Can not install add-ins

[sjeffff]

I often get error messages when I try to install an add-in. And on start-up I also always get an error message showing up

While this error is most probably unrelated, I just wanted to share it anyway to sketch the full picture.

I try to install the following plugin https://apps.autodesk.com/FUSION/en/Detail/Index?id=3662665235866169729&appLang=en&os=Mac&autostart=.... The first weird thing,when installing this plugin. Is that it asks me to accept some agreement, which is actually just a white screen. Then it throws an error. And the plugin is not(?) installed. I do not know for sure, since. Like I said. I almost always get error messages when installing a plugin. I just can not find it in my menu bar. But then again, I can barely find anything over after the last re-design update 😅.

[ryan.bales]

So there is a few things going on. It should still run after installed and the add-in error is usually because the add-ins are not written for the new UI. Now once installed and running it should be here under tools:

[ryan.bales]

Also - the add in isn't for shaper- but for slicer. Uninstall and reinstall slicer and you should not see that error.

[sjeffff]

Hi Ryan,

Thank you for your replies. Unfortunately it does not resolve the issue. It is not installed (since I do not see the add-in on the position you mentioned, neither does it show up in the add-ins list).

What can I do in such a scenario?

The issue with the startup error is resolved btw, thanks for that.

[_koos42_]

I too cannot install add-ins. I was able to get slicer installed on a fresh install of Fusion 360 from the web. I'm on a Mac. When I try to install an add-in from a .pkg file, I get this:

Being a software engineer, I got quite curious and found that my user didn't own my `Library/Application\ Support/Autodesk/ApplicationPlugins/` directory. So I fixed that. The installations still aren't working, however.

I figured that there should be some logs, and sure enough, I found some log file called, `/Users/koos/Library/Application\ Support/Autodesk/copyreg_20190330143040.log`. Its contents seem to imply that during the installation some "plist" file cannot be found, and therefore it looks like the installer is breaking.

logs:

Removing Current User Settings: /Users/koos/Library/Application Support/Autodesk/FusionDoc R3/R23.0/local/HKCU_V1.plist
Path not exist: /Users/koos/Library/Application Support/Autodesk/FusionDoc R3/R23.0/local/HKCU_V1.plist
Confirm /Users/koos/Library/Application Support/Autodesk/FusionDoc R3/R23.0/local/HKCU_V1.plist removed
mv: rename /var/folders/sz/jyf2j2gd63x16z_218lft_hh0000gq/T/backupWorkingTar.pHagDwyw.tgz to /Users/koos/Library/Application Support/Autodesk/Settings Backup 03-30-2019 14.30.41.tgz: No such file or directory

At this point, I'm assuming that there is some incompatibility between the current version of Fusion 360 and the installer packages that you get from the app store.

[_koos42_]

I had this issue, but I have since been able to fix this for myself!

By exploring the add-in's .pkg, I found a post-install script that symlinked from the "~/Library/Containers/com.autodesk.mas.fusion360/Data/Library/Application\ Support/Autodesk/<plugin>.bundle" to "~/Library/Application\ Support/Autodesk/ApplicationPlugins/<plugin>.bundle". I found out that I had some permissions issues; as I was not the "owner" of two critical directories:

~/Library/Containers/com.autodesk.mas.fusion360/Data/Library/Application\ Support/Autodesk
~/Library/Application\ Support/Autodesk/ApplicationPlugins

I found that these two directories were owned by the "root" user, as though they were installed by root, and therefore could only be written by root. So I chowned them to my user using the `chown` command recursively.

[_koos42_]

This turns out to only be a partial success. After "successfully" installing the plug-ins, they don't appear in my UI, so I cannot use them.

[_koos42_]

I finally have gotten my add-ins to install. It turns out it was a matter of uninstalling Fusion 360 using the cleaner app. I went a step further and used the command line utility called `locate` to locate all files that related to Autodesk and remove those (including the library files I had previously chowned). I had an extra complication, because I had once tried to install Fusion 360 from the Mac App Store (big mistake).

Upon reinstall, everything seems to work as it I think its trying to support both the Mac App Store version and the normal install caused some kind of issue.

