CrashPlan Software Crashing

October 2, 2012 | Filed under: Tech Tips

CrashPlan is a great backup service, but, ironically enough, the software starting crashing occasionally on my computer. It is not clear what causes this, but you can correct the problem by telling the software to use more RAM. Instructions follow.

First, run this command from the Terminal to stop the CrashPlan service from running:

sudo launchctl unload /Library/LaunchDaemons/com.crashplan.engine.plist

Now edit the plist file. It is owned by the root user, so it's easiest to use emacs or any other command line editor using sudo.

sudo emacs /Library/LaunchDaemons/com.crashplan.engine.plist

Change the string "Xmx512m" to "Xmx1024m". This tells the software to use 1024mb of RAM, which stopped the software from crashing. Save and exit emacs by pressing CTRL-X, CTRL-S to save and CTRL-X, CTRL-C to exit.

To restart the backup software, run this command from the Terminal:

sudo launchctl load /Library/LaunchDaemons/com.crashplan.engine.plist

After doing this, the software never crashed again.

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