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>Over the last year or so Mac users have run into problems that appear related to a background service named triald. Some report it stealing huge amounts of CPU
by koprulusector 5y ago
>Over the last year or so Mac users have run into problems that appear related to a background service named triald. Some report it stealing huge amounts of CPU, others associate it with various glitches, and a few have noticed gigabytes of disk space apparently being taken up by its folder at ~/Library/Trial, and in their Time Machine backups. This article explains as much as I know about this mysterious new service, and ponders what’s going on.
- I find it so odd, Apple users fascination of their own operating system, this sort of voyeur or wildlife documentarian attitude. It’s your machine, but the inner workings are this ineffable mystery.
>I’m not aware of any control over or opt-out from Trial, although it could be covered in Apple’s general request to share data including panic logs, if you can remember where to control that.
>I first noticed Trial when studying Visual Look Up in the log. At the start of each Look Up, the subsystem com.apple.trial enters the following into the log:
>Initializing TRIClient. Trial version: TrialXP-292.18
>_PASEntitlement: Entitlement "com.apple.private.security.storage.triald" is not present.
>Found entitlement: "com.apple.trial.client" --> <private>
><private> 0x12d9547e0 (no container): using Trial root dir <private>
>This suggests that Trial is recording information about Visual Look Up, although nothing more explicit appears in subsequent log entries.
- Apple can double speak all they want about digital privacy, but their actions tell the truth. As a paying Apple customer, you’re not deemed worthy enough to even understand how your own machines work, less even to “tamper” with their working, and who knows what data is actually being shared?
- Personally, I say no thank you. I’ve been on Debian or a variant for almost 10 years now, and haven’t looked back. It’s only gotten easier, as software generally moves more and more to SaaS web apps and the intrinsic cross-platform nature of the browser.
- sjg007 5y agoHow's the battery life on linux laptops these days?
- vaidhy 5y agoNot OP, but my laptop lives long enough for me to get to a plug point if needed. I have power at work and home and I have suspend turned on when I close the lid. I can live with a few seconds of wake up time, when I have no accessible power for long periods of time. It is really not that complicated.
- callamdelaney 5y agogood enough, especially with optimisations.
- dralley 5y agoStill not as good as Windows but much better than it used to be, especially if you're using well tested hardware like a Thinkpad
- trelane 5y agoMy experience with ThinkPads has been terrible. I've lost faith in ThinkPads. Too bad we can't get working Linux hardware at work. Fortunately, I can buy my personal hardware from whomever I wish, and it certainly will not be Lenovo.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- hdjjhhvvhga 5y agoI dual boot Windows and Linux and I found out I can actually work longer in Linux. Maybe it's related to the fact that Windows services consume more CPU.
- LooseMarmoset 5y agoPretty good, especially if you install TLP for power management. I get at least a full workday and a half out of my Dell 9375.
- rglullis 5y agoDoes it really matter?! Are you really that careless with your privacy and your basic freedoms to the point that you make your choices based on the ~battery life~ of your computing device? Sorry to pick on you, but whenever I hear these sorts of questions I realize how shallow people can be, even those who are (supposedly) informed and smart enough to know better. To be worried about the inconvenience of ~shorter battery life~ over fundamental freedoms is like failing the marshmallow test for tech people.
- _Algernon_ 5y ago>Are you really that careless with your privacy and your basic freedoms to the point that you make your choices based on the ~battery life~ of your computing device? Not OP, but yes. In a laptop, battery life is the number one thing I'm looking for. That being said, Linux does fine when it comes to battery life in my experience.
- rrdharan 5y ago1. The marshmallow test has been debunked (just like so many other flashy claims in the social sciences field, the science is questionable and the replication crisis is very real). So using it in a rant about how uninformed people are is itself a laughable irony. 2. Many of us simply do not agree that the use of an Apple computing device impinges on either our privacy or basic freedoms, or (more nuanced) that the marginal risk is so small that it’s not worth the moderately large inconvenience of shorter battery life.
- rglullis 5y ago1. It doesn't matter if the effects of the marshmallow test are true or not. The idea is just to illustrate how tech people are as weak-willed, short-term focused and plain "convenience-at-all-costs" as the general consumers. 2. There is no argument here: if you can not control what and how your device operates, your freedom is being taken. You can argue that you don't value this freedom over the convenience it brings you, but this is at best an admission of you being on (1).
