Endless GDPR Acknowledgement Loop after using Migration Assistant to new Laptop

PaulB · May 25, 2019, 8:21am

Describe the bug
I was on an old version with an old license. Got the GDPR warning. Agreed. Then got to Crashlog Collection. Disallowed. Got a start button dialog. Pushed. Back to the Data Privacy Dialog.

So I bought a new license and upgraded.

Same problem.

Then I deleted Better Touch Tool. Redownloaded. Restarted.
Same problem.

So basically I can't use BTT at all right now because it just keeps looping warning me about GDPR.

Affected input device (e.g. MacBook Trackpad, Magic Mouse/Trackpad, Touch Bar, etc.):

MacBook Pro 2017

Screenshots
If applicable, add screenshots to help explain your problem. (You can just paste or drag them here)

Device information:

Type of Mac: MacBook Pro 2017
macOS version: newest mojave
BetterTouchTool version: 2.864

Additional information (e.g. StackTraces, related issues, screenshots, workarounds, etc.):

Note: Before bug reporting, please make sure you have the latest version of BetterTouchTool and that you have already tried to restart your system :-). If you encounter a crash, please attach a crash log from the macOS Console.app from the "User Diagnostic Reports" section.

Andreas_Hegenberg · May 25, 2019, 8:29am

most of the time such things are caused by file system errors / permission problems. BTT seems to be unable to write to its own data file. Sometimes happens after migrating data from another system or similar.

If you delete the data file BTT will recreate it with the correct permissions. It's located in ~/Library/Preferences/com.hegenberg.BetterTouchTool.plist (go there via finder -> go -> go to folder)

PaulB · May 25, 2019, 8:44am

does not seem to fix the issue

paul@Pauls-MacBook-Pro:~/Library/Preferences$ ls -lh com.hegenberg.BetterTouchTool.plist

-rw------- 1 paul staff 37K May 24 16:36 com.hegenberg.BetterTouchTool.plist

paul@Pauls-MacBook-Pro:~/Library/Preferences$ rm com.hegenberg.BetterTouchTool.plist

paul@Pauls-MacBook-Pro:~/Library/Preferences$ ls -lh com.hegenberg.BetterTouchTool.plist

ls: com.hegenberg.BetterTouchTool.plist: No such file or directory

Did not create a new one, and I had permissions to delete it. Still looping

Andreas_Hegenberg · May 25, 2019, 8:46am

are you sure it didn't create a new one? This would indicate that even writing a new file to the preferences folder is not possible, but I have not seen this before.
Can you copy files to that folder without being prompted for extra permissions?

PaulB · May 25, 2019, 8:49am

paul@Pauls-MacBook-Pro:~/Library/Preferences$ id
uid=502(paul) gid=20(staff) groups=20(staff),12(everyone) [...]
paul@Pauls-MacBook-Pro:~/Library/Preferences$ touch x.txt
paul@Pauls-MacBook-Pro:~/Library/Preferences$ ls -lh x.txt
-rw-r--r-- 1 paul staff 0B May 25 01:48 x.txt

yeah. write permission is no issue

PaulB · May 25, 2019, 8:50am

the problem is that it just restarts right after pushing the "Start using BTT & open preferences button). E.g. the icon disappears, app restarts, and back to the start.

I can actually use it for screen resizing while the permissions dialog is open, so maybe i'll just background that dialog for now.

PaulB · May 25, 2019, 8:55am

ok, digging into logs. You're right it's about the prefs path.

I don't understand what's going on, but here are the logs:

error	01:54:19.493943 -0700	cfprefsd	Couldn't get uncanonicalized path for domain com.hegenberg.BetterTouchTool
error	01:54:19.494804 -0700	cfprefsd	Couldn't get uncanonicalized path for domain com.hegenberg.BetterTouchTool
error	01:54:19.494844 -0700	cfprefsd	rejecting write of key BTTTouchBarVisible in { com.hegenberg.BetterTouchTool, paul2, kCFPreferencesAnyHost, no container, managed: 0 } from process 9176 because Path not accessible
error	01:54:19.494925 -0700	BetterTouchTool	Couldn't write value for key BTTTouchBarVisible in CFPrefsPlistSource<0x6000037cc070> (Domain: com.hegenberg.BetterTouchTool, User: kCFPreferencesCurrentUser, ByHost: No, Container: (null), Contents Need Refresh: No): Path not accessible
error	01:54:19.515693 -0700	cfprefsd	Couldn't get uncanonicalized path for domain com.hegenberg.BetterTouchTool
error	01:54:19.516226 -0700	cfprefsd	Couldn't get uncanonicalized path for domain com.hegenberg.BetterTouchTool
error	01:54:19.516335 -0700	BetterTouchTool	Couldn't write value for key BTTTouchBarVisible in CFPrefsPlistSource<0x6000037cc070> (Domain: com.hegenberg.BetterTouchTool, User: kCFPreferencesCurrentUser, ByHost: No, Container: (null), Contents Need Refresh: No): Path not accessible
error	01:54:19.516265 -0700	cfprefsd	rejecting write of key BTTTouchBarVisible in { com.hegenberg.BetterTouchTool, paul2, kCFPreferencesAnyHost, no container, managed: 0 } from process 9176 because Path not accessible

Somehow it's interested in user paul2, which does not exist anymore.

Andreas_Hegenberg · May 25, 2019, 8:56am

Possibly try to restart your system once, these messages sound like the system is still trying to access some old stuff from before the migration.

PaulB · May 25, 2019, 9:03am

Restart did the trick.

Andreas_Hegenberg · May 25, 2019, 9:04am

Awesome! The migration assistant has caused various super weird issues since Mojave. Not sure what exactly goes wrong though...

nelsestu · October 12, 2024, 5:27am

Your recommendation was exactly what I needed. I still don't understand why it worked. Checking the permissions on the file they seemed correct. I even explicitly set permissions to 777 and it continued to crash due to permissions failures (specifically i was seeing the following message in the system console log: in CFPrefsPlistSource<0x600003f47e70> (Domain: com.hegenberg.BetterTouchTool, User: kCFPreferencesCurrentUser, ByHost: No, Container: (null), Contents Need Refresh: No): Path not accessible). Finally I stumbled onto your "delete the data file" suggestion and after restarting it has been all good. No more GDPR Acknowledgement loop and everything is happy.