[Busemann]

Originally posted by Link:
I finally found a partial solution for myself: Reinstall OS 10.2.

Yep, until 10.3.5 comes out (and someone here gives us news that it's fixed) -- I'm going to try and stay on 10.2.

So I let the installer start and took a nap on the sofa. When it was finished I eventually woke up to see a welcome screen on my monitor -- cool, went over, hit in some info and the desktop came up. No bitching about the pro speakers not working right -- they just worked like they should.

After trying a few apps and finally using camino to get around, I found it actually wasn't bad at all. The iTunes visualizer for some odd reason runs about 20fps faster now and everything just seems.. better.

Then again, I have to figure out how to situate GCC and the ancient dev tools since my ircd won't start :| *sigh* and many many programs don't work on 10.2 either.

*grumble* Oh well, partial apps and extra time setting up GCC is nothing compared to daily or twice a day crashing!!!

edit: After reinstalling my OS and currently being on 10.2, one of the underchat regulars (DS, thanks!!) points me out to this:

http://www.dshadow.com/software/unlockupd/

Unlockupd.. argh.

Reinstalling Jaguar isn't a good solution if you ask me
I installed unlockupd and hope it works (so far so good)..

btw. due to the nature of this problem, don't expect a fix in 10.3.5..

[Link]

Due to the nature of apple. Don't ever expect a fix for this problem unless you threaten (or pursue) legal action.

Apple has a well known reputation to be really really bad when it comes to problems like this.

[pat++]

Originally posted by Busemann:
btw. due to the nature of this problem, don't expect a fix in 10.3.5..

Are you kidding? This problem has been around for a while now, and Apple is aware of it.
They will surely have a fix for this in 10.3.5.

[Big Mac]

Although I thankfully am not among them, for the sake of those users who have experienced this problem, I pray you are right pat++. As an Apple Loyalist, I'd rather give up computing than leave my Mac. But, on the other hand, if I were experiencing this fatal issue and had to go months (years?) without a fix, I would definitely be tempted to abandon the platform. Look at Krypton - months ago he was reassuring us this would be fixed with 10.3.4, but now he's starting to despise Apple! Just out of curiosity, what makes you so confident 10.3.5 will come to the rescue?

[pat++]

Originally posted by Big Mac:
Just out of curiosity, what makes you so confident 10.3.5 will come to the rescue?

Just because it's a critical issue. It would be really silly for them to release a 40Mb+ update without this critical issue fixed. Moreover it seems that this bug has been clearly identified by Apple engineering.... So there are good chances that we'll have a fix in 10.3.5. Fingers crossed.

[Busemann]

This issue has been around since 10.3, there's no reason it should be fixed *now*.
Im quite confident it wont be resolved before Tiger, because they would probably have to change a lot of stuff deep in the system for it to be fixed.

Just my 2�

[willrob]

>>Just because it's a critical issue. It would be really silly for them to release a 40Mb+ update without this critical issue fixed. <<

It's been with us since 10.3, 10.31, 10.32 and 10.34. All of which have been 40-80MB updates. And still not fixed.

>>This issue has been around since 10.3, there's no reason it should be fixed *now*.
Im quite confident it wont be resolved before Tiger, because they would probably have to change a lot of stuff deep in the system for it to be fixed.<<

Tiger has already been sent to developers; so it either already has this problem solved, or it won't include it either.

[Busemann]

Originally posted by willrob:

Tiger has already been sent to developers; so it either already has this problem solved, or it won't include it either.

Umm.. I think there's time to include a fix for it even if the WWDC preview still has the problem

[Big Mac]

It's terrifically frustrating that we can't isolate the offending variable; everyone has a different theory about its cause, and this problem only effects a portion of users. A sizable portion, apparently, but not all. At least with the PPP bug everyone was experiencing the problem - and apple couldn't come up with a fix for that issue until an enterprising developer fixed it himself. And at least with the PPP bug your Mac was crippled only if you relied on PPP. Unfortunately, I must concur with those who claim this won't be fixed in Panther.

[Link]

Apple doesn't plan to release 10.4 until sometime next year. If they plan to hold off ANOTHER EIGHT MONTHS before offering a fix for this critical problem, you can be assured they just lost at least 100 customers.

[willrob]

I tried out (and am still trying out) unlockupd which Busseman mentioned last week:

http://www.dshadow.com/software/unlockupd/

So far I still get the random freeze, but not in the same situations I did before. And perhaps with less frequency.

has anyone else installed it and noticed a decline in freezes?

