Side effects?

[Ian Wadham]

On 31/01/2013, at 6:36 AM, Brandon Allbery wrote:
> On Wed, Jan 30, 2013 at 2:28 PM, Eneko Gotzon Ares <enekogotzon at gmail.com> wrote:
> To execute powerful commands (for MacPorts) in Terminal, can cause negative side effects? (disturb the drivers of smart card readers, the display adjustment, etc…).

You have not mentioned your hardware and software setup yet: what model of machine,
what version of Apple OS X and, in this case, what version of Macports and the kdelibs4
port.  The first two may have a bearing on your side effects.  It is unlikely that the last two
would, unless you are installing ports of smart card reader drivers (for example).

In a private email I advised you, as a beginner, not to try any commands until you know
what they do, but that is no reason to be afraid.  You can usually find out details of what
a command does by using the "man" (manual) command, e.g. "man port" or "man sudo",
but users' guides may be more readable (e.g. the Macports Users' Guide).

> All's fair for root --- this is why MacPorts uses sandboxing and does builds as a nonprivileged user, to minimize the chances of this happening.  (Hm, do we have a paranoid mode where it makes an archive but doesn't install it automatically, so one can inspect the archive before activating it?)
> 
> I would be inclined to suspect something else is wrong; first guess would be power, although you might also check things like CPU temperature etc.  If MacPorts is building from source instead of downloading prebuilt archives, it may be pushing some marginal component too close to the edge.  (Electronic components do age and fail, and can sometimes be defective in ways that only show at the outside edges of their design specifications.)

Maybe.  I have noticed that building qt4-mac is one of the few occasions when all four
CPUs on my Macbook Pro are running full bore.  They make the keyboard and trackpad
area quite warm.  I am wondering what I shall do next winter (Southern Hemisphere),
now that qt4-mac is a binary package … :-)

In my experience (and that's going back a bit), Macports is one of the most reliable
software builders and installers I have ever encountered.  Pursuing my legal analogy,
it installs the software, the whole software and nothing but the software, and it keeps
you informed about what it is doing at all times.  Furthermore, if anything goes wrong
with individual bits of software, the guys on this list are extremely helpful.  So I don't
think Macports "side effects" should be one of your prime suspects … :-)

BTW, did you get KMyMoney4 going?  KDE apps in Macports can be a problem
because some of them are designed to run inside a KDE desktop (i.e. a Linux
desktop like Mac OS X or Windows), but KMyMoney4 is usually fine.

Cheers, Ian W.

P.S. When you are experimenting with UNIX commands, I suggest you make a
        special folder in which to play, e.g.

        mkdir play
        cd play

If you stay within that, you cannot affect any files in other folders, even if they
are owned by you.  In your home directory, you will find lots of hidden files and
folders that are used by Mac OS X and other software to record preferences, etc.
Try the "ls -a" command and you will see what I mean ...