Troubleshooting Mac OS X Installations

Problem Description

At TotalView startup, the OS checks whether the Mach system call task_for_pid() is working properly. If the call returns an error, no debugging is possible, and TotalView outputs an error message that begins “The Mach system call task_for_pid() is not working properly.” TotalView cannot distinguish the circumstances that can lead to this error, which are varied and depend on the version of OS X. The following sections describe a series of steps to troubleshoot this problem.

For All OS X Versions

Requirement: The TotalView executables must be installed setgid procmod, and must be installed on a file system that is mounted suid (that is, the file system must not be mounted nosuid). The TotalView installation procedure warns if these requirements are not met at installation time.

Remedies: Log in to the Mac host as root. If the file system where TotalView is to be installed is mounted nosuid, remove that attribute and re-mount the file system. Then (while still logged in as root) re-install TotalView.

For OS X Versions 10.8 (Mountain Lion) or Later

Requirements:

The TotalView executables must be codesigned.

The Mac host's system security policy must have Developer mode enabled.

TotalView users must be members of the _developer group, and must run TotalView within the context of a login session that has been validated by a password challenge at the OS X console.

Remedies: It can be difficult to distinguish which of the Mountain Lion requirements are unmet, so several remedial steps are recommended. We suggest you follow them in the order given, which is from least to most intrusive.

Step 1

Go to the console of the Mac host, log in as a TotalView user, and launch TotalView. A password challenge should appear, with a message that “Developer Tools Access” is trying to take control of a process. Enter the TotalView user's password at the challenge prompt. If TotalView still fails to launch, move on to the next remedial step.

If TotalView launches, the installation is OK, but note that if a user wishes to run TotalView at a different physical display, it is necessary to launch an xterm from the same console login session. The xterm can be displayed wherever is convenient, and it will inherit the validation of the console session, so TotalView will run successfully from that xterm.

Step 2

Check the TotalView user's group memberships by issuing the command id -Gn from a user session. If _developer is among the group names displayed, this is not the problem, so move on to the next remedial step.

If _developer is not in the list, you must add the user to that group. Issue the following command from an Administrator or root session:

dscl . append /Groups/_developer GroupMembership username

After adding the _developer group membership, verify that the user can now run TotalView from the Mac host's console (as in Step 1).

Step 3

At this point, the problem is likely to be with the codesigning of the TotalView executables, the certificate used to sign them, or the system security policy configuration.

If TotalView was not originally installed by root, log in to the Mac host as root, re-install, and verify that the TotalView user can now run TotalView from the Mac host's console (as in Step 1).

If TotalView was originally installed by root, please contact TotalView support.