[willrob]

Well 10.3.5 has been released. The notes don't mention any solution to our problem. But then Apple never publicly acknowledged it anyway; so hopefully they too care of it. So far only available via software update.

[Zim]

Its been around since 10.3.0 (yes 0). ie, reported to Apple last NOVEMBER.

Waiting for a fix? I wouldn't hold my breath



Mike

[badtz]

has anyone freezed in 10.3.5 [screen freezes, but mouse moves].... ?

[mbi]

Haven't had the time to install 10.3.5 yet, but Apple's tech note certainly doesn't seem to mention a fix for this.

[Krypton]

Just had my first freeze with 10.3.5

Apple suck

[Jernberg]

My dual 2 Ghz G5 froze (mouse moves, but cannot click anything. Keyboard dead.). This was within 1 hour after installing 10.3.5.

The 10.3.5 install was made "by the book", i.e. I first repaired permissions and checked the target disk.

At the time of the freeze, I was running Safari, Suitcase, Azureus (bit torrent app) and Mail only. Safari was in the foreground when the freeze occured. There was no way I could do a normal shut down or reboot, I had to keep the power button pressed for a coupla seconds.

I've had these random freezes since 10.3.1 or so�

APPLE!!! WHEN ARE YOU GOING TO FIX THIS MASSIVE BUG??

[mbi]

Are you guys experiencing these freezes on machines with a dhcp network setup? I know that my ISP changes my IP address rather often and was wondering if this could somehow be related.

My thought was the following:

• Some heavy network activity is being run on the machine
• ISP assigns a new IP address via dhcp
• network traffic being sent to or from the old IP address fills some buffer
• buffer overruns, crash

Not even sure this makes sense from a networking point of view, but hey, its just an idea.

Anyone with a static IP experiencing these freezes?

[Jernberg]

I'm _not_ using DHCP, as I have been assigned a fixed IP number.

Originally posted by mbi:
Are you guys experiencing these freezes on machines with a dhcp network setup? I know that my ISP changes my IP address rather often and was wondering if this could somehow be related.

My thought was the following:

• Some heavy network activity is being run on the machine
• ISP assigns a new IP address via dhcp
• network traffic being sent to or from the old IP address fills some buffer
• buffer overruns, crash

Not even sure this makes sense from a networking point of view, but hey, its just an idea.

Anyone with a static IP experiencing these freezes?

[mbi]

Originally posted by Jernberg:
I'm _not_ using DHCP, as I have been assigned a fixed IP number.

Okay, nevermind then.

Still, I think it could be interesing if we could come up with some kind of "common denominator" our setups have. I mean, it has been established by now that not _all_ systems are subject to this issue: what makes ours prone to this bug?

[Krypton]

I think you are missing the point: there is no common denominator.

Freezes occur when your system can't allocate itself Virtual memory properly (not because you are using a particular app, and this has been confirmed by an Apple engineer) - I have 320 Mb of RAM, and I suspect systems with far more ram don't experience the problem.

[mbi]

Originally posted by Krypton:
I think you are missing the point: there is no common denominator.

Freezes occur when your system can't allocate itself Virtual memory properly (not because you are using a particular app, and this has been confirmed by an Apple engineer) - I have 320 Mb of RAM, and I suspect systems with far more ram don't experience the problem.

My system (a dual 1.25GHz G4 "MDD") has 1.25GB of RAM (which "should be enough for anyone" ). I have experienced freezes right after system startup, with no applications running yet.

Still, I agree with the Virtual Memory theory, namely the OS not being able to allocate additional swap space, mabye because of disk fragmentation, as it has been suggested before.

[Jernberg]

I have 2,5 GB RAM installed in my dual G5 2 Ghz (rev. 1). My freeze occured when running only Safari, Mail, Suitcase and Azureus. I cannot imagine that the freeze was because of some kind of "out of memory" error� Not with 2,5 GB RAM!

Originally posted by Krypton:
I think you are missing the point: there is no common denominator.

Freezes occur when your system can't allocate itself Virtual memory properly (not because you are using a particular app, and this has been confirmed by an Apple engineer) - I have 320 Mb of RAM, and I suspect systems with far more ram don't experience the problem.

