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FileVault and Launch Services

I seem to have a conflict between FileVault and Launch Services. Whenever I assign a custom URL handler or file extension, the settings are forgotten on a reboot.

Can someone please verify if this happens with their set up too? It's exceptionally annoying for me, even though I don't reboot that often.

To duplicate:
1) Create a new account
2) Log in to the new account.
3) Enable FileVault
4) Modify Launch Services settings. I usually start Firefox and set it as the default browser when prompted. Changing assignments for file extensions (using Finder or RCDefaultApp) will also exhibit the same issue.
5) Reboot (don't just log out) and, if necessary, log into the new account.
6) Check Launch Services settings again. In my case, I start Firefox again. It will prompt to be set as the default browser again, indicating that the previous settings were not retained.

Some cases, it seems the settings seem to be retained over one reboot, but will be lost the next. Settings will be preserved when only logging in and out without a reboot.

The problems go away when I disable FileVault. I've checked ~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.LaunchServices.plist and it's fine across reboots. It seems that LaunchServices itself isn't reading the file when its in FileVault.

This a a clean installation of Leopard, not an upgrade of any sort.

Thanks in advance.

MacBook, Mac OS X (10.5)

Posted on Nov 12, 2007 8:39 PM

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Posted on Nov 19, 2007 6:35 AM

Yes I see it too. In my case it seems com.apple.LaunchServices.plist is resetting with every boot. I typically change various video types from quicktime to vlc among other things. I'm plaaning on seeing if I can work around this with a login script.
In addition to this behavior I cannot get launch services to truly respect file extensions. My primary example: I have digital comics. These are typically zipped or rared sets of jpegs, using zip/rar purely for packaging purposes not compression. The extensions are then standardly set to cbz or cbr (comic book zip/rar). If I assign these to the comic reader, it works until reboot, but .zip and. rar extensions are also mapped to the reader. The opposite problem occurs if I set the zip/rar to something , The plist file does not record the extensions at all in in some cases, going strictly by the type of file, which actually are not different. This was no problem in 10.4.
77 replies

Mar 21, 2008 4:23 PM in response to thirteen37

Aha! I wondered why on my MacBook Pro running Leopard and FileVault, it never remembered that I want to use Firefox+Thunderbird rather than Safari+Mail.app. It would also forget Cyberduck and Adium as my preferred apps.

Running the workaround script has indeed corrected this behaviour - I am currently writing up the bug as instructed 🙂

Mar 22, 2008 11:44 AM in response to thirteen37

Ok the workaround
/System/Library/Frameworks/CoreServices.framework/Versions/A/Frameworks/LaunchSe rvices.framework/Versions/A/Support/lsregister -kill -r -domain local -domain system -domain user >/dev/null 2>&1 &
works for me, with http://lingon.sourceforge.net/ you can easy make a launchd configuration, to execute the workaround after login... (thx to cub from apfeltalk.de for this)

Mar 22, 2008 12:57 PM in response to thirteen37

I've had the same problem for over a year now.
I've looked all over the internet and purchased Apple Care for this exact problem.
No luck.

I purchased Leopard and did a clean install - nothing.

After reading this post I turned off File Vault (3hrs later) and marked all items as default and turned it back on - back the the same problem.

I've contacted Firefox and they pretty much told me to just reinstall Firefox - no dice.

I also have VLC - media player. It will not stay the default player for a various types of files.

FileVault and Launch Services

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