Pervasive Code

I just brought a new project into the world of autotest. I’m not using the Leopard FSEvents “fix” because it’s not necessary (note the sleep and add_exception calls below). I am using the fun and helpful sound plugin, but not the playlist version of that plugin. Here’s my .autotest file.
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In frustration I made a backup of my laptop hard disk, and did an erase-and-install with Tiger from the install DVDs that came with the laptop. Mind you, the Apple Hardware diagnostic gives this machine a clean bill of health. With the original 512MB DIMM, with nothing plugged in but the power cord, and with a fresh Tiger install, even following an SMC reset, I can crash it. So, this is apparently not Leopard’s fault.
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I had some serious Leopard stability problems recently. I thought I had found the problem but I was wrong then.

This time I’m pretty sure I’ve gotten rid of all the badness. I’ve had almost 2 days of continuous uptime, which may not sound like something to get excited about, but it sure beats the 4-6 hour average uptime I’ve had for the past few weeks.

I’ve spent so much time on this that I’m not willing to put in the extra 4-8 hours it would take to really truly isolate this issue. But my best guess is that it was the Canon drivers for my recently purchased Canon PIXMA MX310 multifunction printer. Specifically I think it’s the scanner driver, but I’m not certain. If so, that would mean that the culprits were BJUSBLoad.kext and BJUSBMP.kext in /System/Library/Extensions.
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I’ve had an average uptime over the last couple of months of approximately 48 hours on my MacBook Pro. This has been frustrating and very hard to diagnose, but I think I nailed it today.
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(Apologies to The Notorious B.I.G. for the title.)

I upgraded to Mac OS X 10.5 “Leopard” recently. In short, it’s not ready for mainstream use. There are a few nice improvements, but these are balanced by numerous problems that make me wish I had waited until, say, June 2008 or so. If you haven’t upgraded and aren’t sure that you need to, I suggest that you wait a few months, until some of the bugs have been worked out.
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