Article Title: Failure to start after upgrade to Mac OS X Yosemite (10.10)
Article Name: MAC_OSX_3
OS Platforms: Mac OS X
Last Updated: 11/07/2016

TOPIC:

After upgrading to Mac OSX Yosemite (10.10), RiverTools 4.0 fails to start up. XQuartz starts and appears in the dock, and the RiverTools 4.0 icon is briefly active in the dock but the splash screen never appears.

DISCUSSION:

RiverTools 4.0 was released prior to the release of Mac OS X Yosemite (10.10) and therefore was not tested on this version of the Mac operating system. The installation of Yosemite removes a symbolic link and there is also an incompatible DYLIB file in the embedded version of IDL 8.2. Fortunately, this problem can be fixed as follows.

1. Make sure you have the latest version of XQuartz installed.

If XQuartz is already installed on your system (as it would be if RiverTools 4.0 was running before the Yosemite update), then you can do this by choosing X11 → Check for X11 Updates... from the menu at the top of your screen when XQuartz is running and selected. If you just tried to start RiverTools 4.0, XQuartz will still be in the dock and you can click on it to make it active. Otherwise, you can launch the XQuartz app directly, which can be found in the /Applications/Utilities folder. Alternately, you can download and install the latest version of XQuartz from the XQuartz website.

2. Restore the symbolic link that was removed during the Yosemite installation.

Note that "/usr/X11" was most likely a symbolic link to "/opt/X11" before the OS X update. To restore this symbolic link, first open a Terminal window. The Terminal app can be found in the /Applications/Utilities folder. At the prompt in the Terminal window, type:

 
  cd /usr; ls -l
 
Check if X11 appears in the listing as a symbolic link, as indicated by a preceding "l" in the permissions string and the string "X11 -> /opt/X11". If not, then type:
 
  sudo ln -s /opt/X11 /usr/X11
 
in the Terminal window to restore the symbolic link. Use of the "sudo" command requires that you have administrator privileges on your Mac. Always take extra care when using the "sudo" command. Do not close the Terminal window yet.

3. Hide the incompatible DYLIB file.

To do this, first type:

 
  cd /Applications/RiverTools_4.0/idl_rt/idl82/bin/bin.darwin.x86_64
 
in the Terminal window. Then type:
 
  ls -l libz*
 
You should see a file with the name "libz.1.dylib" in the listing and this is the culprit. Rather than delete this file, rename it to hide it by typing this command:
 
  sudo mv libz.1.dylib libz.1.dylib.HIDE
 
in the Terminal window. Note that this DYLIB file is part of the RiverTools 4.0 distribution and is not used by any of your other applications.

After completing these 3 steps, you should be able to launch RiverTools 4.0 normally.


If you have any additional questions or comments, please contact Rivix Technical Support for assistance.

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