How to disable MOTU Crash Reporter in DP9

[James Steele]

Posting this as its own topic.

HOW TO DISABLE MOTU CRASH REPORTER IN DP9

At some point, MOTU built in their own crash reporter that produces a dialog on a crash and then sends reports directly back to MOTU. This is a good thing as it helps MOTU find problems more quickly, but for the user who wants to try to troubleshoot, it can be inconvenient.

IMPORTANT: I would stress only using this when having a recurring problem and needing to investigate. Otherwise, allow the reports to go to MOTU. They get a lot of valuable information to fix bugs the way it is, so don't disable as standard practice.

I can tell you two ways to disable it.

First the difficult way:

You type in the following into the Terminal window:

Code: Select all

arch -x86_64 "/Applications/Digital Performer.app/Contents/MacOS/Digital Performer" --disable_crash_reporter &

Hit "Enter" and this will then launch DP with the MOTU crash reporter disabled.

Now the EASIEST way: (acknowledgment to David Das who taught me this.)

• Download this very small file: http://motunation.com/files/Disable_DP9 ... ommand.zip

• Unzip and find the file "Disable DP9 Crash Reporter.command" and place in Apps folder.

• Optional: You can then click and drag that file to the right (documents) side of the Dock

• Click on it, and it will automatically run the Terminal command and launch DP9 with the MOTU crash reporter disabled. Any crashes that then happen during this session will generate crash reports in the normal location. (The script does not quit the Terminal app after launching DP9. If that bothers you, manually quit Terminal after DP9 has launched.)

• As a reminder, you MUST launch DP this way EACH TIME to disable the MOTU crash reporter, so DP will create crash reports on your hard drive. If you quit DP and then run again without using the Terminal command, crash reports will go directly to MOTU again.

[FMiguelez]

Thank you, James.

This will become handy indeed.

I must, however, mention that some (a lot?) of my crashes do not invoke MOTU's Crash Reporter at all. DP simply disappears, or sometimes I get a system dialog informing me about the crash instead.
I haven't discovered the pattern, but MachFive, when hosted inside DP, seems to be always the case that doesn't give me the Crash Reporter.

Either way, I trust we will be seeing much less of that unwelcome ugly message in DP's next revision. DP will be crashing much less often, if at all, right?

[James Steele]

Right. But even in those cases, sometimes a crash report will be generated. You just have to go look in that directory. Can't remember where it is offhand.

[Frodo]

Cool tips. Thanks.

Question: what would be a reason to *not* want the MOTU Crash Reporter to kick in? Doesn't that help MOTU for as inconvenient as it might be for the user to go from being musical to "all geeky and stuff"?

Just wondering.

[James Steele]

Cool tips. Thanks.

Question: what would be a reason to *not* want the MOTU Crash Reporter to kick in? Doesn't that help MOTU for as inconvenient as it might be for the user to go from being musical to "all geeky and stuff"?

Just wondering.

Because when the DP's built in crash reporter is enabled and you have a crash, often times a crash report isn't generated on your hard drive, so you can't check the crash report to try to determine what the cause might be. The easiest ones to find are those that involve plug-ins. You can look for the crashed thread and see if the name of a plug in comes up in that thread, and usually that's the plugin causing the problem.

[Babz]

Yes, you also need this if a third party vendor asks you to send in a crash report. I have used this method in the past to determine that it was a particular third party plugin causing my crashes. But I needed the crash report to send to said third party in order to prove it to them, and for them to reproduce and fix the issue.

This is why I think maybe MOTU should just go back to standard Mac OS crash reporting. It may be helpful for reports to automatically go back to MOTU, IF the crash was caused by MOTU code bugs, but that doesn't help if it is a third party plugin issue (and I have found most crashes are). Anyway, for now it's a good thing we have this trick. I have used it many times to get third parties to fix issues so their products will run smoothly with DP.

Best,
Babz

[James Steele]

It is helpful to sometimes disable it. It may also be though that MOTU will contact third party developers via their own channels to report it.