The second error, is normal, in so much as, it is not going to go away unless you delete Office. Microsoft is using out dated calls to libraries, and OS X is warning them to knock it off.

If you are running the latest version of Office, there is nothing you can do to solve that one.

The logs you are looking at are always going to have some errors in them. Developers can chose to log whatever they desire, as much, or as little. Sometimes things seem very bad, but they are normal. The goal is not to have an empty log, that will never happen.

I just ran a search on my own system.log, and from only today, just one day, I have 195 total lines that contain the word “error”. I also consider my machine to be pretty clean and solid.

In the meantime, I’d like to get rid of destroyed applet 9 — is that doable?
Dec 6 22:49:42 adsl-76-199-197-9 [0x0-0x135135].com.apple.Safari[2223]: /SourceCache/WebCore/WebCore-5531.9/bridge/jni/jni_jsobject.mm:207: Attempt to access JavaScript from destroyed applet, type 9.

Here’s a new one — is there something I should do about it?
Dec 7 08:12:52 adsl-76-201-169-253 Microsoft PowerPoint[2347]: The function `CGPDFDocumentGetMediaBox’ is obsolete and will be removed in an upcoming update. Unfortunately, this application, or a library it uses, is using this obsolete function, and is thereby contributing to an overall degradation of system performance. Please use `CGPDFPageGetBoxRect’ instead.

Thank you, Jean

Who knows, maybe so much stuff is failing as a result of your ISP’s slow DNS servers.

Removing the MagicCam stuff will stop the errors, but you will not be able to use google video and such. I do not think it is related, though give it a shot, they are easy enough to install again.

Do these problems follow you into a new account?

Looking at your console log, there are a good deal of things going wrong. More than I myself would be able to explain to you how to solve easily. At this point, I would just reinstall clean, it is always a good idea to do so, I never update an OS, I just clean install.

Even Snow Leopard, I will not put that on top of 10.5, but I will clean install. It is more work, but there is no way Apple can know all the variables I have introduced into my system, and cleanly update on top of that.

Once you do that, never put another IOMEGA software into your computer, and be careful about what other third party software you install. Printers are notorious for installing a ton of junk you do not need, when in most cases, OS X has all the print drivers built right in and you need never put in the disk that came with your printer.

The short of it is, there is so much wrong going on in your logs, unless you were very advanced in troubleshooting, I do not see an easier way to sole this than a clean install.

Scott. I’m somewhat embarrassed asking because I still haven’t fiddled with Office, but you have reservations about that’s being the source of my hang-up problems.

I would not say I have any reservations, it was just something brought up, and there are known issues with spotlight and Office, specifically with Entourage, and how it stores emails in a monolithic database. One new email, or moving an email, or sending an email, means that ALL your emails will need backing up again by Time Machine. I do believe you previously stated that you are not using Entourage, so it should not be related.

My system’s running the Safari that came w/ OS X; no modifications that I know of except routine updates. Format of the ProDrive external drive is Mac OS Extended (Journaled), w/ GUID Partition Table (don’t know what HFS is; disk description is OEM).

Ok, that is good, don’t worry about the HFS+ parts, you have journaled, and GUID, the two aspects that were of the only concern to me in formatting of the drive.

Back-up timing is Time Machine’s hourly.

This should be fine.

By application “open,” I meant that the dot is next to the icon in the dock; by “not running,” I meant that no files were open.

Understood.

I’ve been leaving my console log open and am not finding any references to Office applications but am finding persistent, repeated browser lines (for both Safari and Firefox): “Debugger() was called”;

Do you happen to be running an application called 1Password?

I hope to have time tomorrow to sit on the phone w/ my ISP (AT&T aka sbcglobal) to see if it’s right that my DNS server is registered more than once and to hear what they say about Ethernet debugged.

This is fine, you need not waste your time on the phone with your ISP. The IP’s you see are DNS resolvers, they are what do the work of converting what you type into your browser, to a number, so when you type in osxhelp.com, it will one of the IP’s listed will take the work of converting that to an IP address. It is not limited to just a browser, any “hostname” will use those resolvers, so email, every app you open that phones home to check the serial number, pretty much anything you do, is going to use one of the two resolvers you have listed.

The reason there are two, is in a very simple explanation, that in case one does not work, there is a fallback. The problem is that Comcast, ATT, and all the rest are in the business of supplying Internet access. It just so happens, that the Internet access they supply would not be very useful to the end customer if they did not also maintain DNS resolvers as well.

