App dies on startup but not crash report

Question

I've given an ad hoc version of my app to some users. Two of them have the app die on start up while one user has no issues. I can also install the ad hoc without issue...but that is always the case for me. One user sent the info below from the Xcode Organizer Console. They didn't find any crash logs. I don't know what to make of the info below. The one thing that stands out is "Permission denied".

I place the provisioning and myapp.app files in a dropbox folder. The user then retrieves the files from the same location. I've run codesign against the .app file in the dropbox and get valid output:

codesign -vvvv myapp.app
myapp.app: valid on disk
myapp.app: satisfies its Designated Requirement

Any one have some ideas how I can figure out why the app doesn't work for this user?

Here is the Console output from one user. They couldn't find any associated crash logs:

Stats
totalMLSITDBPostProcessing=5.31s
commands=0.01
misc=0.45s
icuSort=4.41s (MLS_icu_data=0.23s, MLS_icu_sec_data=0.13, dropIdx=0.04, normalize=0.13, update_orders=1.31, tStatsICUOther1=0.02, createIndex=2.50)
Sun Dec 13 12:35:04 unknown com.apple.launchd[1] <Error>: (UIKitApplication:com.cygen.myapp[0x8cb6]) posix_spawn("/var/mobile/Applications/4B036396-3294-4E0A-BBCC-4118E72846D4/myapp.app/myapp", ...): Permission denied
Sun Dec 13 12:35:04 unknown com.apple.launchd[1] <Warning>: (UIKitApplication:com.cygen.myapp[0x8cb6]) Exited with exit code: 1
Sun Dec 13 12:35:04 unknown SpringBoard[24] <Warning>: Failed to spawn myapp. Unable to obtain a task name port right for pid 179: (os/kern) failure
Sun Dec 13 12:35:04 unknown com.apple.launchd[1] <Warning>: (UIKitApplication:com.cygen.myapp[0x8cb6]) Throttling respawn: Will start in 2147483647 seconds
Sun Dec 13 12:35:04 unknown SpringBoard[24] <Warning>: Application 'myapp' exited abnormally with exit status 1
Sun Dec 13 12:35:10 unknown springboardservicesrelay[155] <Warning>: Unable to parse property list data of length: 0
Sun Dec 13 12:35:13 unknown com.apple.launchd[1] <Error>: (UIKitApplication:com.cygen.myapp[0x3ce5]) posix_spawn("/var/mobile/Applications/4B036396-3294-4E0A-BBCC-4118E72846D4/myapp.app/myapp", ...): Permission denied
Sun Dec 13 12:35:13 unknown com.apple.launchd[1] <Warning>: (UIKitApplication:com.cygen.myapp[0x3ce5]) Exited with exit code: 1
Sun Dec 13 12:35:13 unknown SpringBoard[24] <Warning>: Failed to spawn myapp. Unable to obtain a task name port right for pid 182: (os/kern) failure
Sun Dec 13 12:35:13 unknown com.apple.launchd[1] <Warning>: (UIKitApplication:com.cygen.myapp[0x3ce5]) Throttling respawn: Will start in 2147483647 seconds
Sun Dec 13 12:35:13 unknown SpringBoard[24] <Warning>: Application 'myapp' exited abnormally with exit status 1

Answer 1

Ad-hoc distribution is notoriously tricky. If you've missed one thing, the whole chain fails. Here's what I can think of, off the top of my head, based on the fact that it works for at least one of your users:

1. Are you certain that the mobile ad-hoc provisioning certificate contains the UDID for the users who are seeing it fail?
2. Do those users have an old certificate on their device? (i.e. did you delete the existing certificate before installing a new one? Settings->General->Profiles)
3. Are you certain the code-signed .app bundle contains the UDIDs for those users, inside the file named embedded.mobileprovisioning? (Under the ProvisionedDevices key)
4. Is the mobile provisioning certificate expired?
5. Is your developer code-sign certificate expired?
6. Was the application package renamed by the user before installation?
7. Did you try doing a clean before doing the distribution build?

Answer 2

Try using the iPhone Configuration Utility, a free download from Apple. I had the same problem, uninstalled and installed using the iPCU and now it works perfectly.

It's somewhat unintuitive to use, try googling for provisioning profile iCPU. I found detailed instructions on a "redfin's developper blog".

Answer 3

The key word I think you have used is the word 'dropbox'. I've just spent the last 2 weeks trying to work out my app would not work on other machines and I have worked out that is because I have been distributing the app via DropBox with out zipping it.

Try putting the app in a zip file before uploading to DropBox. Instruct the users to download the zip file, unzip it and install the app.

My guess is that DropBox is stuffing up some of the files in the app package.

Answer 4

Yep, we had the same issue with DropBox... zip the file first.

Answer 5

Sun Dec 13 12:35:04 unknown SpringBoard[24] : Failed to spawn myapp. Unable to obtain a task name port right for pid 179: (os/kern) failure

I've been fighting this for some time, and in my case it was a result of our build system using a different zip routine which did not respect OSX's resource forks. I don't know much about them, but in short they are an HFS construct for storing extra metadata about a file/dir which is hidden from most tools. Compressing with finder seems to work, as well as ditto. More info here: http://xahlee.org/UnixResource_dir/macosx.html

Answer 6

Dropbox for me as well, zipped and it worked fine.

Answer 7

Good heavens you folks saved me from certain head trauma with the DropBox solution. Thank you!