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Posts Tagged ‘Safari’

Google Gears for Safari Fix

In Apple on 22 November 2008 tagged Gears, Google, Safari with no comments

I recently took the plunge to install Google Gears on Safari, only to realize that it doesn’t work as expected. The installation went fine, but the “Google Gear Settings” menu just didn’t appear in the Safari menu, and the problem is not unique to me.

Root of the cause is Google Gears for Safari requires the use in Input Manager to intercept URL requests and provide data if necessary. The problem is that Apple has limited the use of Input Manager in Leopard by imposing more restrictive rules as a security measure, one of which is processes running with the wheel group privilege cannot load any bundle input manager.

It appears my account falls under the wheel group, probably due to my system upgrade from Tiger or some funky stuff I did which I can’t remember.

$id
uid=501(YOURNAME) gid=20(staff) groups=20(staff),98(_lpadmin),81(_appserveradm),102(com.apple.sharepoint.group.2),0(wheel),79(_appserverusr),80(admin)

A fix to this problem will be to remove your account from the wheel group, and Gears will work fine thereafter. Since NetInfo is gone in Leopard, the easiest way to do so would be via Server Admin Tools. Just fire up the Workgroup Manager, find your account and remove itself from the wheel group.

Now that we’ve got it working, I wonder how Google is going to work around the possibility of Input Manager being disabled in the next OS X release?

More about Input Manager in Leopard & Gears in Safari.