Eventbox crashes within a few seconds of launching

can you guys post a resolution here? Theres 3 others that have this problem, and probably more.

I fixed this by hitting cmd-shift-k (mark all as read) the second twitter started loading. It took a few of those (hitting the keys multiple times as twitter stacked up) to get it done, but its working now.

Really hope you guys get this one fixed though, I really wanna buy eventbox, but uh, not if its crashing when twitter messages pile up (like when I'm not at home)

I am now experiencing the same problem. The application crashes within moments of launching.

I fixed this problem when I had it the first time by following cm-support's instructions--which worked, but also caused me to lose all of my preferences, my profile peeks, my searches... everything. Not ideal, but at least it was working.

Now it's happening AGAIN.

I really like EventBox... when it's working. But having to delete a file & folder to fix this problem every 3 weeks--that causes me to lose my settings--is really, really unacceptable.

This is a bug that would make the difference between EventBox being great and being completely unusable (assuming you want to use it for longer than 2 or 3 weeks).

This bug has also been very frustrating for us as because we cannot reproduce it. We've been hunting it for 4 weeks now and we still haven't been able to make find it. I sincerely apologize for your troubles and we will keep trying to squash it. All we know about the bug is that it's getting caused by a particular set of users (or just one) on Twitter with some malformed URLs. We would greatly appreciate any clues you might have as to cause.

I had EventBox running, and when Twitter tried to do one of its usual refreshes, it shut down. I don't know which Twitterers might have had updates that came through right then, because I can't get the program to run so I can see what was new in that refresh.

I'd been checking Twitter, so there wasn't a backlog of Tweets; there weren't any unread when the refresh happened that locked it up.

I tried restarting EventBox and using the trick Ken Hanson mentioned (cmd+shift+K), but that does not work for me.

But I did notice that when I try restarting Eventbox, it shows Twitter having a full 500 tweets unread, and all the profile peeks that load before it crashes show as having 100 tweets unread. And I know that isn't correct, because as I said, everything was read up until that last "fatal" refresh happened.

So something in this bug makes EventBox think that everything is unread, somehow, even though it isn't.

I wish I could offer more in the way of hints, but that's the best I can do.

I get the same problem when I try to run EventBox at work (it runs fine at home). The obvious conclusion is that it's network related and it's something that I've seen before in that NetNewsWire opens but doesn't load any feeds when I'm at work. Interestingly NewsFire works fine. Anyway, my problems started when our network nazis installed an ISA server to manage traffic so you may find a solution there. Hopefully you do as it'd be pointless me buying a license otherwise and it looks like it could be a good app.

I removed 'com.thecosmicmachine.EventBox.plist' and 'com.Growl.GrowlHelperApp.plist' from my Library/Preferences/ folder and seemed to fix it... had to reset some settings, but it stopped crashing.

I'm unable to try as my trial period has now expired and, obviously, I don't want to spend money on it, if it doesn't work.

It still crashes for me. I'm currently in my trial period and I want to like this app. Besides some minor things (multiple twitter accounts, share-functionality in google reader) this is a real blocker for me. It gets even worse, because yesterday I tested ALL other twitter clients and they all suck. So I can now choose from one nice client which crashes after starting up and other clients which work so bad and look so bad that I don't even want to start them.

Looks like I have to enable wifi sharing and let my iPhone run Tweetie or Twitterfon the whole day at work :(.

Any confirmation of the connection via an ISA proxy server? Works fine when connected directly to the net (dsl, 3g).

So, what's the work-around? Does everyone here have to email for it? I don't see an official response with a workaround.

I finally had to stop using Eventbox. I wanted it to work... but after a couple more crashes (and the ensuing loss of information, loss of preference settings, etc) I realized that this is just not a usable application until this bug gets fixed. And I *really* hope it does, because (a) I paid for the program and want to be able to use it, and (b) it has such promise for being a good application, if the crashes could be solved.

Alas, for now, it's back to Tweetdeck. I really hope this gets fixed.

I noticed the update last night and updated over my 3G connection. Worked fine, now at work the crashes continue. I paid for it and will continue to use it at home but dang, this is frustrating!

I got the work-around via email from the developers. I had to reenter all logins, prefs, etc but it crashes the same.

I enabled access to FB, Flickr and Twitter one by one, exiting the program after each one. FB and Flickr are fine but as soon as Twitter login info in entered it starts loading up tweets and crashes.

I've disabled Twitter in the prefs and it's fine after that. When I enable Twitter again it crashes when loading tweets. Whatever is going on seems to be a problem with Twitter.

Hi I'm getting the same error as well now following the latest public release running a licensed copy, let me know if you would like the whole error report, summary:

Date/Time: 2009-03-18 20:45:40 +0000
OS Version: 10.5.6 (Build 9G66)
Architecture: ppc
Report Version: 4

Command: EventBox
Path: /Applications/EventBox.app/Contents/MacOS/EventBox
Version: 1.0 (563)
Parent: launchd [85]

PID: 451
Event: hang
Time: 6.74s
Steps: 18

Process: EventBox [451]
Path: /Applications/EventBox.app/Contents/MacOS/EventBox

I just got around a crashing-on-updating-Twitter loop by going straight into prefs on restarting, and turning off the option under General, URLs to "Automatically expand URLs when new events arrive". Can now update Twitter with no problems.

Seemed worth a try when Milen said it seemed to be linked to malformed URLs.

Can anyone else who has experienced those crashes remember if they had the option to auto-expand URLs turned on?

I did and I managed to fix the problem by deselecting the option having disabled the Twitter plugin in the plist file

Same problem here.
Deselecting "auto-expand URLs" solved the problem.

Same problem here.

Thanks to this thread, I turned off Airport, launched EventBox, deselected the auto-expand URL pref, and am back in action again.

Think Milend has his smoking gun.

Okay guys & gals, I think we have found the issue. We cannot verify now whether this really is the cause or not but we will now be waiting for EB to crash for someone and then try to reproduce it. Thank you all for your help.

I've been having the same problem. Deselecting the auto expand URLs seems to fix it (temporarily).

Now that we know what this is caused by (99.9%), we're hunting for a URL which will crash EventBox.

I would advise you to turn on URL expansion. In case EventBox crashes, run the following command in Terminal (spotlight the app if you haven't used it):
defaults write com.thecosmicmachine.EventBox AutoExpandLinksForNewEvents -bool NO

This will disable URL expansion for any *new events* which arrive after you relaunch EventBox. It's exactly those *new events* which will contain a URL that results in the URL Expander to crash.

If someone finds such a URL, please email it to us and if it indeed does crash EventBox, we will be giving out bounties (EventBox licenses). Thank you all for your help.

Note that when I say URL, I mean *any* URL, not just shortened ones. It's even more likely (almost sure) that the URL causing the problem is not a shortened one.

Just let everyone know, it's a bit late over here (past midnight) but we've managed to reproduce the bug! It will be fixed as soon as we can!

Bounties go to Tim Williams and Jim Washburn. Please contact us at cm-support to claim your licenses.

We've pushed an update to the bleeding edge which fixes this bug.

We've also resolved another crasher bug related to networking. We will be pushing that update over the weekend.