How do I get reports and diagnostic messages?

Because Fork Server Helper may do its job silently in the background even if you are logged out and no user is active at the Aqua user interface, it cannot directly communicate problems to the user. However, the helper process fully utilizes the logging technologies available in Mac OS X, so you can get problem reports in case you need them in a perfectly integrated fashion.

To get all messages about the operation of Fork Server Helper, launch the Console application. You will find it in the folder Utilities in the Applications folder of Mac OS X.

Important error messages regarding the launch of the helper process become automatically and immediately visible in the console.log window of the Console application. Note that Fork Server Helper is not the only program using this reporting facility. Messages of all running applications appear in this window. You can recognize the messages created by Fork Server Helper by the key word processForks. An example is shown in this picture:

System Log Example

Every log message has the following structure:

Date and time the message was reported.
Identification name of the process that reported this message.
Serial number of the process, in square brackets.
The message itself.

Console has a Find feature (Edit > Find > Find...) that can be used when searching for specific reports, in this case, all messages that have the processForks label.

If the console.log window was not open at the time a problem was reported or an error condition was detected while the helper process was running in the background, you can still find the message:

In the Console application, select the menu item File > Open Log....
Enter the filename /var/log/system.log. Note that you cannot directly select this file in the open panel because it is hidden by default. Press OK.
A system.log window will be opened which contains all error and warning messages of the past several days. (Mac OS X automatically deletes older entries if the file becomes too large.)

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