com.apple.LaunchServices-014501.csstore keeps rebuilding every 3 seconds!

Hi, Tim.

1. As a general check, run the Procedure specified in my "Resolving Disk, Permission, and Cache Corruption" FAQ. Perform the steps therein in the order specified.

2. See my "Resetting Launch Services" FAQ.

Good luck!

😉 Dr. Smoke
Author: Troubleshooting Mac® OS X

---
Note: The information provided in the link(s) above is freely available. However, because I own The X Lab™, a commercial Web site to which some of these links point, the Apple Discussions Terms of Use require I include the following disclosure statement with this post:

I may receive some form of compensation, financial or otherwise, from my recommendation or link.

a brody wrote:

"don't use cache clearing utilities. The only cache you should ever clear is the browser cache."

I strenuously disagree with this statement.

While cache cleaning should not be part of regular maintenance, it is a valuable troubleshooting technique, though there are certain side effects of System cache cleaning. However, the side effects should not dissuade one from using cache cleaning as part of troubleshooting. Reputable third-party utilities that offer cache-cleaning functions — Cocktail, YASU, and others — are the most convenient methods for users to clean caches as part of troubleshooting.

Good luck!

😉 Dr. Smoke
Author: Troubleshooting Mac® OS X

---
Note: The information provided in the link(s) above is freely available. However, because I own The X Lab™, a commercial Web site to which some of these links point, the Apple Discussions Terms of Use require I include the following disclosure statement with this post:

I may receive some form of compensation, financial or otherwise, from my recommendation or link.

3. An errant Startup or Login Item maybe the cause. My "Troubleshooting Startup and Login Items" FAQ can help you pin that down if such an item is causing the problem.

Good luck!

😉 Dr. Smoke
Author: Troubleshooting Mac® OS X

---
Note: The information provided in the link(s) above is freely available. However, because I own The X Lab™, a commercial Web site to which some of these links point, the Apple Discussions Terms of Use require I include the following disclosure statement with this post:

I may receive some form of compensation, financial or otherwise, from my recommendation or link.

Why are you trying to keep this killed? If it is due to the fact some programs won't launch, this may be one of those infamous corrupting cache problems. Sadly the only way to solve that problem is an erase and install. It seems to happen If you use some third party cache clearing utility to clean the cache inadvertantly. As a result I never use any cache clearing utility, and tell others to avoid such utilities. The most important thing you can do for maintenance is to backup your data as my FAQ explains:

http://www.macmaps.com/backup.html

Ignore the csstore files, and don't use cache clearing utilities. The only cache you should ever clear is the browser cache.

Well, we can agree to disagree. The only times I've ever cleaned my caches have been manually. Not using any cache cleaning utility, and definitely not while any programs were open. Only once have I had launchservices go south, and that was with 10.0, which I attribute more to not having the directory repaired at that time. When I've had customers who have used cache cleaning utilities come to me, invariably their cache files have become corrupted after using such utilities. Whether it was Macaroni, Onyx, Jaguar/Panther/Tiger Cache Cleaner, or Cocktail. Often deleting the LaunchServices cache files was sufficient to fix the problem, while a few times, the cache file persistently regenerated itself as a corrupt file after a second reboot. The evidence points to the contrary to what you are stating, and I don't know how it happened that way, but it seems to affect non-web browser cache files only that have been acted upon by utilities such as these.

Let's continue this discussion in private some other time, but I just want to let you know this has been my experience, and just the virtue of the fact these utilities have been used seems to be at issue. Fixing with Alsoft Disk Warrior did not fix it for these people, neither did an archive and install.

If you are using a utility to clear the caches make sure it is the latest version of the utility. There have been reported problems with third party tools being used to clear caches but all of them that I remember seeing were because an older version of the utility was being used, not the proper version for the OS version being used.

Any time Apple updates their system it makes good sense to see if an updated version of any utility that you use has been released. I generally don't use a utility, whether commercial, shareware, or freeware right after a system update but wait a few days and check the web sites for the software to see if an updated version will be needed.

Just my thoughts on the subject. I do believe it may be a cache problem. Just make sure that if you are going to use a third party utility it is the proper version for your system software version first.

There are many possible causes for recurring cache corruption. A proper cache cleaning utility is simply not one of them.

A proper cache cleaning utility, such as those I cited, and using the correct version of such — as Al noted, which I consider implicit but is worth stating — removes cache files.

Repeated cache corruption indicates other problems, e.g. hardware or software, since the caches are recreated dynamically by either the OS or an application which employs caching, e.g. browsers, Help Viewer, etc., depending on the specific type of cache. AN errant Startup or Login Item that involves caching could corrupt either a System or User cache after a restart.