[badtz]

Originally posted by willrob:
I tried out (and am still trying out) unlockupd which Busseman mentioned last week:

http://www.dshadow.com/software/unlockupd/

So far I still get the random freeze, but not in the same situations I did before. And perhaps with less frequency.

has anyone else installed it and noticed a decline in freezes?

has anyone had success using unlockupd?

[Busemann]

Originally posted by badtz:
has anyone had success using unlockupd?

nope

[Kate]

Originally posted by Jernberg:
My dual 2 Ghz G5 froze (mouse moves, but cannot click anything. Keyboard dead.). This was within 1 hour after installing 10.3.5.

The 10.3.5 install was made "by the book", i.e. I first repaired permissions and checked the target disk.

Exactly my case. But I had this twice. But after my second restart eveything went normal again. This system is up 24/7 . I never ever had this freeze before. This is with 1GB RAM.

[Powaqqatsi]

10.3.5 just froze on me

[Jernberg]

I have a feeling that the freezes are either related to memory (cache?) or graphics. I read on Apple's Discussion forum about a guy who could bring the G5 to freeze by running a demo from ATI. It's located at: http://www.ati.com/developer/demos/macss2/index.html
(Animusic Demo).

I tried it myself, and the G5 froze within 2 minutes. Graphics halted, but the music continued, at least for another minute, then it stopped also. The G5 never recovered and I had to force a re-boot.

Could you guys also try this demo and post your results. Leave it running for a while and see how long it lasts�

/Jernberg

[Kate]

Originally posted by Jernberg:
Could you guys also try this demo and post your results. Leave it running for a while and see how long it lasts�

I had this running on all my Macs. No issues for about an hour or so.

[badtz]

Originally posted by Busemann:
nope

yeah, confirmed it myself. unlockupd didn't work [on my machine]

[Big Mac]

Originally posted by Krypton:
I think you are missing the point: there is no common denominator.

Freezes occur when your system can't allocate itself Virtual memory properly (not because you are using a particular app, and this has been confirmed by an Apple engineer) - I have 320 Mb of RAM, and I suspect systems with far more ram don't experience the problem.

Low memory and low swap space isn't the problem either, though. My iBook has 320MBs of RAM, and I have about 1.3GBs of drive space free after a restart (without any swapping). Yet this has never happened to me.

[The Placid Casual]

This is all very, very odd.

As I posted earlier in this thread, I suffered from the problem too... Over at ARS they checked it out and worked out that even though OS X has defragmentation built in, there is something no quite right about it, and it is affecting the systems Virtual Memory allocation... Apple UK 'semi' confirmed that this was the cause when I spoke to one of the tech managers in Ireland.

All the people who suffered from the problem used a 3rd party app to defragment and the problems disappeared.

Personally, I added 1 gig RAM and defragged my G5, and have not had one of these crashes since... And my machine runs 24/7 with very high network loads etc...

Has any one tried this course of action? If so, did it help you?

I only ask as everyone who tried it on ARS fixed the issue...

[Jernberg]

Which app is the best for defragging? I'm very suspicious about Norton, since it rendered a drive useless once, but that was back in the "OS 9 days"�

Originally posted by The Placid Casual:
This is all very, very odd.

As I posted earlier in this thread, I suffered from the problem too... Over at ARS they checked it out and worked out that even though OS X has defragmentation built in, there is something no quite right about it, and it is affecting the systems Virtual Memory allocation... Apple UK 'semi' confirmed that this was the cause when I spoke to one of the tech managers in Ireland.

All the people who suffered from the problem used a 3rd party app to defragment and the problems disappeared.

Personally, I added 1 gig RAM and defragged my G5, and have not had one of these crashes since... And my machine runs 24/7 with very high network loads etc...

Has any one tried this course of action? If so, did it help you?

I only ask as everyone who tried it on ARS fixed the issue...

[mbi]

Has any one tried this course of action? If so, did it help you?

Yes, but it's only a temporary solution. The freezes eventually start again.

I'm currently defragmenting my disks about twice a month, whenever I notice the freeze-rate increasing.

[Big Mac]

Guys, if this were a general, low level bug this would be happening to most, if not every Mac. It clearly is not, so there must be something other than the OS alone to blame.

[Kate]

Interestingly I had this never ever since 10.3.5 as stated above. But today I had my third freeze of that type all of a sudden.

So far I can neither relate this to an app, nor to memory. But three times makes no good statistics. I do not hope for good statistics on this though.....

Anyway, my disk is not full (70%), but may be rather fragmented. So I'll try defragging next. This is so odd.

