Composer Will Not Open

[emadams]

For some reason I can't get Composer to open. It was working just fine the other day and now it just says that it's not responding when I try to open the application. I have tried to remove the Jamf Pro applications and reinstall them and that doesn't work either. Any ideas?

[slehmann · Accepted solution]

The com.jamfsoftware.Composer.helper is missing for some reason it doesn't get reinstalled automatically.

Take it from another computer with Jamf composer installed and put in in your Library: /Library/PrivilegedHelperTools/

[Vanco_Corey]

I'm having the same problem with this.

[Vanco_Corey]

Jamf support said they were having some issues and recommended that I downgrade to 10.17.0. That worked for me.

[slehmann]

Exactly the same here.

Composer did run fine until yesterday. Using Composer 10.19 on OS X 10.14.6.

I tried already to:
-reinstall it
-grant it Full Disk Access (10.14)
-run it as root via shell (no logs or errors are printed, just nothing happens)
-run it as another User
-deleted /Library/Application Support/JAMF/Composer (or whatever it was called)
-installed an old version of Composer - It is working - installed 10.19 -> same Problem

Does somebody know where the logfiles of Composer.app are located - if there are any?

I'm working in a team of multiple Mac admins and don't want to use a different version than the others...

[slehmann · Accepted solution]

The com.jamfsoftware.Composer.helper is missing for some reason it doesn't get reinstalled automatically.

Take it from another computer with Jamf composer installed and put in in your Library: /Library/PrivilegedHelperTools/

[emadams · Accepted solution]

@slehmann This fixed my issue! Composer ran just fine on my MBP so I just Air Dropped that file to my iMac and restarted. Launched Composer and it came up with no hesitation. Thank you so much. I'm up and running again.

[tomt]

@slehmann THANK YOU!!! This was driving me crazy.

Sloppy Jamf...

[garybidwell]

You can grab the latest helper from within the Composer.app itself
Just right-click and show package contents and copy and paste it to /Library/PrivilegedHelperTools/

[tomt]

@garybidwell Good to know. I can just write my own postinstall script for it until Jamf gets it resolved.

[alexkaloostian]

This has been happening to me for 4 years. Composer is kind of a mess.

[McGinn]

I am so happy to have this fixed! I've been dealing with this for months, I thought it was just a Catalina bug

[allanp81]

Why doesn't it just leave the helper there rather than remove and reinstall each time?

[lucas_nelson]

Hey @allanp81,
The reason Composer removes the helper each time is due to some issues regarding privilege's lost when the helper has been installed for some time. Removing and reinstalling the helper is a workaround until it can be remedied.

This issue is something my team is currently working on, with some changes being made available for the 10.22.0 Beta Composer. If anyone who has been affected by this has an is interested, please follow the instructions in the post below for signing up for the beta to try out the changes:

https://www.jamf.com/jamf-nation/discussions/35598/jamf-pro-10-22-0-beta-1-now-available

The issue of Composer hanging upon launch is documented in PI-008179, if you are affected by that issue, please reach out to Support and create a case. If possible, include macOS Version, Hardware Specs, and any Anti-virus that may be running on affected machines when creating the case as any information we can gather on the issue would be helpful.

[cwaldrip]

Weird, just saw this on a coworkers machine and copying the helper from a known good system, and changing the permissions and owner/group didn't fix it... machine is 10.15, and the app is 10.27 (was happening under app version 10.19). I get "The helper tool is required to use Composer" when I try to launch it.

It installs the helper, but can't use/see it?

[Giannini]

Just tried the same thing and it worked on my mac running Mojave 10.14.6
copied the missing file from the package contents as suggested earlier and copied it to /Library/PrivilegedHelperTools. Restarted my machine and it all came good.