Been noticing for a while now a dropping that I couldn’t identify… kept thinking of asking, and NOW 2 new droppings have cropped up… what ARE these things? They drop in the root of my boot drive…
blob_storage
GPUCache
Telemetry
all folders. cMP, 5,1, 10.12.6, GTX 980 GPU.
Looks like blob_storage is related to Microsoft Azure, and GPUCache is related to Adobe in some way. And Telemetry seems to be connected to World of Warcraft most commonly.
Thanks Adam… funny, I know Blizzard has dropped a new folder in my user root with cache files, I think this is the 85th spot they have claimed for their cache files. Indeed, I’ll take that up with them… I already asked them about the folder in my user root.
Funny, I used to be a HUGE Adobe supporter, back in the Warnock/Geschke days (all the most geeky math stuff they showed when they launched Acrobat came from me!). They annoy the pizz out of me now, they are constantly connecting back for Reader AND they have sold my email address to spammers (well, the unique one I used for macromedia which they bought then sold the user e-mail list to spammers and I consider that unforgivable). Maybe I should just trash Reader, I think Preview can actually do more with PDF files than Reader can…
Dana, not sure why you want me to not call them what they are… yes, I play that MMORPG so it’s kinda on me, but the other 2 excrements I neither wanted nor was I asked to allow in… I have done NOTHING whatsoever with Azure, and I have never, ever had anything even vaguely related to Maya on my computer. Sorry, but I am getting more and more uncomfortable with the liberties software companies are taking with users these days.
They had a security breach a while back. THOSE emails got stolen by SPAMers. Are you sure that isn’t the issue?
Yes, I do remember the breech… this was going on long before the breech… and it was my unique macromedia address, not my unique adobe address.
I’m sure the emails lists got merged into a big list internally after the mergers.
Have done some further testing… trying to figure out more specifics about these 2 items that keep getting added to my HD root. Yes, it is a log in that creates them, not necessarily a re-boot. Yes, MalWareBytes says my system is clean. Yes, I looked at my Little Snitch config and denied anything from Adobe (AAM Updates, Acrobat Update Helper, Adobe Desktop Service, Adobe Flash Player Install and Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 5, AGSService) ALL of which were listed as login items. Looking closer that AGSService ALSO wants to not JUST connect to Adobe, but to Amazon AWS… but it looks like that is in service to Adobe.
For the life of my I can not figure out why these things keep getting added during login… anyone have any clues?
Welcome to the current world. Software vendor want to know who is using their software and to make sure licenses are not being shared. So they keep coming up with all of these schemes to keep track of what you are using and when. Likely
documented somewhat on page 458 of that “Click to Agree” thing you did when you installed something. And to keep mortals from messing with such they make them invisible files to the general public.
If they show up after a login then see what is in your ~/Library/Launch* folders. One or some of the items listed there is likely doing it. But tossing those might also make the app stop working so tread carefully.
Indeed David, I understand, I kinda get the Adobe part, but M$Azure? I DID make the old college try to get a second free trial of one of the streaming services using a different email address, but they left some kind of dropping that I can’t be bothered to go find (20 years ago it would have been a challenge, too old for that shizz now).
Thought just occurred to me… Activity monitor! Sure enough, there is an Adobe daemon running. Looked the the rest of the list, HOLY CRAP! Reminds me that WAY back in the day I was a BIG fan of boxer twins… stone age motors. One time, the bike died on me way out in uncharted territory up in Canada. Popped the front cover and was back on the road in 20 mins (pulverised rubber from a tube for wiring shifted going into the points rotor housing, gunked them up… went electronic after that BUT kept the rotor assembly that I could always fall back on!).
Hmmm, no Launch folders in there, but in /Library… all plists that I can kinda recognize.
I should just make them invisible and be done with it!
If you have almost any Microsoft product it uses Azure for authentication.
