[voodoo]

Hello there!

I've got a few Macs lying around and one (iMac), running 10.6.4 is and has been having problems - the entire system just beachballs every now and again. I don't see any special pattern in it, which is a problem - except that by shutting down Time Machine the beachballs are less frequent.

But they are far from gone. I've recently upgraded the RAM to 4 GB and this is a 2.4 GHz C2D iMac - and it isn't running anything more taxing than Safari, QuickTime Player, Mail, Word 2008, iPhoto... you know the very run of the mill boring apps.

Even though I've never seen a special pattern in *when* this happens, it happens more to apps made by Apple - in fact Safari can be pretty bad, all apps that use QuickTime in any way shape or form for playback and the Finder itself.

I've only got about 30 GBs left of the HD which I thought was perhaps the reason, but still.. I don't know. I've got another iMac (2 GHz / 1 GB RAM) that has even LESS hard-drive space left and it runs fine.. takes a few moments to switch between apps, sure but it doesn't randomly *stop* and beachball.

Then I thought it was perhaps the immense amount of VM the system is taking (more than 100 GB when there are only ca. 30 available..) but then the system is only using 2-3 GBs of the 4 available.

I don't get it.. any ideas?

[Oisín]

How long do the beachballings last?

If they’re just a few seconds each time, then it sounds like what I get here (and have gotten, ever since first upgrading to 10.6, not just in 10.6.4).

In my case, it’s easily identified: every time an app (for whatever reason) needs a list of available drives or anything like that, I have to wait for all three internal drives to spin up (and before I unplugged it, also the external one). Now why playing an embedded YouTube video would need to have anything whatsoever to do with your drives, I have no idea.

[voodoo]

Originally Posted by Oisín 

How long do the beachballings last?

If they’re just a few seconds each time, then it sounds like what I get here (and have gotten, ever since first upgrading to 10.6, not just in 10.6.4).

In my case, it’s easily identified: every time an app (for whatever reason) needs a list of available drives or anything like that, I have to wait for all three internal drives to spin up (and before I unplugged it, also the external one). Now why playing an embedded YouTube video would need to have anything whatsoever to do with your drives, I have no idea.

Yeah the beacballs only last for a few seconds (3-10 secs) each time and indeed this problem started with 10.6.x .... though I have not been able to identify this with spinning up drives - in fact, if I plug in the 2 extra HDs, the machine seems to beachball far less - but only using the internal drive, no optical media inserted, no external HDs - then the iMac is prone to beachball like it's 1999 (and it's actually a 300 MHz G3 trying to run an OS X Developer Preview)

I began to notice this during QT playback, both in the QTP and iTunes (when playing movies).. interestingly VLC is slightly affected, but doesn't beachball. It just coughs a fraction of a second, but doesn't really stop. So when QT/Finder/Safari etc. are beachballing (every now and then) other apps are affected but not as seriously..

An like a hicchough this last for some time, but can disappear. So perhaps for a few hours the iMac is beachballing every 30-60 sec. and then it seems ok again. Restarting helps, but the beachballing returns rather fast if it was active at the time of the restart.

I'm preparing this iMac for wiping. I'm re-installing everything, this is too annoying. I've had many many Macs, never have I seen this and there are 2 other Macs right here running 10.6.x (one more powerful than this and one less powerful) but neither one has this problem.

[Spheric Harlot]

Do the Console logs have anything interesting in them - something timing out, perhaps?

[voodoo]

Originally Posted by Spheric Harlot 

Do the Console logs have anything interesting in them - something timing out, perhaps?

Aishh.. I don't know the first thing about reading into the Console logs. It's all greek to me! ... something could be timing out, but I don't know what it might be. Yesterday it was so bad I just turned the computer off and went and read a book.

Today, it's behaving completely normal. :S

I did a string search for 'timeout' in the console and the only thing that came up was:

Code:
8/16/10 9:07:45 PM	PreferenceSyncClient[2501]	[1112b0] |Server|Warning| failed to connect to the server: NSPortTimeoutException connection timeout: did not receive reply

[Veltliner]

I have beachballing sufficient for a beach ball world cup. Culprit: Bridge CS3 and it's slow building of high quality previews. Which I need.

Do you have any software that processes in the background. (Can't call Bridge CS3's work "background" though, but main elbowing and bullying all other processes down to a crawl).

Another one: have you tried to repair your directory with DiskWarrior?

[Spheric Harlot]

CS3 is not 10.6-compatible. As I recall, Adobe Bridge, specifically, is problematic (but don't quote me on that).

voodoo, the Console gets interesting when you can pin it down to the specific time the machine goes wonky.
If you note the time, say, 18:45:35, and you look into Console --> All messages and see a message repeated 40 times a second, it might be a clue on where to start looking.

[besson3c]

voodoo: the next time this happens I'd suggest running "iostat" to see what kind of disk activity you are getting, as well as "uptime" to check on your load average (which will be elevated when your disk is unable to keep up with the I/O demands). An app that is really pegging your disk can cause stalling like you are describing, as can a disk that is starting to fail. The console/log data suggestion is also a good one.

[Spheric Harlot]

If you don't want to futz with the Terminal, you can check Activity Viewer instead - it's in the Utilities folder.

(also, I recommend installing SMARTReporter and MenuMeters, both of which are free and add icons to your menu bar to give you SMART status of your internal drive and CPU usage, network transfer rates, and disk activity (including RAM paging).)

[besson3c]

Originally Posted by Spheric Harlot 

If you don't want to futz with the Terminal, you can check Activity Viewer instead - it's in the Utilities folder.

(also, I recommend installing SMARTReporter and MenuMeters, both of which are free and add icons to your menu bar to give you SMART status of your internal drive and CPU usage, network transfer rates, and disk activity (including RAM paging).)

Why doesn't Activity Monitor show load average? I know the numbers are terribly misunderstood and misinterpreted, but it would still be useful to display there, esp. for admins...

[voodoo]

Thanks guys! I'll take a look at the Console next time the Mac starts acting up, Spheric.

Perhaps the HD is failing... Well, something is wrong.

Typically, the machine is working at full cylinders today .. so until things go south again, I'll just have to wait and see ..

[mduell]

Originally Posted by voodoo 

Then I thought it was perhaps the immense amount of VM the system is taking (more than 100 GB when there are only ca. 30 available..) but then the system is only using 2-3 GBs of the 4 available.

VM is just addressing space for OS/apps. No relation to physical memory or swap space.

[voodoo]

Well, after much deliberation and investigation, the internal hard drive is the culprit. Perhaps it is failing, but after mirroring its contents to an external FireWire drive and booting from that external drive - the Mac is again running smoothly and without any hiccoughs.



I guess I should have the internal drive replaced, but I've reformatted it for now and it seems ok... though I don't trust it any more.

Thanks for the advice, guys and gals!

[Veltliner]

Originally Posted by Spheric Harlot 

CS3 is not 10.6-compatible. As I recall, Adobe Bridge, specifically, is problematic (but don't quote me on that).

There are a few issues with CS3 in Snow Leopard, but they are exotic. I have logged in several hundred hours of Photoshop CS3 under Snow Leopard, and it works.

Bridge CS3 is a problem, and some issues may stem from Snow Leopard. But it's never been a particularly well built application. Looking forward to CS5, but I'm not sure if it will run well on my old 24" white iMac and it's low 3 Gb RAM (maxed out), so I'm holding off with the upgrade.