Aliases (on the Dock and elsewhere) randomly switching to random targets

[dolphin842]

Hi all,

I've had a conundrum with my first-gen intel imac for some time. Every now and then, for no reason I can discern, a handful of aliases will switch to random targets. By random I mean anything from different folders, to random .nib files inside of Mail.app (instead of iTunes), a German ReadMe.rtf inside of Installer.app (instead of NetNewsWire), a .sty file instead of the WMV video launcher app, and a PkgInfo file deep inside iWeb (instead of System Preferences).

I'm starting to get a bit worried, because these are just some of the broken aliases I've found; I don't know how far this extends to aliases I don't use that often.

Any suggestion on what could be the case? Is a call to AppleCare in order?

 

[mad jew]

Very weird. Verify your drive in Disk Utility and repair permissions while you're there. How much free space do you have on your boot drive? Have you used any apps to trim your system files down, such as Monolingual?

 

[dolphin842]

The disk verifies... I've got 1/2 of the 160GB drive free, so things shouldn't be cramped. I didn't use monolingual to remove language files, though when I did a formal reinstall last year I unchecked some of the languages.

 

[mad jew]

Do you have FileVault enabled?

 

[dolphin842]

nope... always avoided using filevault

 

[mad jew]

Good stuff. Did the permission repair from Disk Utility come up with any changes?

 

[dolphin842]

It corrected a few... here's the output:

Permissions differ on ./Applications/iTunes.app/Contents/Frameworks/InternetUtilities.bundle/Contents/MacOS/InternetUtilities, should be -rw-rw-r-- , they are -rwxrwxr-x
Owner and group corrected on ./Applications/iTunes.app/Contents/Frameworks/InternetUtilities.bundle/Contents/MacOS/InternetUtilities
Permissions corrected on ./Applications/iTunes.app/Contents/Frameworks/InternetUtilities.bundle/Contents/MacOS/InternetUtilities
Permissions differ on ./Library, should be drwxrwxr-t , they are drwxrwxr-x
Owner and group corrected on ./Library
Permissions corrected on ./Library
User differs on ./Users/Shared/SC Info, should be 0, owner is 501
Owner and group corrected on ./Users/Shared/SC Info
Permissions corrected on ./Users/Shared/SC Info
Permissions differ on ./private/var/log/secure.log, should be -rw------- , they are -rw-r-----
Owner and group corrected on ./private/var/log/secure.log
Permissions corrected on ./private/var/log/secure.log

 

[mad jew]

Since the permissions repair, has this happened to any new aliases?

 

[dolphin842]

Not yet... the occurrence of this behavior is pretty sporadic, so I'll have to keep an eye on it.

In any event, if I end up getting Leopard, I'll probably do a clear install anyway.

 

[dolphin842]

lol... it's happened again. This time the iCal alias on the dock changed to "man.tmac" which is in the folder /usr/share/groff/1.19.1/tmac/

Thankfully only a week til Leopard, between this and a half-broken WebKit, I think this seals the deal for me as far as a clean install is concerned.

EDIT: some more poking around in my dock discovers that the MacJournal alias has been replaced with "PkgInfo" in /Applications/iWeb/Contents/Resources/Themes/Modern.webtheme/Japanese.lproj/Photos.webtemplate/Contents ... Haven't used this app in a while though, so it might have changed before the last permissions repair.

EDIT2: also fwiw, this has happened to aliases on a separate account (at least on the Dock, not sure about regular aliases). Is there a specific system-wide pref file for the Dock? I can only find user-level ones...