Since yesterday morning my copy of iTunes has been starting and stopping randomly. If iTunes is not running, then it opens and sometimes begins playing, other times sits idle. Eventually, after a random interval it will begin playing a song, and then stop, and so on... Needless to say, it's driving me mad. (Mac OSX, 10.6.3, on a new-ish (< 1 year old) 24" iMac) I've made five changes to my system that may or may not be connected to this: My office phone was replaced with a Linksys IP Phone, which necessitated a change to my networking; where previously my Mac was connected directly to the office network port, now it is connected through the phone. My network connection now uses auto link detection in lieu of forcing 100Mbit I unpaired my bluetooth headset. I removed the USB audio device associated with another headset. I upgraded to Safari 5. I don't use it as a primary browser, but it's often open to run web apps that I'm developing. All of these things happened in pretty close proximity to each other, so one or more of them may be the culprit. One other thing that may or may not be related; for some reason my built-in microphone is no longer picking up audio. It seems like this might be connected to the iTunes issue, because it happened around the same time. In terms of things that I've tried in order to solve this, I'm at a bit of a loss. I followed the instructions at http://developer.apple.com/mac/library/technotes/tn2004/tn2124.html#SECLAUNCHDLOGGING to enable detailed launchd logging to see if I could track down which process was asking iTunes to open (when it's not already open) but I wasn't able to make heads or tails of the output. I'm not even sure if I'm looking in the right place, to be honest; it actually acts like something is activating the application with AppleScript, but I have no processes running that are doing that, as far as I know. I'm running a few apps that have iTunes integration: Adium, iChat with Chax, Quicksilver. None of these have been changed lately, so I consider them low risks of causing this, but it's not impossible. Moreover, I'm not using any of those features intentionally. This is a snippet of launchd debug logging from around the time it just launched: 10-06-09 9:14:29 AM com.apple.launchd[1] Dispatching kevent... 10-06-09 9:14:29 AM com.apple.launchd[1] KEVENT[0]: udata = 0x10002b230 data = 0x30 ident = 5 filter = EVFILT_READ flags = EV_ADD|EV_RECEIPT fflags = 0x0 10-06-09 9:14:29 AM com.apple.launchd[1] Dispatching kevent... 10-06-09 9:14:29 AM com.apple.launchd[1] KEVENT[0]: udata = 0x100802000 data = 0x0 ident = 26 filter = EVFILT_PROC flags = EV_ADD|EV_RECEIPT|EV_CLEAR fflags = NOTE_FORK 10-06-09 9:14:29 AM com.apple.launchd[1] (com.apple.coreservicesd[26]) Dispatching kevent callback. 