Are you sure you don’t have a ~/Library/LaunchAgents folder? I think everyone gets one. Mine has things from the following:
AddressBook
Safari
Backblaze
Code42 (yes I know)
Google (their update checker) 2 of them
1Password
Then head over to the big lists in:
/Library/LaunchAgents
/Library/LaunchDaemons
Those run all the time where the ~ ones only run when you log in. By “all the time” I mean according to the schedule in the plists.
Both are tied to Adobe; the Azure is used if you have a storage account with your Adobe Online. They shouldn’t be allowed there, unless you maybe turned off SIP?
If they are taking up too much space on your system volume/disk, you can symlink them to any other (user- or admin-controlled) location.
Okay, so research over at Adobe forums shows this is not an infrequent bug that creeps into various Adobe products, but everything I found in terms of solutions was for Windows.
You should login to your account over there and specify Mac, as well as file a trouble ticket. There will either be a fix offered by deleting and recreating files (my guess is you’re going to have to clear caches and plists), or its a bug introduced in a recent update they need to know about to fix.
You can avoid the annoyance in the meantime by setting all your Adobe products (esp. CC Online login/startup Menubar item) to not launch/open at login; however, they will probably come right back whenever you launch Reader or Lightroom.
There is one post over at the Apple forums with 5 ‘me too’; no solutions offered, so it probably started with an update in mid April.
/Library is where system wide user-controlled things go. It DOES require admin access to get put there.
SIP stops things from getting into /System which leads to /System/Library (amongst other things)
This is reserved for Apple unless you disable SIP.
Sorry Adam, this thread seems to have wandered off topic, so I thought to create another one! I think I have ghosts in my machine… on boot this morning I got over a dozen Snitch alerts for various connections to apple of all places. My guess is that may have been a result of my turning OFF various adobe “connections” it reported happened during log-in where I had no chance to block or accept (I detailed those above). Why one had anything to do with the other is a mystery to me.
Yes I am very aware of what Library folders do… matter of fact, I turned them both to visible because I had much distaste for the OS trying to hide them from me! I HAVE researched disabling SIP because something Blizzard was doing annoyed me (I HAD to input my admin pw every time I launched their app)… BUT I’d have to almost literally stand on my head to do it (my boot volume is a 2 SSD array) so I did not… AND they did fix that issue.
I do NOT get that I REALLY looked in BOTH Library folder for Launch Agents and found it in neither. So I took a look at my user folder with FileBuddy (which shows all invisible files) and it took me 10 minutes to get up from the floor I had fallen to! HOLY repository of crap is in there (there’s stuff going back to 04, 05, 06, 07, 08)! Shocked my computer actually works with all the deleterious in there. Damn my curiosity! Of COURSE, NOW I see that LaunchAgent folder. Sure enough, 2 adobe things in there, AAM Updater and something dealing with ARM.
Frederico, I hope this month finds you better and thanks for chiming in once again! I have tried in the past to get some questions answered on their forums, but was universally ignored (said I was using macOS). I DO have a copy of Reader (which I am about to maybe delete) and Photoshop 6. P’shop hasn’t been touched by them in years and the last update to Reader was quite a long while ago (I think). AND mine was the Riverside_Guy post over on that forum?
Back to Launch items… just remembered that one app I used DOES need Air. So I looked closer at both plists… interesting. One was lebel with ARM… this has to do with Reader… the other was AAM. Seems this is an audience measurement tool, i.e. are they peeking into what I go about doing on my computer?
HOWEVER, this is very much reminding me of my past… I would spend huge amounts of time trying to figure out what was going on… it mattered to me very much having a very tech focused career AND somehow made me a kind of go-to guy for those I talked into going with apple products. I think I’m falling down that rabbit hole…
It seemed to me that it was very much still on the topic of these mysterious folders, so I merged the two and reset the topic name (and deleted a couple of the random comments). That’s all easy to do in Discourse and prevents things from getting confusing.
I DO have ghosts… all of a sudden, another one showed up (visible from the git go):
default.profraw
did some googling and I got mentions of xcode and “CleanMyMac.” NEITHER of which I have ever used. BUT I did run EtreCheck, so will kep an eye on it!
AND now it has gone by-by.