Troubleshooting Chimera: Talkback Problems under Mac OS X 10.2.x

Under Mac OS X 10.2.x, Chimera 0.6 will cause a kernel panic whenever the Talkback component is closed. Talkback is designed to send system information back to the open-source development compilation if Chimera unexpectedly quits. Martin Williams writes:

"Gave Chimera 0.6 a try; it crashed (can't remember what was happening), and I sent Talkback report - and my machine then promptly crashed horribly, with semi-translucent looking screen, and message saying I must restart. Restarted, and found myself confronted with a Darwin screen, asking for me to log in. Restarted and found that an IdeaSpiral file was corrupted; maybe by the crash."

Lorin Rivers of REALbasic confirms the problem in a Mozilla.org bug report.

Apparently, the problem does not affect Mac OS X version prior to 10.2.x. Greg Kolanek writes that TalkBack 2.0b1 (included with Chimera/2002110415) runs, sends reports, and quits flawlessly on his system running Mac OS X 10.1.5.

One viable solution at this juncture is to force quit Talkback as soon as a bug report is sent. Talkback can also be disabled from the Chimera preference pane.

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