10-06-09 9:14:29 AM com.apple.launchd[1] (com.apple.coreservicesd[26]) EVFILT_PROC event for job: 10-06-09 9:14:29 AM com.apple.launchd[1] KEVENT[0]: udata = 0x1004076f0 data = 0x0 ident = 26 filter = EVFILT_PROC flags = EV_ADD|EV_RECEIPT|EV_CLEAR fflags = NOTE_FORK 10-06-09 9:14:29 AM com.apple.launchd[1] (com.apple.coreservicesd[26]) fork()ed 10-06-09 9:14:29 AM com.apple.launchd[1] (0x100401720.anonymous.lssave) Conceived 10-06-09 9:14:29 AM com.apple.launchd[1] (0x100401720.anonymous.lssave[22197]) Created PID 22197 anonymously by PPID 26 10-06-09 9:14:29 AM com.apple.launchd[1] (0x100401720.anonymous.lssave[22197]) Looking up per user launchd for UID: 0 10-06-09 9:14:29 AM com.apple.launchd[1] (0x100401720.anonymous.lssave[22197]) Per user launchd job found for UID: 505 10-06-09 9:14:29 AM com.apple.launchd[1] System: Looking up service com.apple.system.notification_center 10-06-09 9:14:29 AM com.apple.launchd[1] (com.apple.launchd.peruser.505[143]) Mach service lookup: com.apple.system.notification_center 10-06-09 9:14:29 AM com.apple.launchd[1] (0x100401720.anonymous.lssave[22197]) Looking up per user launchd for UID: 0 10-06-09 9:14:29 AM com.apple.launchd[1] (0x100401720.anonymous.lssave[22197]) Per user launchd job found for UID: 505 10-06-09 9:14:29 AM com.apple.launchd[1] System: Looking up service com.apple.system.DirectoryService.libinfo_v1 10-06-09 9:14:29 AM com.apple.launchd[1] (com.apple.launchd.peruser.505[143]) Mach service lookup: com.apple.system.DirectoryService.libinfo_v1 10-06-09 9:14:29 AM com.apple.launchd[1] (0x100401720.anonymous.lssave[22197]) Looking up per user launchd for UID: 0 10-06-09 9:14:29 AM com.apple.launchd[1] (0x100401720.anonymous.lssave[22197]) Per user launchd job found for UID: 505 10-06-09 9:14:29 AM com.apple.launchd[1] System: Looking up service com.apple.system.DirectoryService.membership_v1 10-06-09 9:14:29 AM com.apple.launchd[1] (com.apple.launchd.peruser.505[143]) Mach service lookup: com.apple.system.DirectoryService.membership_v1 10-06-09 9:14:29 AM com.apple.launchd[1] (0x100401720.anonymous.lssave[22197]) Looking up per user launchd for UID: 0 10-06-09 9:14:29 AM com.apple.launchd[1] (0x100401720.anonymous.lssave[22197]) Per user launchd job found for UID: 505 10-06-09 9:14:29 AM com.apple.launchd[1] System: Looking up service com.apple.CoreServices.coreservicesd 10-06-09 9:14:29 AM com.apple.launchd[1] (com.apple.launchd.peruser.505[143]) Mach service lookup: com.apple.CoreServices.coreservicesd 10-06-09 9:14:29 AM com.apple.launchd[1] Dispatching kevent... 10-06-09 9:14:29 AM com.apple.launchd[1] KEVENT[0]: udata = 0x100802000 data = 0x0 ident = 22197 filter = EVFILT_PROC flags = EV_ADD|EV_RECEIPT|EV_CLEAR fflags = NOTE_EXIT 10-06-09 9:14:29 AM com.apple.launchd[1] (0x100401720.anonymous.lssave[22197]) Dispatching kevent callback. 10-06-09 9:14:29 AM com.apple.launchd[1] (0x100401720.anonymous.lssave[22197]) EVFILT_PROC event for job: 10-06-09 9:14:29 AM com.apple.launchd[1] KEVENT[0]: udata = 0x100401720 data = 0x0 ident = 22197 filter = EVFILT_PROC flags = EV_ADD|EV_RECEIPT|EV_CLEAR fflags = NOTE_EXIT 10-06-09 9:14:29 AM com.apple.launchd[1] (0x100401720.anonymous.lssave[22197]) Reaping 10-06-09 9:14:29 AM com.apple.launchd[1] (0x100401720.anonymous.lssave) Total rusage: utime 0.000000 stime 0.000000 maxrss 0 ixrss 0 idrss 0 isrss 0 minflt 0 majflt 0 nswap 0 inblock 0 oublock 0 msgsnd 0 msgrcv 0 nsignals 0 nvcsw 0 nivcsw 0 10-06-09 9:14:29 AM com.apple.launchd[1] (0x100401720.anonymous.lssave) Removed 10-06-09 9:14:30 AM com.apple.launchd[1] Dispatching kevent... 