E-Maculation

After hours of searching and hacking around in terminal I am at loss. I downloaded the latest build of Sheepshaver, unzipped it, placed a valid ROM beside and no matter what I do, it hangs on double clicking. Obviously it seems to be an access problem, because when I start it from terminal with sudo, it works as expected. Log file says:
I also tested it on another Mac, also running Catalina. There it runs without sudo. I tried to figure out any differences, but had no success. Everything regarding permissions and ownership (including xattr) looks the same.

Any help appreciated. Maybe I overlooked something.

Not sure if it'll help with your problem, but whenever I test on Catalina, I always have to be careful to add the SheepShaver executable to System Preferences -> Privacy -> Full Disk Access.

Permissions are getting increasingly locked down in macOS, and at some point, the Mac builds of Sheep may need to adopt Apple's sandboxing rules for storing preferences and other items.

@ awado
Could there be a permissions issue with your Home folder? Do you (the user) have write permissions to the Home folder?

@ Elyus
It should not be needed to give SheepShaver Full Disk Access. Any specific properties of your builds that could make that necessary?

Not that I'm aware of, but Mojave is still my daily driver. What I have done ever since testing with Catalina or Big Sur is set Full Disk Access and leave it that way after having any permission issues.

Thanks for your answers. Home folder permissions are okay. I already tried Full Disk Access, but doesn't change anything. It was my first idea, too. On the second Mac access settings also where not set and it worked there. Must be something different. There's also no antivirus or application firewall software. I'm a Mac sysadmin, so I'm quite familiar with all this. What are the files Sheepshaver usually needs beside the ROM, .dsk and .iso files? Might it be something with SIP, which I have deactivated? So the elevation of permission runs differently? Is it the included etherhelpertoolm, which needs further permissions?

SheepShaver can be launched with only the application itself and in the same folder a compatible ROM file that is (re)named "Mac OS ROM".

When you say that the app hangs on double clicking, exactly what do you see happening.? Is a window opened? Do get a beach ball?

Was a ~/.sheepshaver_prefs file created?

Note that you cannot launch SheepShaver from the location where the .zip archive is expanded. The app must first be moved or copied to the desired location. (A security feature that was introduced in macOS 10.12 Sierra.)

I get a beach ball. I did it exactly as you wrote. Made a folder on the desktop, moved the application in there and also ROM, dsk, iso. The prefs file was not created. Running it via sudo from there shows the vm instantly. Double clicking shows the beach ball.

Try:
- Make a copy of the app in a different location
- Delete the original
- Move the copy back to where the original was

Still no success.

Have you tried
??

Yes. Tried "xattr -cr" and no success. But interesting observation:

I created another user "test" in Catalina and could successfully use Sheepshaver on its desktop. So I put this whole Sheepshaver folder from the desktop into the shared user folder. From the new test user I still can start it there successfully, which indicates that permissions should be okay. But this does not work from my current user, it also shows the beachball. So it must be some resource restriction of my current user?

Can you save a file to root level of your Home folder?

Yes. Just saved a TextEdit file in my home folder.

I have no more ideas. What could possibly be special (probably unusual) about your user account?

Anyway, thank you for your help so far, though. Much appreciated. I'm not aware of anything that makes my account unique. Would Sheepshaver run in safe boot mode (pressing SHIFT at boot)?

Here SheepShaver runs after a safe boot in Catalina, useable but with some display issues.

Got it!!! And it's an interesting point: In the accessibility settings I had enabled reduced transparency. As soon as I untick that, Sheepshaver runs. I can reproduce this on my test account. So it seems to be related to graphics driver stuff. (I have a MacBook Pro with a Radeon Pro 450.)

Interesting. I have reduced transparency enabled and I do not have the issue with SheepShaver. There must be more involved. My Late 2013 iMac has a NVIDIA GeForce GT 750M 1 GB graphics card.

This issue may be related to https://www.emaculation.com/forum/viewt ... 20&t=10392.
See the topic and try the new build.

Thanks for this update. Tried the new version. Unfortunately no change here. But I could nail it down a bit further: Beach ball only occurs with an external retina display (28" Samsung). On the internal display everything works fine, no matter which GPU is used, with and without transparencies. So I still guess it may be something with the graphics driver for my AMD Radeon Pro 450.

Then try adding the following line to ~/.sheepshaver_prefs: This option is valid only the new build.

Unfortunately no change.

Well, I think I'm fine with transparency turned on now. So, if it's only me, who's having trouble here, don't worry. Don't want to arouse too many sheeps. But nevertheless, I'm happy to stay for testing, if you want to iron that out.