com.apple.launchd, insidious Smith Micro installs etc.

Question

com.apple.launchd, insidious Smith Micro installs etc.

A thread (Schedulermailer) a while back was explaining how to deal with an insidious little doodad from Smith Micro (Stuffit, Spring Cleaning, Internet Cleanup etc) that needed access to the Keychain password after every reboot - I have a different pwd for keychain and login account. The final "resolution" was to remove:
~/Library/Smith Micro
~/Library/LaunchAgents/.com.smithmicro...
~/Library/LaunchDaemons/.com.smithmicro...
So these are now all removed.
Not I get this all the time - every 10 seconds.
"Feb 15 10:41:49 MackTheBook com.apple.launchd[141] (com.smithmicro.cleaning.schedulermailer[2228]): posix_spawnp("/Library/Smith Micro/Common/schedulermailer", ...): No such file or directory"

Which makes me think I need to "speak" with com.apple.launchd and tell it not to keep trying to find that folder and run that app.

Which makes me wonder how to do that.

At some point I expect to face a reinstall of Leopard but I'd still like to know how to undo some of this stuff that software that I purchase silently installs on my machine.

The ETC. bit.

Is there a "best" way to note/log/track the "bells/whistles" that I'll need to reinstall after the Leopard reinstall? Thinss like Flip4mac, TypeExpander, A BetterFinderRename, Macaroni etc.? Anything that adds a prefpane?

MBP, MB, iBooks, iMacs, Mac OS X (10.5.6)

Posted on Feb 15, 2009 9:55 AM

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Answer 1

gumsie

Level 4

2,185 points

Feb 15, 2009 10:04 AM in response to Stephen Wonfor

Have you tried at first a search for "smith" or "stuffit" to find any other items left on the drive? (You'll need to include system files). Though if any of the offending apps came with an installer you should try that first. Re-install using the installer and then uninstall using the same if necessary.

As for the bells whistles, apps in general on the Mac are just drag and drop which means you can copy them to an external drive and just copy them back when you have done the re-install. Any that require an admin password will need the installer I suspect.

Message was edited by: gumsie

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Answer 2

V.K.

Level 9

56,192 points

Feb 15, 2009 10:05 AM in response to Stephen Wonfor

Stephen Wonfor wrote:
A thread (Schedulermailer) a while back was explaining how to deal with an insidious little doodad from Smith Micro (Stuffit, Spring Cleaning, Internet Cleanup etc) that needed access to the Keychain password after every reboot - I have a different pwd for keychain and login account. The final "resolution" was to remove:
~/Library/Smith Micro
~/Library/LaunchAgents/.com.smithmicro...
~/Library/LaunchDaemons/.com.smithmicro...
So these are now all removed.
Not I get this all the time - every 10 seconds.
"Feb 15 10:41:49 MackTheBook com.apple.launchd[141] (com.smithmicro.cleaning.schedulermailer[2228]): posix_spawnp("/Library/Smith Micro/Common/schedulermailer", ...): No such file or directory"

this means you didn't remove all smithmicro launch daemons.

Look again in

/Library/LaunchAgents
/Library/Launchdaemons
~/Library/LaunchAgents

~ means your home directory.

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Answer 3

Feb 15, 2009 11:17 AM in response to V.K.

Good point. Missed that one. I often get distracted about who really owns and runs my computer. I paid for it but the root user runs it - I get to use an account. Too long with all the other OS n, 6,7,8,9 model. Removed that and it stopped, thanks.

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Answer 4

louiexiv

Level 1

9 points

Mar 7, 2009 2:10 PM in response to Stephen Wonfor

I got the same log entry (and two related others) every ten seconds. That cannot be helpful to system performance, so I found and deleted com.smithmicro.cleaning.schedulermailer in my users/myname/ Libary/LaunchAgents directory. The log entries disappeared ... until I restarted Spring Cleaning the next time. Lo, and behold, the file that I had deleted was back! Apparently Spring Cleaning checks for that file and, if missing, copies it back to that directory so that it tries to run every 10 seconds. Anyone know how to stop that from occurring?

I'm inclined to delete the whole Spring Cleaning package, but it has some useful stuff for system maintenance.

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Answer 5

louiexiv

Level 1

9 points

Mar 12, 2009 9:12 PM in response to louiexiv

Now Spring Cleaning will not even launch on my iMac. Not even when I uninstall, get fresh copy from web site, and reinstall. I'm fed up with Smith Micro. Can anyone suggest an alternative to Spring Cleaning?

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