[The Placid Casual]

Originally posted by Jernberg:
Which app is the best for defragging? I'm very suspicious about Norton, since it rendered a drive useless once, but that was back in the "OS 9 days"�

I would avoid Norton at all costs... look at something like Drive 10 or Diskwarrior...

[Jernberg]

Originally posted by The Placid Casual:
I would avoid Norton at all costs... look at something like Drive 10 or Diskwarrior...

I checked out Alsofts info on Diskwarrior (which I have used on OS 9), but cannot find any explicit info that says that DW _does_ defrag drives. It only talks about rebuildning file index and such�

I might as well check out Drive 10, i guess

Thanks for the feedback!

[dlgraves]

Hi,

haven't seen anyone talking about the crashreporter fix lately, but I tried it more than a month ago (well before 10.3.5) and have not had one crash since. Anyone know how this would theoretically tie into the swap disk / virtual memory theories?

Knokcing hard on wood.

lucas

[quiksilver]

hi

I have had a lot of problems with my brand new 12" powerbook. In the first period it could crash like 10-15 times a day, and this lead me to the knowledge about this thread. After what I read I do believe that my problem the first time came in combination with Bittorren, wireless connection and some web surfing with safari. The reasons of this believe of mine is that after I quit using bittorrent my problems stopped. Later on I've had some sporadically problems, and the last time was when I tried to move 1.25 Gb from my iPod, to an other external disk using USB connection on both of them. 3 times I tried this, and 3 times it crashed before I changed the iPod to Firewire, and everything was ok again (when I say crash, I mean that nothing responds, or that the mouse responds, but don't have any function on buttons or so)

Lather this day I came over this tread, and for me solution (at least so far) http://mac1.no/community/modules.php...809&highlight=

And for those of you not know how to read Norwegian, I do some translation:

1. Download cocktail from www.versiontracker.com
2. Install it in applications or where ever it fits for you
3. Quit all applications
4. Start cocktail - if it asks for your administrator password it totally normal.
5. Click on the "pilot" icon, and check all the boxes: clean caches, run cron..., remove archi...., prebind... and repair permissions. Hit "run". Cocktail might act like it dos not respond, but be patient, and let it do its job.
6. When cocktail is done, shut down the computer
7. You shall now reset the PRAM. I don't know how you do this on other computers than powerbook G4. And on this you press: Apple - alt - r - p simultaneously when you start the computer again. You will hear two "start up" sounds. 1 normal, and 1 a little more silent one. Then you release the buttons.

If you like som more information about resetting of PRAM check this out: http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=2238

I hope it might work for more than me.

[Zim]

Originally posted by Big Mac:
Guys, if this were a general, low level bug this would be happening to most, if not every Mac. It clearly is not, so there must be something other than the OS alone to blame.

Ok, then USING the OS is to blame

Seriously, I've used Solaris (unix) at work for 11 years now, and ultrix for 5 years before that. I've locked up my work box maybe 6 times.

Point being this is low level. Anything higher level should crash and take only itself down, not the entire system.

And it only started with 10.3.0. Same applications pre-10.3 == no problem.

Mike

[jjs357]

Originally posted by dlgraves:
Hi,

haven't seen anyone talking about the crashreporter fix lately, but I tried it more than a month ago (well before 10.3.5) and have not had one crash since. Anyone know how this would theoretically tie into the swap disk / virtual memory theories?

Knokcing hard on wood.

lucas

I disabled crashreporter on Saturday and then had the same ole freeze on Sunday.

Had iTunes open streaming a radio station to my home stereo via Airport Express from my tiBook 1ghz which is part of my home network that includes an old Airport base station.

Also had Safari, Mail, Terminal, Fire and a few other applications running at the time.

The freeze occurred when I was carrying the tiBook to another room, still playing the stream, where there might have been a momentary loss of airport signal. I had previously carried the tBook from the room to which I was returning some time earlier and there was no problem then.

Anyway, I thought I would report the failure of the crashreporter turn-off being a solution for me at least.

Jim

[Kate]

I see the freezes now every day depending on the number of swapfiles!
As long as there are only 3-4 swapfiles everything is ok, but starting with the 4th or while generating the 5th swapfile I get the freeze where only the mouse moves and nothing else.

When I let the Mac just sit there after the freeze occurs it does not recover. At least not after 30 minutes.

I had never had more than 2 swapfiles until now. So this might well be caused by the Vm-system.

