Crash reporting lockup in 10.7.5 & fix under 10.11

Scrivener Scrivener for macOS
1

Others seem to be reporting something similar, but my issues has some specifics that may help track down the trouble. Here it is:

Situation: I have a Mac mini running 10.11 (never had the beta version) but do almost all my writing on an old MacBook running the last version it will run, 10.7.5. I synch documents with Dropbox. The problem is with the MacBook and 10.7.5. The Mac mini gives me a workaround that those who have a single, older Mac won’t have.

The problem develops this way.

  1. Scrivener on MacBooks crashes. I suspect that’s due to some HTML documents I have in my Research folder but that’d not the real issue.

  2. When I reopen that document on my MacBook, I get a CrashReporter window and the spinning rainbow wheel. To escape, I have to force quit Scrivener. Waiting fifteen minutes for the spinning to stop made no difference.

  3. That leaves me in a trap, every effort to open that document or any other gives me that CrashReporter window and spinning wheel.

The problem can be fixed this way.

  1. Via Dropbox, I open the document in Scrivener on my Mac mini and 10.11. When it opens, I get a message that the document is open elsewhere. I agree to let Scrivener create another file. I then slightly edit and save that new document and close it.

  2. On my MacBook, I open that new version. Scrivener gives me the CrashReporter window but this time does not lock up. That looks suspiciously like under 10.7.5 Scrivener is writing a defective crash report. I send the crash report and then I can edit the document. The problem is fixed until my next Scrivener crash for other reasons.

Additional factor. Eliminating the files in Library/CrashReporter on my MacBook makes no difference. Since Scrivener still knows there was a crash, there are probably other files I don’t know about and thus can’t trash.

Hope that helps track this pesky beast down.

–Mike Perry

2

You should have gotten the crash report after I made the fix about thirty minutes before my first post. I did not make any comments, lest that start a lockup again. That sending deleted the crash report log, so I can’t send it to you. If/when it happens again, I’ll send it with the proper note.

3

Try the ~/Library/Logs/DiagnosticReports folder instead of ~/Library/CrashReporter. That is, at least, where the system puts crash reports over here, I don’t recall how things worked in 10.7 at this point.

But yes, this sounds like a known problem; no idea what causes it, but some people have issues with the crash reporter itself crashing when attempting to load the crash report, and clearing the crash report files from the folder is the work-around. It could be that sending the .crash file to support, so we can try to drop it into the right folder and start Scrivener with it, could help us track down what is happening.