- 5y ago
- asciimov 5y agoIt's not the battery life that's the issue on Laptops these days, as it is typically better than windows. The biggest issue is getting all the hardware supported out of the box. For example, there is a certain amount of mucking about you have to do to get any off the shelf laptop running Linux. On rare occasion system updates change something that the laptop doesn't like, hunting down that change can become tedious.
- rglullis 5y agoThe solution for that is easy: don't buy the absolute-latest-generation of any hardware. I've owned Samsung laptops, HP laptops, Thinkpads. I've built my own work desktops. I've never had any issues, as long as the hardware is ~6 months out on the market. That's about the time it takes for linux devs to catch up with companies that focus on windows drivers.
- trelane 5y ago> The solution for that is easy: don't buy the absolute-latest-generation of any hardware Or don't out Linux on Windows hardware. System integration teams are a thing, and one person without access to documentation is going to do it poorly. Instead, buy Linux in Linux hardware.
- AshamedCaptain 5y agoThat's useless advice. Even Webcams from laptops as older as 6 years may still not work under Linux. Anything which has an Intel webcam for example is almost guaranteed not to work, outside of perhaps a couple of popular models (like MS Surface devices, and then not precisely "out of the box"). The rule still is to get either a Linux-supported or at least a Linux-popular laptop, even if it's more expensive or doesn't match all your features/requirements. Then it doesn't matter whether it's 6 years old or brand new. It will work. i.e. it's more important for it to be Lenovo and the correct line than the age. But not all Lenovo are equal. T/P stuff is likely supported out of the box even if brand new. X depends on popularity of the model. Tablets/IdeaPad stuff.... look elsewhere. (Lenovo is just an example, leaving other brands for the reader).
- throw10920 5y agoIt varies, like it does for literally every other combination of hardware and software on the market, but mine gets between 8 (light web browsing) and 12 (terminal programming, no web browser running, wifi disabled) hours on a single charge. For reference, Windows on the same laptop gets about 6 hours while just sitting there.
- gigaflop 5y agoThis reminds me of Windows Search Indexer on my PC. Microsoft's spying aside, it apparently needs 13.5% or more of my CPU at all times. It started after I updated multiple time sin a row, and for the past few weeks, has never stopped. I've killed it via task manager, only to have it come back shortly after.
- dmitrybrant 5y agoOne of my first tasks after a clean install of Windows is to disable any unnecessary services, including the Search Indexer. Not only do I disable the service itself, but I also explicitly remove all folders from the "indexed locations" control panel, and explicitly disable the "Allow files to be indexed" bit on the disk itself. I've literally never needed to search my disk for a file (using the Windows search interface), and if I ever do, I'd rather wait a few more seconds that one time for my search to complete, rather than have the indexer consume my CPU at all times.
- gigaflop 5y agoMy PC had been fine before the updates (hence not updating until I needed some other thing to work), and I'd never seen Search Indexer pop up in Task Manager in any notable way. something tells me that I might just have a broken version of it, and since Windows Update also looks to be a bit broken, I may just be SOL for the near future. This set of problems may be obviated by actually getting Manjaro to cooperate. It's on the todo list.
- sjcoles 5y agoTry out Fedora! There's Fedora Rawhide if you want rolling release. I have been using Rawhide (+ mainline, non rc or git, kernel) on my work machine for the past 6 months without issue. If you have to compile a lot of kmods it can be a pain as everything is transitioning to GCC12 but the kernels are still built with GCC11. A container can take care of that though.
- cmeacham98 5y ago
- gotaquestion 5y ago> It’s your machine, but the inner workings are this ineffable mystery. At some point, every machine's software becomes an ineffable mystery. Do you know what is going on in all your 3rd-party Linux drivers, say, from NVIDIA?
- Aperocky 5y ago[The machine] will not fulfill its destiny until you let go of the illusion of control. -- Master Oogway.