As a sidenote: I run the same setting on my Powerbook and have 2! swapfiles and had no such freezes yet, even under heavy use. The PB has 768 MB RAM, my Powermac has 1GB RAM. After a restart the swapfiles are reset and you start again with just a single file. This explains why we do not get the next freeze shortly after a restart. Weird!

[badtz]

isn't there only one swap file?

why does it need to make more than one?


[interested to know ]


..... as I"m getting freezes also!

[Big Mac]

Originally posted by Zim:
Ok, then USING the OS is to blame

Seriously, I've used Solaris (unix) at work for 11 years now, and ultrix for 5 years before that. I've locked up my work box maybe 6 times.

Point being this is low level. Anything higher level should crash and take only itself down, not the entire system.

And it only started with 10.3.0. Same applications pre-10.3 == no problem.

Mike

It is low level, obviously, but my point was is that it's not universal. There's some common denominator we must be missing. And it's not low or fragmented VM space, because my iBook has low drive space (it even gives low space warnings) but it does not suffer from this malady. My G5 does not have this problem. Only a portion of users - sizable but clearly not a majority - are experiencing this, so it's not a universal OS X issue.

I'm wondering, can anyone experiencing this problem agree to wipe their system and use only the bundled OS X applications for awhile? I bet that person wouldn't see any freezes.

[mbi]

I'm wondering, can anyone experiencing this problem agree to wipe their system and use only the bundled OS X applications for awhile? I bet that person wouldn't see any freezes.

Scroll back this thread a little bit and you will read of people wiping their system and reinstalling Panther and getting freezes during the install process itself.

... which scares the hell out of me, because it would mean that the common denominator could be linked to our hardware; e.g.: if it's not software related (the hard drive has been wiped) then what is it? Is the install procedure using Panther's Mach kernel as well? And in this case how comes people experiencing the freezes get them again during installation, while million other users's machines have never crashed because of this issue?

And let's push the speculations even a bit further: if it was hardware-related (defect chipset, defect hard drives, ...) this would explain why Apple hasn't apparently done anything to correct the issue: it would be way too expensive for them to admit there is a flaw in part of their machines, because the users would (rightfully) demand reparation.

Ok, all together now: panic!

(Feel free to call BS on me if you think I'm utterly wrong)

[HorseyBoy]

I wonder whether it might not be hardware related after all - specifically RAM modules. Just a hunch, really, because I'm convinced it's got something to do with memory management, and after running the usual battery of tests and fixes (and still getting periodic freezes) I decided to run tech Tool Pro's suite of hardware tests as well. The Mac locks up every time it tries to check the memory. I've got one factory-installed Apple module running with a stick of Kingston RAM and I'm starting to think that might be the problem.

[Kate]

There IS something going on with VM. Last night I checked and had one swap file. Over the course of the night a second one appeared. And there were no new apps opened, no files moved etc. The VM system should create a new and additional swap file if needed, but, in this case there seems to be no such need, since no new memory allocations should have been requested as no new app could have called for one.

And it is a rare subject to boot, since my powermac is the only one with this failure in the whole network. And it got this behaviour since 10.3.5 . So I would not rule out a combination of hardware and the upgrade mechanism.

[willrob]

>>I wonder whether it might not be hardware related after all - specifically RAM modules.<<

On the G5 thread dealing with this problem, it was the Apple supplied Ram that was the source for many owners. There apparently was a bad batch of Samsung Ram that shipped in the new G5's, which Apple had to replace.

The G5 freezing thread is at

http://discussions.info.apple.com/[email protected]/354

I recently installed a freeware app called SwapMenu (available on Versontracker) which displays swap file size in the menu bar. So far I haven't noticed any direct connection between increased file size and the freeze. It can be smooth sailing with large swap allocation and crashes with just the first 64Mb swap. I've taken out my Ram chips and run the system with only one chip installed at a time�all three chips can bring on a freeze eventually. And of course, as with most of you, this problem did not exist under Jaguar.

[SMacTech]

Originally posted by Kate:
There IS something going on with VM. Last night I checked and had one swap file. Over the course of the night a second one appeared. And there were no new apps opened, no files moved etc. The VM system should create a new and additional swap file if needed, but, in this case there seems to be no such need, since no new memory allocations should have been requested as no new app could have called for one.

It's possible that the current running apps needed more memory causing VM to create another swap file. Could be a memory leak or just additional memory was needed for something else.

I doubt they are created without the need for them!