10-06-09 9:14:30 AM com.apple.launchd[1] KEVENT[0]: udata = 0x100802000 data = 0x0 ident = 22197 filter = EVFILT_PROC flags = EV_ADD|EV_RECEIPT|EV_CLEAR|EV_EOF|EV_ONESHOT fflags = NOTE_REAP 10-06-09 9:14:32 AM com.apple.launchd[1] Dispatching kevent... 10-06-09 9:14:32 AM com.apple.launchd[1] KEVENT[0]: udata = 0x10002b230 data = 0x30 ident = 5 filter = EVFILT_READ flags = EV_ADD|EV_RECEIPT fflags = 0x0 10-06-09 9:14:33 AM com.apple.launchd[1] Dispatching kevent... 10-06-09 9:14:33 AM com.apple.launchd[1] KEVENT[0]: udata = 0x100802000 data = 0x0 ident = 143 filter = EVFILT_PROC flags = EV_ADD|EV_RECEIPT|EV_CLEAR fflags = NOTE_FORK 10-06-09 9:14:33 AM com.apple.launchd[1] (com.apple.launchd.peruser.505[143]) Dispatching kevent callback. 10-06-09 9:14:33 AM com.apple.launchd[1] (com.apple.launchd.peruser.505[143]) EVFILT_PROC event for job: 10-06-09 9:14:33 AM com.apple.launchd[1] KEVENT[0]: udata = 0x10041e9a0 data = 0x0 ident = 143 filter = EVFILT_PROC flags = EV_ADD|EV_RECEIPT|EV_CLEAR fflags = NOTE_FORK 10-06-09 9:14:33 AM com.apple.launchd[1] (com.apple.launchd.peruser.505[143]) fork()ed 10-06-09 9:14:33 AM com.apple.launchd[1] System: Looking up service com.apple.distributed_notifications.2 10-06-09 9:14:33 AM com.apple.launchd[1] (com.apple.launchd.peruser.505[143]) Mach service lookup: com.apple.distributed_notifications.2 10-06-09 9:14:33 AM com.apple.launchd[1] System: Looking up service com.apple.system.notification_center 10-06-09 9:14:33 AM com.apple.launchd[1] (com.apple.launchd.peruser.505[143]) Mach service lookup: com.apple.system.notification_center 10-06-09 9:14:33 AM com.apple.launchd[1] System: Looking up service com.apple.system.DirectoryService.libinfo_v1 10-06-09 9:14:33 AM com.apple.launchd[1] (com.apple.launchd.peruser.505[143]) Mach service lookup: com.apple.system.DirectoryService.libinfo_v1 10-06-09 9:14:33 AM com.apple.launchd[1] System: Looking up service com.apple.system.DirectoryService.membership_v1 10-06-09 9:14:33 AM com.apple.launchd[1] (com.apple.launchd.peruser.505[143]) Mach service lookup: com.apple.system.DirectoryService.membership_v1 10-06-09 9:14:33 AM com.apple.launchd[1] System: Looking up service com.apple.CoreServices.coreservicesd 10-06-09 9:14:33 AM com.apple.launchd[1] (com.apple.launchd.peruser.505[143]) Mach service lookup: com.apple.CoreServices.coreservicesd 10-06-09 9:14:33 AM com.apple.launchd[1] System: Looking up service com.apple.SystemConfiguration.configd 10-06-09 9:14:33 AM com.apple.launchd[1] (com.apple.launchd.peruser.505[143]) Mach service lookup: com.apple.SystemConfiguration.configd 10-06-09 9:14:33 AM com.apple.launchd[1] System: Looking up service com.apple.audio.coreaudiod 10-06-09 9:14:33 AM com.apple.launchd[1] (com.apple.launchd.peruser.505[143]) Mach service lookup: com.apple.audio.coreaudiod 10-06-09 9:14:34 AM com.apple.launchd[1] System: Looking up service com.apple.system.logger 10-06-09 9:14:34 AM com.apple.launchd[1] (com.apple.launchd.peruser.505[143]) Mach service lookup: com.apple.system.logger 10-06-09 9:14:35 AM com.apple.launchd[1] Dispatching kevent... 