If the Launch Services cache is repeatedly corrupted, this can imply a corrupted set of Launch Services preferences, hence the two-pass procedure specified in my "Resetting Launch Services" FAQ.

Disk Warrior probably won't correct the problem since if the directory error was occurring in a cache file, that cache file has probably been corrupted as a result. An Archive and Install (A&I), assuming one uses "Preserve User and Network Settings", will preserve user cache files along with other data in /Users, hence if the problem is in a user cache, the A&I with "Preserve User..." preserves the problem file.

You should not recommend against cache cleaning based on such shaky "evidence."

Good luck!

😉 Dr. Smoke
Author: Troubleshooting Mac® OS X

---
Note: The information provided in the link(s) above is freely available. However, because I own The X Lab™, a commercial Web site to which some of these links point, the Apple Discussions Terms of Use require I include the following disclosure statement with this post:

I may receive some form of compensation, financial or otherwise, from my recommendation or link.

Hi, Tim.

What you've not clarified is how you are determining these "disk hits." Something you're seeing in either one of the Console logs or some process noted in Activity Monitor?

There may be something amiss with your FireWire drive. I've seen some reports of anomalous behaviors if one leaves a FireWire cable connected with no FireWire device attached, but I've been unable to reproduce the problems myself. I run my PM G5 with an OWC FireWire drive connected and powered-on at all times, and that drive contains:

• Two bootable Duplicates of the startup disk of my PM G5.
• A Duplicate of the second internal hard drive in my PM G5.
• A bootable Duplicate of my wife's iBook.

I don't see any repeated updates of Launch Services-related files, so merely having bootable Duplicates mounted doesn't appear to be causing problems, at least in my case.

Good luck!

😉 Dr. Smoke
Author: Troubleshooting Mac® OS X

1. You wrote:

"It always has the drive attached to the wire, but if I want to repair permissions in DU or Cocktail the drive can not be unmounted w/ the FW 800 LaCie cable plugged in. It must be unplugged. Mounted it runs fine."

Try a different FireWire cable or different FireWire port.

2. You wrote:

"Doc, I think you might start recommending the very popular SuperDuper! in your back up strategy. It's laughingly easy, advanced if you want it to be, and to me was so much more users friendly than my Retrospect experience which seemed clunky and considerably more expensive)"

I've considered doing so, but it's really a one-trick pony: duplicates to external drives. If that's all one needs, it's a very good product. However, there can be more to Backup and Recovery than duplicates. I hold a license for SuperDuper and several other Backup and Recovery utilities as it's an area of interest for me, so I'm regularly testing and comparing them.

Retrospect has far more capability: it's truly the "Swiss Army Knife" of Backup and Recovery utilities and why I recommend it. Backup Sets, for example, are a Retrospect exclusive and are extremely useful. Backup to optical media, including media spanning, is another unique feature. As noted in my "Backup and Recovery" FAQ, Retrospect Express is often bundled for free with FireWire drives, making cost a moot point. One can do incremental duplicates with Retrospect Express whereas one must license SuperDuper to do so. If Retrospect was bundled for free with one's FireWire drive, one should at least give a try. 😉

Likewise, Retrospect itself isn't that expensive: what gets expensive is adding the support contracts to Retrospect, but those are generally not required.

Good luck!

😉 Dr. Smoke
Author: Troubleshooting Mac® OS X

---
Note: The information provided in the link(s) above is freely available. However, because I own The X Lab™, a commercial Web site to which some of these links point, the Apple Discussions Terms of Use require I include the following disclosure statement with this post:

I may receive some form of compensation, financial or otherwise, from my recommendation or link.

It would help if you provided "the command" to which you are referring or a link to the Mac OS X Hints item you read from which you used "the command." I presume you are referring to some command related to rebuilding the Launch Services database?

The files involved in Launch Services, and the caches in particular, have changed with each release of Mac OS X, from Jaguar to Panther to Tiger, as cited in my FAQ. Accordingly, commands that may have worked under Jaguar or Panther may not work under Tiger.

As to the specific Console message you site, it appears to be flagging a potentially corrupted info.plist file within the Contents folder of AirPort Setup Assistant. The info.plist file contains information about an application, such as the installed version and other details. AirPort Setup Assistant is a bundle: the application is actually a folder containing the executable code and other supporting information and components. You can see the Contents folder of an application by Control-clicking the app's icon and selecting "Show Package Contents" from the resulting contextual menu.

Good luck!

😉 Dr. Smoke
Author: Troubleshooting Mac® OS X

Hi,

as a developer I stumbled upon that message already, but I think it is not critical. For example if I am localizing my applications, Apple tells me to use UTF-16 so special characters are shown correct, and from that moment on I get that message with some of my apps, not all. As the console entries states, OS X uses an older system call to read the plist file and it seems that it manages to use it then.

volker