So they do maintain them, but they are generally not a high priority, and they can do other nefarious things, such as when you type in a domain that you spell wrong, or that does not exist, they may hijack that result, and show you some ads, or try to help you along to the correct domain. Regardless, it is not a good tactic. A DNS resolver should return what is called a NXDMOMAIN response when something can not be found.

Take for example, you send an email to example@yahoo.com but you spell yahoo.com wrong. If they have a DNS hijacking service in place, instead of the email bouncing, or being rejected it will end up at your ISP’s email server. What they do with that email, is anyones guess. But it also stops the rejection email you should have received, so you believe your email worked, when it did not.

The ISP must provide this DNS resolver service, but they have little motivation to make it work well. Just well enough. They run systems that have DNS resolvers that could probably handle about 20% of the load they are putting on them. This means your loading of web pages, takes longer. Consider that an average FaceBook, or myspace page, any relatively complex web page may make around 40 DNS lookups. If each takes 10 milliseconds, that is almost half a second you are waiting. Generally, we are talking much more than 10 milliseconds in the bad cases.

A good DNS server will take less than 5 milliseconds, on bad day. Once that DNS server has had a chance to learn of the lookups it has done in the past, those times should get even shorter, as it no longer needs to look them up in full, but pull them from a cache.

My best suggestion to you, is to use openDNS.com as your DNS servers. You do not even need an account with them, you just enter in 208.67.222.222 and 208.67.220.220 in your settings, in addition to the settings you see that ATT is putting in there now. Yours will be listed first.

If you want to fully remove the ATT servers, which is what I generally do, it gets a little trickier, depends on the ISP sometimes. But if you have a router, you will need to define the DNS IP addresses in there, and they will be sent out to your other computers automatically.

openDNS will do the same DNS auto correction and some of the other tactics I mentioned above, though they make it clear what they are doing. In addition, if you create an account with them, at http://opendns.com, you are then in full control, and can enable and disable numerous features.

Your one log error of: Note: DNS Server 192.168.0.1 for domain . registered more than once”
This may be something ATT can help with, though I would just look to their docs to find the correct settings to enter into the “Network Preference Pane” in the DNS section. It also could just be a transient error. Or it could be that temporarily, ATT really was registering two domains to the same IP. This is not really your problem, or one you can fix, nor is a first, second, or third tier support tech going to even know what it means. If you can get to a DNS engineer, they will help, I give you the best of luck with that.

I also see problems w/ applet 9 (sequence of Java Applet Plug-Ins, in Java Preferences, J2SE 5.0, Java SE 6, J2SE 5.0, J2SE 1.4.2).

This issue I am not personally aware of, though I suspect it is going to be related to your next issue.

Also a string of MagicCam problems, though not in the part of the log on/at the current pastie. Also Iomega (http://www.pastie.org/712392 — I can just delete the IOmega application … and install it at some future date if I add an IOmega device, right?) http://www.pastie.org/712390

The MagicCam log lines are from installing google’s tools. You probably were asked to at some point in order to use video chat within google chat, or to add some other functionality to google’s apps. This is a known issue, many experience it. Some have solved it by reinstalling Google Voice, others just delete the files at:
/Library/QuicktTime/Google Camera Adapter 1.component
/Users/your-username/Library/QuicktTime/Google Camera Adapter 0.component

One thing I see, is mention to Iomega. I have had my rounds with that company, and to be honest, I would never buy or recommend any of their products to anyone, any longer. Customer service is just not where it needs to be.

You will find what are called Contextual Menu Modules, which are the items that can show up when you control/right click on something on your computer. Iomega installs them at:
/Library/Contextual Menu Items/IomegaCM.plugin
and possibly
/Users/your-username/Library/Contextual Menu Items/IomegaCM.plugin
or also
/System/Library/Contextual Menu Items/IomegaCM.plugin

If they are not there, then they have been removed, but some other Iomega part is looking for them.

Iomega even seems to have gone as far as to install a bundle for Apple Mail, which I am hoping you find in your home Library folder, and within the Mail folder, there should be a Bundles folder, and something pointing to Iomega.

Perhaps they have an uninstaller, I tend to find they never remove everything, so you may need to dig around a little to get all the bits removed. A reboot will be needed once you get rid of the Iomega stuff. I can not see any good reason you would need it, an external drive should not need any software at all to work, unless we are talking Enterprise class stuff here.

I would start with getting rid of the Iomega stuff. If that does not solve it, I can not remember if you have reformatted the backup drive, but it could be general Time Machine file corruption of it’s indexes and other preferences, which would be simplest to just reformat, than to try to restore to an old backup set, which is somewhat more challenging.

