Unwanted reset of Data Browser Preferences and Recent Experiments list

Share icon

Sun, 04/03/2016 - 10:03 pm

Hi, Igorians.
I'm using Igor Pro 6.37 on Mac OS X 10.10.5.
Some Igor Pro settings are not saved properly and always get back to default settings every time I launch the software.
For the moment, I find this phenomenon for Data Browser Preferences (always default font and display settings) and Recent Experiments list (always empty after restart).
How can I save these properties?
It is likely that the file permissions for the files in the Igor Preferences folder are preventing Igor from saving changes to them.

--Jim Prouty
Software Engineer, WaveMetrics, Inc.

April 4, 2016 at 12:06 pm - Permalink

JimProuty wrote:
It is likely that the file permissions for the files in the Igor Preferences folder are preventing Igor from saving changes to them.

--Jim Prouty
Software Engineer, WaveMetrics, Inc.


Thanks for the reply.
Which files' or folders' permissions should I change?

Kotaro

April 4, 2016 at 06:00 pm - Permalink

ksaito wrote:
JimProuty wrote:
It is likely that the file permissions for the files in the Igor Preferences folder are preventing Igor from saving changes to them.

--Jim Prouty
Software Engineer, WaveMetrics, Inc.


Thanks for the reply.
Which files' or folders' permissions should I change?

Kotaro


Almost all setting files are stored in '$HOME/Library/Preferences/'.
But 'Library' folder is hidden by OS and usually file and folder permissions are consistent　with owner user.
Because your situation is unusual condition, you should better to find cause of permission mismatch.

April 4, 2016 at 08:04 pm - Permalink

Here are some results of "ls -l" for Igor Preference Folder

>pwd
/Users/kotaro/Library/Preferences/WaveMetrics
>ls -l
total 0
drwxr-xr-x 8 kotaro staff 272B 10 9 2012 Igor Pro 6 Intel/
>ls -l Igor\ Pro\ 6\ Intel/
total 136
-rw-rw-rw-@ 1 kotaro staff 1.1K 4 15 09:39 Igor Auto Update Prefs.txt
-rw-rw-rw-@ 1 kotaro staff 16K 4 15 14:49 Igor Dialog Preferences.txt
-rw-rw-rw-@ 1 kotaro staff 33B 8 21 2015 Igor Font Substitutions.txt
-rw-rw-rw-@ 1 kotaro staff 0B 4 27 2015 Igor Preferences.ipr
drw-rw-rw- 4 kotaro staff 136B 10 9 2012 Packages/

> sudo ls -l ls -l Igor\ Pro\ 6\ Intel/Packages/
total 16
-rw-r--r--@ 1 kotaro staff 6148 5 15 2013 .DS_Store
drwxr-xr-x 8 kotaro staff 272 5 29 2015 WMFunctionGrapher

Igor Preferences.ipr is empty since last year. Maybe this should contain the settings, I guess. No?
I need sudo to look into the Packages folder. This seems also strange.
There are several ipf files which relate to functions that I made for FunctionGrapher in WMFunctionGrapher folder.

I don't have enough knowledge to find the solution from these results...
What should I do next?

April 14, 2016 at 11:20 pm - Permalink

My list shows this ...

JJW-MPB:Igor Pro 6 Intel jjw$ ls -l
total 96
-rw-r--r--@ 1 jjw staff 468 Nov 12 07:31 Igor Auto Update Prefs.txt
-rw-r--r--@ 1 jjw staff 11662 Apr 12 22:07 Igor Dialog Preferences.txt
-rw-r--r--@ 1 jjw staff 0 Apr 12 22:26 Igor Preferences.ipr
drwxr-xr-x 4 jjw staff 136 Jun 26 2014 Packages

I see you have allowed groups and everyone to have write access to the Preferences. Do you have someone else using your machine under a different login ID?

--
J. J. Weimer
Chemistry / Chemical & Materials Engineering, UAH

April 15, 2016 at 11:12 am - Permalink

ksaito wrote:
Here are some results of "ls -l" for Igor Preference Folder

>pwd
/Users/kotaro/Library/Preferences/WaveMetrics
>ls -l
total 0
drwxr-xr-x 8 kotaro staff 272B 10 9 2012 Igor Pro 6 Intel/
>ls -l Igor\ Pro\ 6\ Intel/
total 136
-rw-rw-rw-@ 1 kotaro staff 1.1K 4 15 09:39 Igor Auto Update Prefs.txt
-rw-rw-rw-@ 1 kotaro staff 16K 4 15 14:49 Igor Dialog Preferences.txt
-rw-rw-rw-@ 1 kotaro staff 33B 8 21 2015 Igor Font Substitutions.txt
-rw-rw-rw-@ 1 kotaro staff 0B 4 27 2015 Igor Preferences.ipr
drw-rw-rw- 4 kotaro staff 136B 10 9 2012 Packages/

> sudo ls -l ls -l Igor\ Pro\ 6\ Intel/Packages/
total 16
-rw-r--r--@ 1 kotaro staff 6148 5 15 2013 .DS_Store
drwxr-xr-x 8 kotaro staff 272 5 29 2015 WMFunctionGrapher

Igor Preferences.ipr is empty since last year. Maybe this should contain the settings, I guess. No?
I need sudo to look into the Packages folder. This seems also strange.
There are several ipf files which relate to functions that I made for FunctionGrapher in WMFunctionGrapher folder.

