osx applications folder problems

ok...i have no idea whats going on. i updated a couple of apps (may be completely unrelated to the problem). a day later my Applications folder appears empty. Finder says "0 Items"...but if i get info it tells me its 6.53GB. I can see the folder fine in terminal. It seems like the files are hidden or something, but there is no "." infront of the filename.

Also, i am looking for a good support IRC for osx.

so hard to find osx techies

btw im running 10.4.8 and the apps i updated were Adium, Growl and Microsoft Messenger.

i'm not sure whats going on there, but I have gotten help a few times on irc.freenode.net in ##mac. its not a very active channel but if you idle long enough, i'm sure you could catch some one else in there.

i doubt the issue was by updating growl, or microsoft messenger.
But why the hell do you even use microsoft messenger, adium is by far 10000x better.
Anyways..


Adium, what version of adium did you update, is it possible you are running their new beta.
I have updated their new beta without problems, however if it is the new beta, maybe it was a flaw in the beta's update. And it would not be a bad idea emailing them. They are wicked when it comes to resolving that stuff (at least with respect to their programs problems)

As for your applications folder totally empty..hmm... that is strange.

I may have an idea. however, i will bother my dear mac friend who is in essence pretty decent on macs

Till then.
Cheers,

Zoltan

Give this a try, it may or may not work:

Open the Script Editor in the /Applications/AppleScript/ folder and enter the following (exactly):

tell application "System Events"
set visible of (choose folder with invisibles) to true
end tell

Press the Run button and then navigate to the location where that folder is located by double-clicking on folders. If you see the folder in the list, click Choose. After running the command, you may need to relaunch the Finder. Quitting it can be accomplished with:

tell application "Finder" to quit

and then clicking on its icon in the Dock to relaunch it.

I've heard of this happening when permissions get screwed up.
btw... have you got the new EFI update yet? It went smooth for me.

Try this:
http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=106712

@ splat: thanks alot for the IRC...i'll give that a try...havent seen anyone in there in the last hour...i'll keep idling tho

@ Lord_Zoltan: i updated microsoft messenger because adium won't open now that i updated. i downloaded the newest one when you click the download button, i dont recall it being a beta. i did contact them though.

@ Ha_hA_HA!: i'm not sure what this is accomplishing. it is to set the invisibility of the folder...correct? i selected the applications folder (was i supposed to select something else??) if i did the right thing, it was unsuccessful. the script ran fine, it didnt solve the problem though.

@ FudgeNuggets: i'm not sure that it's a permissions thing tho. i still have the same problem in the actual root account. not in command line tho. i'll give the repair permissions thing a try. i have not done the EFI update since i'm using a powerbook g4.

i repaired permissions and still a nogo. it seems like it is a BIT more snappy though. two more things that i have noticed. CPU is at 100% constantly, and also when i have run the computer for about an hour i have like 160mb left on the disk. i restart and it goes to 4gb. i realize that this is hurting performance alot, i need to back stuff up.... my question about that...is osx really that much of a pig on swap files? my memory usage is rarely 100%, right now its at 37%. (i think that is the most logical reason for the disk space to be going up and down so much).

is there a way to find out what exactly is draining so much of the cpu?
i don't really mind the applications folder not being visible, i can still get things in finder and see the contents in terminal. i can deal with it, though i would like it to be proper.

demortey said:

my question about that...is osx really that much of a pig on swap files? my memory usage is rarely 100%, right now its at 37%. (i think that is the most logical reason for the disk space to be going up and down so much).

is there a way to find out what exactly is draining so much of the cpu?
i don't really mind the applications folder not being visible, i can still get things in finder and see the contents in terminal. i can deal with it, though i would like it to be proper.

Click to expand...

The Activity Monitor in the Utilities folder will show you a list of processes and how much CPU/memory they are consuming. It also shows graphs of disk/memory/network usage. As for the folder not showing the icons my laptop does that sometimes, but I am using OS X 10.3.9. Pressing the back button and then reopening the Applications folder has always fixed it.

Have you tried verifying the startup disk in Disk Utility? You can do that in OS X 10.4.8 without restarting to the startup CD, but for repairs you will have to reboot from the CD.

Also, this may help speed up your system:

Open Terminal (Applications:Utilities) and type the following:

sudo periodic daily

then press Return. You'll need to enter your administrator password. The command won't give any feedback as it is working but rest assurred it is. When it is finished, run the same command again except type sudo periodic weekly. When that is finished, run the command again but this time type sudo periodic monthly.

What those commands do is execute the various underlying UNIX maintenance scripts. OS X schedules these to run by default in the middle of the night, thus on laptops they rarely get to execute. The scripts, particularly the weekly script, can take several minutes if they have not been executed in some time.

so, periodic would be Mac's version of cron?

OS X has cron but it's set to run the tasks at 3AM (I think). I think they added periodic in OS X 10.3.

ok...so i ran the periodic scripts, and it seems to have helped a bit. i fired up activity monitor and for some reason "loginwindow" is taking up like 46% of the cpu and not responding. poss someone can make some sense of this. also posted a screenshot of activity monitor

im pretty sure everything is back to normal now...not exactly sure what i did to fix it. i changed the pkginfo for finder from FNDRMACS to APPLMACS. i read something about that when using finder alternatives that run slowly. apparently worked for finder aswell. i'm not sure what the deal is with the applications folder...but i can live with that if i have to. thanks for everyones help...