite a lot of problems that were, at the end, caused by some setting in the - albeit not corrupted - preferences.

Edited November 9, 2022 by polanoid

[Dewdman42]

I think its definitely possible for prefs file to get mixed up, especially if switching between different versions of LogicPro.  I think using the word "corrupted" is a bit strong, its not like the XML/JSON is likely to become garbled, for example...but it could simply be that and older version of LogicPro expects to find a certain data parameter in a different way then another version of LogicPro...and we are not privy to the internal code of LogicPro, but it literally can be as simple as LogicPro being confused about the data it finds and trying to apply the wrong data in the wrong way because it doesn't have enough of its own error checking.  Unlikely to cause a crash, but even that could happen with poor programming inside Logic Pro..its always possible...and there are any number of logistical problems that could happen when LogicPro expects to find one data set and looks for whatever it can find and only finds part of it or finds it in a different form that confuses it..

So yes...getting rid of the preferences plist is not completely out of the question to try in some cases.

When would that case be?  In the above example, the user found that when they logged in as guest the problem they were having went away.  I think it was  pretty good bet that the guest had a new fresh preferences plist and the problem went way.  Just a hunch though, but worth a try certainly...

 

[polanoid]

1 minute ago, Dewdman42 said:

I think it was  pretty good bet that the guest had a new fresh preferences plist and the problem went way

Yes of course, the guest user has his own prefs, which are created with default values. 

[fisherking]

1 minute ago, polanoid said:

my claim is mainly based on the fact that I never encountered a really corrupted (the only corruption I can imagine with a plist, BTW, is that it is incompletely written, which should cause Logic to assume default values for the missing settings IMO) prefs file, and I have looked at quite a lot of problems that were, at the end, caused by some setting in the - albeit not corrupted - preferences.

ok. so you personally, have not experienced a corrupted plist. how does this dominate over the experience of all those (logic and other app users) who have fixed issues by deleting an app plist? adobe claims plists can become damaged, and apple themselves support this (such as they do). 

anyway, i'll go with what works. i've dealt with a lot of logic issues (often during OS betas), and found all sorts of fixes, workarounds... and if deleting the app plist gets me back to work.. am good.

[polanoid]

2 minutes ago, Dewdman42 said:

I think its definitely possible for prefs file to get mixed up, especially if switching between different versions of LogicPro.

So. All I'm asking is that people upload those prefs here before deleting them. So we (or at least, i) can try to analyze what really caused their issue

[Dewdman42]

its definitely a nice idea!

[polanoid]

Just now, Dewdman42 said:

its definitely a nice idea!

Phew! 😉 

[Dewdman42]

one reason to look at the old and new prefs file and compare them if possible with a diff tool would be so that the user with the problem could potentially fix the original prefs file, rather than having to resort to destroy all their prefs and starting over again.  But on the other hand, if they were recently coming from and older version of LogicPro, there could easily be other discrpencies and its probably safer to just start with a new one and keep good notes about how to re-setup prefs from scratch again...  (shrug).

This recent release has, in my opinion, also some backwards compatibility problems with the project file...so everyone from 10.7.5+ onwards may have some problems opening up older project files..unless Apple fixes that in a future patch release somehow...based on what I saw in the past they introduced that kind of problem also when they brought 1000 tracks into LogicPro...I don't think they ever patched away the problem either..people just moved on to using new project files.

[polanoid]

2 minutes ago, Dewdman42 said:

This recent release has, in my opinion, also some backwards compatibility problems with the project file..

Which ones would that be?

[Dewdman42]

There was someone on here last week talking about how they were opening up older projects files and something wasn't displaying right...but new projects everything was fine, they resorted to creating new projects and importing stuff from the old projects into the new projects..then all was fine.  In my mind that is a clear indication of the project file format changed and the new LogicPro is confused about reading the older format.

When they did the 1000 track update, they messed up a bunch of stuff related to metronome, bla bla bla...in my view it was the structure of the project file changing that caused the problem as only people opening older projects had the problem.

[fisherking]

1 minute ago, polanoid said:

Which ones would that be?

the only one i've experienced is... all my pre-10.7.5 projects (and all my templates) lost the 'key signature / project end' indicator in the control bar. ugh. i reworked my templates, but have to re-activate that indicator any time i revert an 'older' project to it's locked window state.

still, i can keep working.

[Dewdman42]

anyway moral of the story is...you might just be better off refreshing the prefs file every once in a while in any case.

[Eon]

2 hours ago, polanoid said:

Referring to a topic I started in the "Logic 10.7.5 is out" thread: I'm asserting there's no such thing as a "corrupted prefs file" that leads to strange behaviours in Logic. My claim: some combination of preferences from a perfectly fine prefs file causes - maybe unexpectedly - that behaviour. I'm really curious if anybody can prove me wrong by posting an actual corrupted prefs file (that is still read by Logic). So, let's see what you have 😉 !

I'm afraid its a waste of time to explain something to people who do not understand how things works. Im not blame them though, for a casual user its much easier to simply delete the preference file than find a root of a problem.

I absolutely agree with you that delete a "corrupted" preference file is just simplified step (for technical support) to "reset all to default settings" and fix the user error. Especially when there is so much settings in the preferences.

Edited November 9, 2022 by Eon

[Eon]

In fact, i just corrupt my own preference file for a sake of test and logic just created a new default file which means that you are correct and technical support is simply force us to reset logic to factory settings (to fix the user error)

Long story short : if preference file is REALLY corrupted, Logic will create a new one automatically.

Edited November 9, 2022 by Eon

[fisherking]

13 minutes ago, Eon said:

In fact, i just corrupt my own preference file for a sake of test and logic just created a new default file which means that you are correct and technical support is simply force us to reset logic to factory settings (to fix the user error)

Long story short : if preference file is REALLY corrupted, Logic will create a new one automatically.

what did you do exactly to "corrupt' your preference file? did you save it, polanoid & i would like to see it.

also, if returning logic's settings to default fixes an issue that is critical for me... am all for it.