Lion and Front Row

[Conor]

I been digging deeper and playing around with build settings to try to make it work under MT Lion as I think if I can make it work there then it should work for your install. Changing build settings so far has had no effect. This post here might be interesting as he actually modifies the plugins and Front Row to link internal libraries. Since the error seems to be about loading a virtual memory address it could easily be about the linking. I'll try to get that ISO to you or part of the Front Row setup as my upload speed is not that great to upload an entire OS image.

[geeji]

Thanks Conor for your continuing efforts, but I am more pessimistic than you are : as explained, I had the exact same error message on Mountain Lion, so I am almost sure the problem, whatever it is, is still there. Anyway, Front Row on Mountain Lion seems to suffer from other additional severe limitations (infrared Apple Remote not working : again some com.apple.RemoteUI issue ?).
I also found the same post about Safely Installing Front Row on Lion, but since we don't know anything about the incompatibility on MY system, there is no reason to suppose it would solve anything; it could too easily be one more false trail, and it may also disable the Apple Remote, which I do use (as most other HTPC users do).
Since tracing does not seem an option, unless either you can reproduce my problem on your system, or me reproduce your solution on mine, we will remain blind in a too large and unknown country.
I have increasing admiration about non-Apple developers, if they have so little debugging aid when they flounder on similar OS<->application dysfunction...
Must be hard to make a living if you have to spend so much time tracking some bit flipped the wrong side...
Let me know if/when you succeed in uploading some .iso image I can try, that test should be so simple that if it does not work, we then would at least have found a bug exotic enough to brag about

[MJB3]

I bet is the _CodeSigniture. A Lion Security Update or that Flashback virus protection altered Lion so system software or core services had to be Apple CodeSigniture'ed to load or work. An internal firewall in the system software. What Lion version, with what updates, is running FrontRow and FrontRow DVDPedia 5.0 successfully???

[Conor]

I think you are correct about the code signature. Geeji narrowed it down to possible the code signature and it's like Apple to give generic errors when the issue is one of security. Also Lion does check with the OS X server on install and downloads all patches directly during installation. Thank you for the extra suggestion.

[geeji]

But if the NON-Apple signature is the root of my problem (Conor kindly provided a Bruji signed version of DVDpedia.frappliance), should not that preclude other third-parties plugins from loading too, not only the DVDpedia.frappliance ?
And the EyeTV.frappliance DOES load.

[FineWine]

Not that I used Front Row but I was bored today and had a look round and came across this front row hack: http://d.pr/f/tudr
Just a thought.

[geeji]

It is a patched version of the 2.2.1 Snow Leopard Front Row.app within /System/Library/CoreServices.
What is it supposed to do better than the Snow Leopard original ?

EDIT :
Well, I still don't know what this patched version was supposed to do better than the original, but unfortunately it does not solve my problem : I get the same previous 2 error messages, plus 2 new ones :

Code: Select all

16/09/12 07:21:18,275 FrontRow: ******** Application Startup ********
16/09/12 07:21:19,166 com.apple.launchd: (com.apple.coreservices.appleid.authentication[328]) Exit timeout elapsed (20 seconds). Killing
16/09/12 07:21:20,314 com.apple.RemoteUI: dyldNameStartingAtAddress:vm_read header (os/kern) invalid address
16/09/12 07:21:20,315 com.apple.RemoteUI: vmutils: can't find image for dynamic loader used by /System/Library/CoreServices/Front Row.app/Contents/MacOS/Front Row [427]!
16/09/12 07:21:20,315 FrontRow: Failed to allow loading of appliance /System/Library/CoreServices/Front Row.app/Contents/PlugIns/DVDpedia.frappliance

Ah well...

[MJB3]

Just got FrontRow on Mavericks 10.9.3 Still want DVDPedia in Front row (best media launcher GUI with BEST Media Library). Trying things... using the Sign'ed version on plugin. Oh Well....

6/11/14 12:17:19.146 PM com.apple.launchd.peruser.501[179]: (com.apple.RemoteUI) The following job tried to hijack the service "com.apple.RemoteUI" from this job: com.apple.frontrow.387584
6/11/14 12:17:19.146 PM FrontRow[572]: Message Handler Installation Failed: bootstrap_check_in(): 0x44c: Bootstrap not privileged
6/11/14 12:17:19.146 PM FrontRow[572]: ******** Application Startup ********
6/11/14 12:17:19.216 PM FrontRow[572]: Failed to allow loading of appliance /System/Library/CoreServices/Front Row.app/Contents/PlugIns/DVDpedia.frappliance
6/11/14 12:17:19.234 PM FrontRow[572]: T:[0xa0d6c1a8] Registered BRPhotoPlayer for media type 3
6/11/14 12:17:19.234 PM FrontRow[572]: T:[0xa0d6c1a8] Registered FRITunesAppMusicPlayer for media type 0
6/11/14 12:17:19.234 PM FrontRow[572]: T:[0xa0d6c1a8] Registered FRVideoPlayer for media type 1
6/11/14 12:17:19.234 PM FrontRow[572]: T:[0xa0d6c1a8] Registered FRDVDPlayer for media type 2

[Conor]

Thank you for kind words. To be honest I haven't even opened the Front Row project in years so not sure what the state of it is with Mavericks. Since the error does include the word allow in the error message we have always assumed it's a signature issue. You could try resigning the plugin and Front Row so they have the same signature. This would require you to get a self signing certificate and then run the following command from Terminal:

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codesign -f --deep -s "My Self Signed Certificate" "/System/Library/CoreServices/Front Row.app/Contents/PlugIns/DVDpedia.frappliance"
codesign -f --deep -s "My Self Signed Certificate" "/System/Library/CoreServices/Front Row.app"

Also not sure if you saw it, but the entire code base for the DVDpedia Front Row Plugin is available. It does require you to setup Xcode with access to the BackRow.framework so that the project can link it. I know I had it working on Xcode 4, but have not tried with the newer Xcode's.

Although this blog post has Front Row linking to internal frameworks instead of in the system folder. Might be another way to try the installation.