- TremendousJudge 5y agoWhat's your point?. That since some software doesn't play nice and doesn't treat its users with respect, we shouldn't value all the software that does? I don't find this agreeable
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- gotaquestion 5y agoI don't think I meant that, although it might sound like it. I think you're accusing me of the fallacy of all or nothing, but to me the original argument sounds like an obsession with purity, but clearly one line isn't enough to explain that. The replies to my original post seem to me to be arguing for 100% transparency from the keyboard to the atoms on the finfets. I don't think I'm strawmanning that (maybe hyperbolizing a little, but with RISC-V proponents, maybe not!) That sounds like a noble goal, like world peace, ending starvation, and curing all modern ails. However, the extent to which tribalism and out-grouping emerges from people who don't use the "superior, pure" solution is nonsense: just look at the tone of the first post, snidely declaring that this is proof apple is again such a bad solution. That's not helpful, and after hearing similar tech arguments for nearly 35 years online, it is tiresome (ironic). On top of that, the dream of transparency seems unlikely because every open source hardware project I've ever seen has failed [1], there is zero motivation for it. Again, not to say it isn't a noble goal, but don't fetishize it to the point of outgrouping others. [1] This is a broad statement, as there is plenty of gadgetry that is open source hardware. I mean: open source hardware for Linux laptops. Or at least hardware that has open source drivers but doesn't have an "Appendix H".
- jmull 5y agoThe existence of a Mac OS service you don't immediately understand really has nothing to do with Apple's stance on digital privacy. There's no logical connection here.
- philjohn 5y agoI'd argue that's not a helpful take. This appears to be downloading and executing new code, and potentially returning results back to the mothership. That there is no explicit opt-in, or even much information about WHAT this is doing, is sadly what I've come to expect from Apple.
- cafed00d 5y ago> - Apple can double speak all they want about digital privacy, but their actions tell the truth. As a paying Apple customer, you’re not deemed worthy enough to even understand how your own machines work, less even to “tamper” with their working, and who knows what data is actually being shared? > - Personally, I say no thank you. I’ve been on Debian or a variant for almost 10 years now, and haven’t looked back. It’s only gotten easier, as software generally moves more and more to SaaS web apps and the intrinsic cross-platform nature of the browser. Personally, all the paying Apple customers in my family have been able to understand how the systems works to make video calls and talk to their grandchildren. 10years ago we tried installing Linux on an HP laptop we paid for and could barely get a picture opened up because... (do I really need to spell this out?) of unreliable display drivers means that the screen blacks out on whim. I find it so odd, Linux users overlooking the fact that people who don't tinker with computers all their life do not have the time to get Linux up & running.
- seanw444 5y agoTry again. Linux Mint is fantastically simple to use, and legitimately "just works" for average-Joe uses cases. Linux, and its various distros, are an ever-evolving tech. Linux 10 years ago was so much less capable than Linux in 2022. Just because it didn't work then, definitely doesn't mean it won't work now.
- 30367286 5y agoOn what laptops does sleep/hibernate work correctly when you close the lid, with Mint? Seriously, swear to fucking god, every time someone says “oh Linux just works”, the next comment is “oh? I tried that distro on the recommended hardware and had trouble with…” Next response is ALWAYS: “Oh yeah that’s broken but I don’t use that feature.” Usually about hibernate. As in, apparently everyone using a laptop plugged into a wall and never closes the lid. Or uses a desktop. I don’t even know, it doesn’t make any goddamn sense. I just don’t believe you guys any more. Everyone who says Linux just works has adapted their workflows to be hyper specific to the things they do, and have just decided that basic-ass features present and working on mainstream OSes are just gimmicks that the rest of us should forgo out of moral purity. Also with this “try again” noise. Good lord, happy y’all are blessed with the patience to try again until you find the right Goldilocks set of hardware and tweaks that doesn’t give you a migraine but there exists a large contingency of the population that doesn’t spend every waking moment staring at glowing rectangles. Spare us a fucking thought, and spare a thought for our relatives who took years to learn how to double click.
- stonemetal12 5y ago>It’s only gotten easier, as software generally moves more and more to SaaS web apps and the intrinsic cross-platform nature of the browser. What is the difference between not knowing what the software on your system is doing and not knowing what any of your software is doing and it is not running on your system?
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- noufalibrahim 5y agoMy thoughts exactly. A machine that I paid money for and bought shouldn't have these kinds of mysteries from me. A binary driver is one thing. I can uninstall it albeit at the cost of impaired functionality but I had the option of buying another graphics card, OS whatever at the beginning. Here, I buy hardware, OS and everything else from one vendor and I can't uninstall, delete or kill a process that's running on my own machine? If it's something malicious on Linux, I can deny it access to parts of the drive, I can kill it or make it non executable. I can even find the executable and corrupt it so that it won't run.