10-06-09 9:14:35 AM com.apple.launchd[1] KEVENT[0]: udata = 0x10002b230 data = 0x30 ident = 5 filter = EVFILT_READ flags = EV_ADD|EV_RECEIPT fflags = 0x0 10-06-09 9:14:35 AM com.apple.launchd[1] System: Looking up service com.apple.DiskArbitration.diskarbitrationd 10-06-09 9:14:35 AM com.apple.launchd[1] (com.apple.launchd.peruser.505[143]) Mach service lookup: com.apple.DiskArbitration.diskarbitrationd 10-06-09 9:14:35 AM com.apple.launchd[1] System: Looking up service com.apple.system.logger 10-06-09 9:14:35 AM com.apple.launchd[1] (com.apple.launchd.peruser.505[143]) Mach service lookup: com.apple.system.logger 10-06-09 9:14:36 AM com.apple.launchd[1] System: Looking up service com.apple.FSEvents 10-06-09 9:14:36 AM com.apple.launchd[1] (com.apple.launchd.peruser.505[143]) Mach service lookup: com.apple.FSEvents 10-06-09 9:14:36 AM com.apple.launchd[1] System: Looking up service com.apple.SystemConfiguration.configd 10-06-09 9:14:36 AM com.apple.launchd[1] (com.apple.launchd.peruser.505[143]) Mach service lookup: com.apple.SystemConfiguration.configd 10-06-09 9:14:38 AM com.apple.launchd[1] Dispatching kevent... 10-06-09 9:14:38 AM com.apple.launchd[1] KEVENT[0]: udata = 0x10002b230 data = 0x30 ident = 5 filter = EVFILT_READ flags = EV_ADD|EV_RECEIPT fflags = 0x0 10-06-09 9:14:39 AM com.apple.launchd[1] Dispatching kevent... 10-06-09 9:14:39 AM com.apple.launchd[1] KEVENT[0]: udata = 0x100802000 data = 0x0 ident = 26 filter = EVFILT_PROC flags = EV_ADD|EV_RECEIPT|EV_CLEAR fflags = NOTE_FORK 10-06-09 9:14:39 AM com.apple.launchd[1] (com.apple.coreservicesd[26]) Dispatching kevent callback. 10-06-09 9:14:39 AM com.apple.launchd[1] (com.apple.coreservicesd[26]) EVFILT_PROC event for job: 10-06-09 9:14:39 AM com.apple.launchd[1] KEVENT[0]: udata = 0x1004076f0 data = 0x0 ident = 26 filter = EVFILT_PROC flags = EV_ADD|EV_RECEIPT|EV_CLEAR fflags = NOTE_FORK 10-06-09 9:14:39 AM com.apple.launchd[1] (com.apple.coreservicesd[26]) fork()ed 10-06-09 9:14:39 AM com.apple.launchd[1] (0x100401720.anonymous.lssave) Conceived 10-06-09 9:14:39 AM com.apple.launchd[1] (0x100401720.anonymous.lssave[22211]) Created PID 22211 anonymously by PPID 26 10-06-09 9:14:39 AM com.apple.launchd[1] (0x100401720.anonymous.lssave[22211]) Looking up per user launchd for UID: 0 10-06-09 9:14:39 AM com.apple.launchd[1] (0x100401720.anonymous.lssave[22211]) Per user launchd job found for UID: 505 10-06-09 9:14:39 AM com.apple.launchd[1] System: Looking up service com.apple.system.notification_center 10-06-09 9:14:39 AM com.apple.launchd[1] (com.apple.launchd.peruser.505[143]) Mach service lookup: com.apple.system.notification_center 10-06-09 9:14:39 AM com.apple.launchd[1] (0x100401720.anonymous.lssave[22211]) Looking up per user launchd for UID: 0 10-06-09 9:14:39 AM com.apple.launchd[1] (0x100401720.anonymous.lssave[22211]) Per user launchd job found for UID: 505 10-06-09 9:14:39 AM com.apple.launchd[1] System: Looking up service com.apple.system.DirectoryService.libinfo_v1