I don't have enough knowledge to find the solution from these results...
What should I do next?


Obviously file permissions are different from normal situation. Did you make your home folder by normal operation?
You should better to find cause of permission mismatch.

Quote:
Igor Preferences.ipr is empty since last year. Maybe this should contain the settings, I guess. No?

Igor Preferences.ipr has 'ResourceFork'.
You can see it by 'ls -l@' command.

And I found them in the 'ResourceFork', 'Data Browser Preferences'(XPRF ID=14242) , 'default font'(WMT0 ID=10) and 'Recent Experiments list'(RCNT ID=1500-15??) by using classic application 'ResEdit'.

April 19, 2016 at 12:24 am - Permalink

jjweimer wrote:
My list shows this ...

JJW-MPB:Igor Pro 6 Intel jjw$ ls -l
total 96
-rw-r--r--@ 1 jjw staff 468 Nov 12 07:31 Igor Auto Update Prefs.txt
-rw-r--r--@ 1 jjw staff 11662 Apr 12 22:07 Igor Dialog Preferences.txt
-rw-r--r--@ 1 jjw staff 0 Apr 12 22:26 Igor Preferences.ipr
drwxr-xr-x 4 jjw staff 136 Jun 26 2014 Packages

I see you have allowed groups and everyone to have write access to the Preferences. Do you have someone else using your machine under a different login ID?

--
J. J. Weimer
Chemistry / Chemical & Materials Engineering, UAH


I made an account for guest before and it still exists, but I didn't have any intentions to set the permissions in this way.
Maybe this is an issue of my computer. I haven't done clean install for a long time when I upgrade OS X.

April 24, 2016 at 09:48 pm - Permalink

kanekaka wrote:
ksaito wrote:
Here are some results of "ls -l" for Igor Preference Folder

>pwd
/Users/kotaro/Library/Preferences/WaveMetrics
>ls -l
total 0
drwxr-xr-x 8 kotaro staff 272B 10 9 2012 Igor Pro 6 Intel/
>ls -l Igor\ Pro\ 6\ Intel/
total 136
-rw-rw-rw-@ 1 kotaro staff 1.1K 4 15 09:39 Igor Auto Update Prefs.txt
-rw-rw-rw-@ 1 kotaro staff 16K 4 15 14:49 Igor Dialog Preferences.txt
-rw-rw-rw-@ 1 kotaro staff 33B 8 21 2015 Igor Font Substitutions.txt
-rw-rw-rw-@ 1 kotaro staff 0B 4 27 2015 Igor Preferences.ipr
drw-rw-rw- 4 kotaro staff 136B 10 9 2012 Packages/

> sudo ls -l ls -l Igor\ Pro\ 6\ Intel/Packages/
total 16
-rw-r--r--@ 1 kotaro staff 6148 5 15 2013 .DS_Store
drwxr-xr-x 8 kotaro staff 272 5 29 2015 WMFunctionGrapher

Igor Preferences.ipr is empty since last year. Maybe this should contain the settings, I guess. No?
I need sudo to look into the Packages folder. This seems also strange.
There are several ipf files which relate to functions that I made for FunctionGrapher in WMFunctionGrapher folder.

I don't have enough knowledge to find the solution from these results...
What should I do next?


Obviously file permissions are different from normal situation. Did you make your home folder by normal operation?
You should better to find cause of permission mismatch.

Quote:
Igor Preferences.ipr is empty since last year. Maybe this should contain the settings, I guess. No?

Igor Preferences.ipr has 'ResourceFork'.
You can see it by 'ls -l@' command.

And I found them in the 'ResourceFork', 'Data Browser Preferences'(XPRF ID=14242) , 'default font'(WMT0 ID=10) and 'Recent Experiments list'(RCNT ID=1500-15??) by using classic application 'ResEdit'.


I don't know what is normal. But I guess there are some problems concerning account settings, because sometimes I have to login two times when I reboot Mac without any significant updates.
I have no idea about the cause of the permission mismatch. Maybe it's a problem of OS X itself.

Back to the topic.
I changed the permission to 644 for the files in the preference folder and 755 for Packages folder.
Thanks to your advice, I found that the resource fork of Igor Preference.ipr is corrupt.
> DeRez Igor\ Preferences.ipr
### /Applications/Xcode.app/Contents/Developer/usr/bin/DeRez - The resource file "Igor Preferences.ipr" appears to be corrupt.

After removing the corrupt ipf file to another folder, I relauched Igor Pro and it created new Igor Preference.ipf.
Now, Recent Experiments list and font setting of data browser are saved properly.

Thank you, folks.

April 24, 2016 at 10:11 pm - Permalink