Modification: Word wasn’t running, but the application was still open. When ProDrive is hung up, I can’t force Word to quit.

Can you elaborate on what you mean by “is not running” but “still open”. An open app is running, unless you mean it is stuck in some way, but I would still say, if it required a force quit, then it was in fact running.

Maybe the first thing you should try, is exclusion of the entire Office Applications folder from Time Machine. That, and confirm the format type you used, which you can find out in Disk Utility.

I do not believe your issues to be related to Office at this time. There may be something, hard to say for sure, but so far, it is not appearing to be related to Office.

What I can tell
1) You have plenty of room on the backup drive.
2) Backups appear to be happening fine, in full, and getting completed, but something is making it look as though i is still running.

This line from the logs is interesting:
Copied 34344 files (3.5 MB) from volume Macintosh HD.

That is a whole lot of files to copy, that only amount to a very small amount of size, and it was able to do so in an amount of time that seems unlikely.

Copied 460 files (19 KB) from volume Macintosh HD.
Same here, 460 files that only amount to 19KB. Keep in mind, our logo on this site is 24KB, and only one file. So larger, yet 1/160th the number of files.

Are you running a nightly or beta version of Safari/Webkit, or just the usual version that comes with OS X and no modifications aside from Flash perhaps?

At this point, my first course of action to solve this is going to be to start clean on your backups. This means, turn of Time Machine, reformat the ProDrive, turn back on TimeMacine, and start a new backup. You are going to lose all your other backups, so be sure that there are no older files you need to locate first.

Go ahead and exclude /Applications/Microsoft Office 2008 from the advanced area in Time Machine, no sense in backing up a possible source of problem, when even if you need to restore, you can easily reinstall office from the DVD you bought.

Make sure you format as HFS+ Journaled case insensitive as a GUID partition table. It almost sounds as though this drive is DOS formatted, or Windows formatted, which could explain the high count of files, for such a small amount of data being moved across.

If that does not stop the endless spinning of backups, try a different interface. I am sure the drive offers USB, but you are using FireWire. If it works with USB, we just discovered that the drive is having issues with FireWire.

Have you applied any terminal based commands to alter the backup schedule timing? Does “defaults.write.something.application-name value bool true” or similar ring bell?

This is not super common, but I myself have ran into these very issues with the Seagte Free Agent Extreme on the FireWire, where it is just not Mac compatible for some reason. It is like they tried to make it break on the Mac.

This is only a test, I would not want you to have to suffer the slow backup speeds over USB beyond this test.

With a reformat, and the test of USB over FireWire, we should get the answers we need. It may require a call or email to support for the ProDrive.

I do not see anything in the logs that indicates that this is a deeper tooted issue, your logs look pretty clean.

The Finder would not locate the things that could possibly be a problem, were it the ProDrive, you would have to dig deeper.

What happens if you keep it on, and watch the console log, located in /Applications/Utilities/Console.app and see what it says right around the time things start to go bad?

I would see if there are updates. If you are on 10.6, then it very well may not be supported at this time.

My inclination, if I were in your shoes, would be to rid the machine of all the ProDrive software, and use it as a external backup drive, using Time Machine, which I can pretty much assure you, is going to do a better job than whatever software ProDrive made.

Sounds to me like the ProDrive is putting some type of a lock on files as it backs them up, and apps do not like that.

The ProDrive looks to be a normal external drive. You should not have to power it on and off at any time. I would make sure that whatever interface you use, be it USB, or FireWire, you plug direectly to the computer, and not to a keyboard, or other hub.

They tend to need direct connections, ad a generality. Yes, there are exceptions, but in order to keep this simple, plug in direct. Use firewire if you can.

I am not sure what the ProDrive Arrow is, I assume a light or something on the drive showing activity?

A few things to try. Run the auto update tool in Office, run it as many times as you need until it reports there are no more updates. They have a really bad update tool, but you need to be up to date.

There is a chance your ProDrive is failing. Look in Disc Utility to see the S.MA.R.T. status, make sure that is ok. Since there are just backups, you may want to just reformat it, and start it clean. This can remap bad spots on a drive to not be used. Do make sure there is nothing important on the drive.

Are you using Entourage for your email? If you are, that is part of the issue, it is not compatible with Time Machine. The solution is to exclude the Mail user Identity from Time Machine, but that also means you are not backing up your email. If you are using IMAP, then it is ok, if you are using POP, then it is not the best idea to leave mail without backups.

Great site!

P.S. This is a great website. You are doing a super job with it.