Debugger() was called!

D

doubledream

Registered
This message appears frequently in the console.log - what does it mean?
This morning I checked my email, personal and work, and logged in to this
website briefly. During that time the console.log shows the debugger message
and warnings from" Syndication Agent" about a malformed database disk image and then a warning about a fatal database error and ignoring a Quickdraw drawing (18 times) and then" /XRefStm was encountered but not yet supported"and then "Debugger was called! " All I did was quickly check email, and nothing unusual happened - except for the hesitations and the beachball.
Can someone please explain this? And maybe also who all those users with the
weird names are on the activity monitor, like kextd and usbmuxd and nobody(!)
oh and why, if I'm the root user is root apparently constantly logged on and doing stuff when I'm not?? I really hope someone can tell me what's going on.
 
It's harmless.
If the program would crash those bits where the debugger was called would tell a bit more about what went wrong. But when it doesn't crash, don't worry.
 
All those users are part of the UNIX heritage of OS X. They are all normal. Some processes run as their own user for security purposes since you can restrict user accounts to be able to access only a small area on the hard drive. Many things need to run as root to give them higher access privileges. All these users are hidden UNIX accounts that you can not log in as. Your user account that you use is probably an admin account not the root account.
 
Thank you for the reassurance - I truly was getting spooked - but I did think I
was the root user, the "other" in the login box, I read about it in David Pogue's
Book that should have been in the box ( haven't read the whole thing yet) and
created a password altho perhaps I shouldn't look at some of that stuff cause
it seems to induce a human kernel panic. I'm still wondering what was going on
with that Veoh web player, I printed about 30 pages of computer talk all to do
with veoh and its 9 threads and the listening ports being shared. I am trying to
understand it but there's only so much time to devote to it, that's why I'm glad
I found this website and grateful to you and Giaguara for your answers.
So is Debugger a person or a program? Can a web player get remote control
access to my computer thru ports - is that how a virtual network works?
Should I start a new thread with each question?
 
Debugger is a process (and it is a useful one).
A web player can't grab the control of your Mac. The player doesn't have enough privileges for the system even if it would (in some theoretical way) try to do something in your system. The system would need you (or the root, or an admin user of your system) to authenticate and grant access for things that could potentially harm it.
I'm not too familiar with what ports Veoh uses, but if you want granular control and a good map of what programs are trying to connect where from or to your Mac, I'd recommend Little Snitch http://www.obdev.at/products/littlesnitch/index.html
You can grant an access one or always or deny access for each and every program on your system.

I think as long as we're in the topics of debugging this thread will do just fine. For a totally different issue then a new thread... :)
 
Thanks again, Giaguara - can you tell me what a shared listening port is? Does
it have anything to do with Virtual Networking? Oh, and what about a non
virtual thunk ? Or KERN_PROTECTION_FAILURE ?
The real world calls - time to go to work - i will check in this evening in hopes
you have replied.
 
Captain Code said:
All those users are part of the UNIX heritage of OS X. They are all normal. Some processes run as their own user for security purposes since you can restrict user accounts to be able to access only a small area on the hard drive. Many things need to run as root to give them higher access privileges. All these users are hidden UNIX accounts that you can not log in as. Your user account that you use is probably an admin account not the root account.
Click to expand...
Hi Captain Code
I'm sure you can tell I'm new to this - I created a password for the root account mostly for the fun of it and so no one else could. And so I could see what was in those files I didn't have sufficient access for as administrator. I certainly don't want to mess with anything I don't understand, what's your advice ? If i disable the root account can
someone else turn it on? Leave it as is and don't look at the Unix stuff?
 
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