Where Does Rosetta Live?

[arcobb]

Where does the Rosetta "app" live on the hard drive? I know we aren't supposted to see it, but I was curious where it is.

I've looked around for this and I haven't found a thread that describes it ... so If you know please point me in the right direction. Thanks!

 

[FF_productions]

It's not an app, it's just an invisible process that just happens. It's built in somewhere in the system folder...

 

[xUKHCx]

Just having a little look at the list of open files when textedit is run in rosetta and when it is not. There are about 30 extra files when run in rosetta but the interesting one that stands out is /usr/libexec/oah/translate. Could well be "rosetta" i looked at the Get Info window for it and doesn't mention anything interesting. I am not really going to mess around with it because it is hidden for a reason.

Edit: Though Fu*k it, opened the file and it report this in terminal

Usage: /usr/libexec/oah/translate [-argv0 <file>] [-b] [-z <file>] <subject program> <subject arguments>

Options:
-argv0
Override argv[0] for subject program execv, execve calls.
-b
Display the current baseline version.
-z <config file>
Config file.

Seems more and more like rosetta to me

Edit 2: Inside the oah directory there is the translate unix executable but there is also a directory called "Shims" IIRC a shim is a way of altering code. There seems to be a common reference to "BrutusSystemShims" inside the plist entries.

 

[SC68Cal]

Rosetta runs under a daemon called translated.

Somehow, my friend actually killed rosetta. He can't run any PPC apps anymore. No idea how he did it, but he killed it and I can't find any sign of it.

 

[rogersmj]

Somehow, my friend actually killed rosetta. He can't run any PPC apps anymore. No idea how he did it, but he killed it and I can't find any sign of it.

Did he run something like Monolingual? Countless people (myself included, and to this day I feel like an idiot) break Rosetta by running Monolingual in an attempt to free up disk space. It's quite easy to delete PPC files using a clenup program like that.

 

[SC68Cal]

Did he run something like Monolingual? Countless people (myself included, and to this day I feel like an idiot) break Rosetta by running Monolingual in an attempt to free up disk space. It's quite easy to delete PPC files using a clenup program like that.

I'll have to ask. I had no idea that Monolingual would be so badly written that it would damage Rosetta. Just goes to show you, you really ought to ask questions about why an app needs to run as root.

 

[robbieduncan]

I'll have to ask. I had no idea that Monolingual would be so badly written that it would damage Rosetta. Just goes to show you, you really ought to ask questions about why an app needs to run as root.

I have nothing to do with the Monolingual developers but it's not badly written: it's User Error. It offers to strip the non-Intel parts of Universal binaries and the related PPC libraries from your system if you, the user want to. If you say yes it does what you ask. Without the PPC libraries no PPC code can be run under Rosetta as it need the PPC libraries.

 

[richyfp]

I'm not sure how Rosetta works, but I do know that you can find out which running apps are being translated using the following:

lsof | grep translate

@xUKHCx: SHIM stands for Software/Hardware Integration Medium; it's a language with C-like syntax that's able to provide a "bridge" between software and hardware. In SHIM, it's possible to define one collection of "hardware processes" and software functions and have the SHIM compiler generate C code and also VHDL code, which is able to describe the hardware on which the C code is to run. I don't know if this is the same as what's being used in Rosetta, but it's a plausible explanation...

 

[arcobb]

Interesting stuff ... thanks for the replies!

 

[richyfp]

Also, I just randomly hit upon this, which confirms that "translate" is indeed what we know as Rosetta:

$ sysctl kern.exec
kern.exec.archhandler.powerpc: /usr/libexec/oah/translate