[sjeffff]

Thank you for your replies. What do you mean by "cleaner app version"? Is this related to the weird hoops you need to jump through in order to get the Fusion 360 application in the applications directory? Is there a version where this does not has to be done.

Also, doesn't changing the ownership of these directories cause a major security breach? Which implies that if the software becomes fraudulent, that it can install basically any kind of malware on my device without me noticing?

I did made the changes either way. So when I check these directories it now all belong to the group "staff". The user I am using is also part of this group. Unfortunately, I still can not install this particular package.

[_koos42_]

Messing with file permissions is definitely beyond the typical expectation of what a user may have to do. I don't think this constitutes a security breach, because I think the intention of those files is that the user is the owner. However, I think the issue is that the root user (probably via some installer) created the directories in your user's directory, but never made you the owner of those files. Because of this, when you run installers to install the add-ins, it's running as your user, and therefore can't copy files to where they need to go. I'm guessing this is a bug in the installer of Fusion 360, somewhere.

If you had the installer declare success, but still can't see the add-in you're installing, there is one more step that may need to be done. Here's the instructions I got from the maintainer of MapBoardsPro:

"""

copy MapBoardsPro.bundle from the first location to the second location then restart Fusion (replace logon ID):

from: /Users/<logon ID>/Library/Containers/com.autodesk.mas.fusion360/Data/Library/Application Support/Autodesk/ApplicationPlugins

to: /Users/<logon ID>/Library/Application Support/Autodesk/ApplicationPlugins

"""

I kind of did this, but instead of copying the contents from one location to the other, I made a symbolic link (command `ln -s`), as that is what I actually saw the installer for the Shaper Utilities package do.

I hope this helps. And, maybe someone from the Autodesk team will see this and chime in with wether this all is correct or not.

[ryan.bales]

@sjeffff and @_koos42_,

None of this should be necessary, if the add-in is not showing you could search for it manually - for example if you already have it installed. This would be especially true if you had it installed prior to the update. 

You can use the cleanup tool - https://knowledge.autodesk.com/support/fusion-360/troubleshooting/caas/sfdcarticles/sfdcarticles/How... and then reinstall both Fusion and the Shaper Plug-in and in theory that would fix it. 

[sjeffff]

New Add-In same problem. This proposed solution by @_koos42_ was the solution to the problem.

sudo chown -R USERNAME ~/Library/Application\ Support/Autodesk/ApplicationPlugins
sudo chown -R USERNAME ~/Library/Containers/com.autodesk.mas.fusion360/Data/Library/Application\ Support/Autodesk/

(Replace USERNAME with the required username)

The previous time I have re-installed Fusion 360 and installed the required add-ins manually. Now I tried the solution proposed by Koos. Which seems to work just as well. That makes me extra curious...

@_koos42_, are these two directories still owned by the user you have changed them to? Or have they changed to root?

[fredgab]

Thank you very much!

Had some trouble since months to install add ins and this finally worked for me!

Thank you,

fred

[_koos42_]

The directories would have previously been owned by the `root` user, but they will now be owned by the user you set. `root` is a special user that is often used by the system, whereas your personal user typically can't do all of the special things root can. By using `sudo` "super user do", you're elevating your permissions to those of root. In this case, you're switching to the root user to change the owner to be your user (who will therefore now have permissions to read, and maybe write or execute those files).

If you ever see `sudo` that is really a red flag, because you can do horrible things to your computer with elevated permissions and a typo, or you could copy a one line script that starts with `sudo` and it could run and download, execute all sorts of badness.

My guess is that the old installer installed the app and plug-ins as the system, using root. But the update likely changed this to install the app as the local user, along with the plugins, too. This makes sense, even if it was slight, they were probably concerned that plug-ins operating with system privileges could be a path to running malicious code.

If AutoDesk has a clean up tool that works, I would highly recommend that over my copy-paste bash script hack job. Who knows what I missed, or what problems it could create in the future.

[Anonymous]

For some reason only one of those folders were under root account on my machine. 

The solution fixed the problem!!

[tim.shimo]

This old discussion thread solved my even older problem of being unable to install Add-Ins on Mac OS. Thanks, @_koos42_  and @sjeffff - FINALLY a solution.