Preference plist was NOT a dictionary

Were you thinking a file would not open/be corrupt? Or, is there something else you are trying to convey?

Only that plutil would also tell you if it were corrupt. Moot point since it appears to be a valid plist.

I still have this issue (hourly "PreferenceSyncClient[1144] Preference plist was NOT a dictionary." x6). Anyone have a solution yet?

- I don't have a MobileMe account
- I do sync iCal to a Google calendar but it occurs wether or not iCal is running

I don't have 10.6 yet, so I can't investigate this myself, but I can say this. in general, plists should always be dictionaries at the root level (the outer structure looks like this):

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<!DOCTYPE plist PUBLIC "-//Apple//DTD PLIST 1.0//EN" "http://www.apple.com/DTDs/PropertyList-1.0.dtd">
<plist version="1.0">
<dict>
 ...
</dict>
</plist>

if I had to guess at the problem, I'd think the one of the following was the cause:

1. you have plists in your preferences somewhere that are badly formed in some small way (maybe missing the closing tag for the main dictionary). this would be a minor mistake that might pass inspection on plistutil but still gets caught by the syncing client.
2. Apple has upgraded versions for plists in SL, and newer versions aren't being recognized be the syncing agent as valid.

unless you can locate the plists in question (which would be a case of 'which of these things are not like the others' - look at the preference plists and try to locate six that have some (maybe inconsequential-seeming) difference from the rest), or identify something that's actually going wrong on your machine, you're kind of stuck. It would have to be a default SL preference (since it looks like something that affects numerous people), if that helps any.

6 times an hour for me also...

10/24/09 8:32:50 PM PreferenceSyncClient[1075] Preference plist was NOT a dictionary.
10/24/09 8:32:50 PM PreferenceSyncClient[1075] Preference plist was NOT a dictionary.
10/24/09 8:32:50 PM PreferenceSyncClient[1075] Preference plist was NOT a dictionary.
10/24/09 8:32:50 PM PreferenceSyncClient[1075] Preference plist was NOT a dictionary.
10/24/09 8:32:52 PM PreferenceSyncClient[1075] Preference plist was NOT a dictionary.
10/24/09 8:32:52 PM PreferenceSyncClient[1075] Preference plist was NOT a dictionary.

try moving the file ~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.PreferenceSync.plist to the desktop and rebooting, see if that solves the problem. make sure you move it, so that there's no copy left in the preferences folder, because this will force the system to create a new default plist file. you might also check to see if there's a version of this plist at /Library/Preferences/ as well (though syncing prefs ought to be on a per-user basis, not a system-wide basis, so there probably won't be). you might lose some settings when you do this, but if it solves the problem then we can look through the plist on the desktop to see what's wrong with it.

I too am getting this console message. I have tried all the above solutions with no luck. I do NOT have MobileMe or Google Calendars. However I do have BusyCAL. Applecare personnel were stumped and had never heard of the problem. Obviously, they had no suggestions other than a clean reinstall of the System, i.e., format and install.

could you post that particular plist file so that we can see if it's malformed? open it in TextWrangler (or any other plain text editor) and copy it into a post between code tags.

I found the problem. It was Google trying to connect to an unknown server. I had downloaded Chrome but didn't like it. Anyway, I used HoudahSpot to find everything Google after LittleSnitch reported Google trying to "phone home". I trashed everything GOOGLE and restarted last night. The console message is now gone.

Me thinks Google is doing more than what we may think it is.

Please outline the process of how you "trashed everything GOOGLE".

Thanks.

I merely used HoudahSpot to find and destroy everything Google put on my Mac. 6 different items in multiple folders. All those console messages are now gone.

The Google issue could be correct.... I am in the process of testing this...

What about Google Contact Syncing via Address Book? It explains how Google could be involved in the isync scenario... I have turned off Google Contact Syncing to test this theory... (I didn't even remember that it was on until I saw this message)

The files that were created when I configured it, are:

com.google.GoogleContactSyncAgent.plist @ ~/Library/LaunchAgents
com.google.ContactSync (folder) @ ~/Library/Application Support
com.google.GoogleContactSync.plist @ ~/Library/Preferences

So, if we take the error message at face value, either the LaunchAgent or preference file maybe damaged…

But of course, the root cause of this issue is that the error message is uninformative, and does not indicate which plist “is not a dictionary”. If Apple had indicated which plist was the cause, we would not be investigating this issue.

- Benjamin

http://www.schollnick.net/wordpress/2009/09/preference-plist-was-not-a-dictionar y/

Along with the others, 6 times per hour for me. However, I've never registered for any google services (calendar, gmail, etc) and cannot find any of the google-related files described in earlier posts. I also inspected my "Local" sync items using Syncrospector (developer tools) and there was nothing that was non-Apple in origin (I don't sync address books, keychains, .Mac, or iSync).

A sample from the console log is below:
28/10/2009 00:00:52 PreferenceSyncClient[3382] Preference plist was NOT a dictionary.
28/10/2009 00:00:52 PreferenceSyncClient[3382] Preference plist was NOT a dictionary.
28/10/2009 00:00:53 PreferenceSyncClient[3382] Preference plist was NOT a dictionary.
28/10/2009 00:00:53 PreferenceSyncClient[3382] Preference plist was NOT a dictionary.
28/10/2009 00:00:54 PreferenceSyncClient[3382] Preference plist was NOT a dictionary.
28/10/2009 00:00:54 PreferenceSyncClient[3382] Preference plist was NOT a dictionary.

The only thing I can add is that PID 3382 only appeared transiently with the process name "mingler", which is part of SyncServices. I have removed com.bombich.ccc.plist from /Library/LaunchDaemons (this came from Carbon Copy Cloner) to see if this makes a difference. This and com.vmware.launchd.vmware.plist are the only two non-apple LaunchDaemons that I have. Agree with the previous comment though - the console message could be more informative.

Well, all I know is that when I trashed all the Google crap, I no longer get those messages which you describe, and many other's here are experiencing. IMHO, Google does many things "behind the scenes" that we are not aware of.

Sadly, no change after removing the Google Address book sync plist....

Anyone else have an idea?