Q: Claims of Rosetta working
A poster on the Macintouch forum writes:
'I accidentally installed Rosetta on Lion again on a different machine, MBP8,2.
It again works OK!
The RosettaNonGrata file is the handler-file that prompts 'Launch of "%@" failed: the PowerPC architecture is no longer supported', when a program tries to use Rosetta in Lion; whereas in SL it used to prompt to download Rosetta if it wasn't installed.
Re-installing Rosetta in Lion by adding the SL "translate" binary to the use/libexec/oah folder changes the default Rosetta handler file back to translate from RosettaNonGrata
My 10.7 systems now respond to the Terminal sudo sysctl kern.exec.archhandler.powerpc challenge with
kern.exec.archhandler.powerpc: /usr/libexec/oah/translate
So Rosetta is installed in Lion and is my default PowerPC architecture handler '
I don't understand a word of it. Is he deluding himself/trolling/a berk? Or has he found a magic solution?
24 inch iMac, Mac OS X (10.6.7), 13 inch Macbook Pro (10.6.7)
Posted on Aug 5, 2011 8:36 AM
IMHO He's getting all excited over nothing.
AFAIK How /usr/libexec/oah/translate works is it selects to run the PPC code version of both the program you are attempting to run as well as the system libraries need to load that program.
Last time I checked Lion has no system binaries that have any PPC code in them. Intel and 64 bit Intel code makes up a good part of Lion.
He may be able to get rosetta installed.
But that doesn't mean it will make PPC programs magically work on Lion. Launchd and the various system binaries responsible for launching programs would then have to be forced to use Rosetta when encounting PPC code and there's no guarantee that will actually work and no guarantee the system will then allow Intel code in the system binaries to run the PPC code in the program.
In fact I don't see anything about him then opening a PPC only program and it working on Lion. It's like he's gotten an old 2400 baud modem working in his office yet has not shown him being able to jump on the internet with his Tandy 64 because of that.
Posted on Aug 6, 2011 2:21 AM

