[azarel]

I've just experienced the same problem on my pb 12" with panther 10.3.2 installed...IThe system 'froze' when MS Words crashed on me...the mouse could move and select (or using Cmd-Tab) apps but I just can't click on anything!!! Ended up logging out immediately (Shift-Option-Comd-Q) and everything was back to normal after logging back in...

[Azzgunther]

It froze again after re-installing 10.3 and upgrading to 10.3.1. Damn.

[HorseyBoy]

I can chime in and say I get the exact same problem and it's always when I'm running bit torrent and it's close to finishing a download. At first I thought it must be the official bit torrent client causing the lockups so I switched to an alternative client (the one available at www.sarwat.net). The problem is now less frequent, but it still remains.
No Airport, no router, just a straight cable modem connection.

[Spheric Harlot]

Originally posted by pimephalis:
However, I've also had my iBook lock up when downloading a single .dmg from a web site and when running an sftp session. Both of those should initiate only one network connection (I believe).

Mine have invariably happened on the iMac when attempting to copy large amounts of data from the iMac to the Powerbook via Airport.

after a few hundred megabytes, it will just die.

-s*

[yukon]

seen it, a couple times. probably running Adium, iCab, iTunes, Finder, SimpleText/TextEdit, MPlayer, Carracho, and extensive use of Expose. I don't have "Haxies" except a disabled MenuMeters (and TinkerTool if it counts), no MS software. Two HDs, SCSI Burner, dying Intellimouse Explorer, MacAlly iKey...can't think of anything else special....10.3.0

[Link]

i think it's totally random and a problem with panther >_<

[Azzgunther]

Originally posted by Link:
i think it's totally random and a problem with panther >_<

The problem with that assertion is that I've had a perfectly working Panther system for two months and then it suddenly began to freeze when 10.3.2 OR the Airport 3.3 update came out.

YUKON-

Did you ever upgrade to 10.3.2 or Airport 3.3?

[Spliff]

Please email MacFixit.com so they put it on their front page. Maybe then Apple will take notice and fix this bloody problem.

[email protected]

[Zim]

Also join ADC (free) and submit the bug there. (I submitted mine in Nov)

Mike

[Busemann]

Count me in as well..

ALWAYS happens when running iTunes
ALWAYS happens during heavy net-traffic (BitTorent, carracho, p2p apps etc)

I'm on a dual 1,25MDD, no airport

[Judge_Fire]

Me too a few times, only, tho.

10.3.2, no Airport. For me it feels to be related to the Finder; networking mainly.

The weird part is I can't even SSH into my machine - it responds and stalls, failing to prompt for a login.

SSH work for others?

J

[Spheric Harlot]

Originally posted by Busemann:
Count me in as well..

ALWAYS happens when running iTunes
ALWAYS happens during heavy net-traffic (BitTorent, carracho, p2p apps etc)

I'm on a dual 1,25MDD, no airport

I never run iTunes on the iMac that locks up.

-s*

[yukon]

Forgot to mention, i have a Samba share running. Yes, I updated to the latest a few months ago, and messed the system up pretty badly through something else, and decided to avoid some random issues (the finder crashing/stalling, for example) I had with 10.3.2, and haven't updated (I'm protected security-wise) after a clean reinstall. No, I've never installed any Airport updates. I don't have BitTorrent or any other P2P running, but there is heavy activity on the Samba/SMB share. The SMB share sometimes gets errors on client machines (IO Errno 22 on windows) and I see errors often in the Samba logs, but they don't seem to coincide with the Panther lockups.

I mentioned before that I use Expose heavily, because it seems to happen after using it. Happened yesterday after the "expose finder/desktop" effect.

[OoklaTheMok]

with bittorrent a lot of PC users have spontaneous restarts; updating their network card drivers usually fixes the problem. Of course we all have onboard ethernet, but for those of us using airport it sounds like a similar dilemma...

I had my 17" lock up a couple days ago but it's just been the once and I haven't a clue what caused it... it was after Safari 1.2 came out though, and I was using it at the time. And I've always got bt seeding in the background. And I've got the newest version of everything installed.

[dfbills]

Definitely looking like the airport driver to me. I've been crashing 5-6 times a day all week. Only thing that seem to eliminate it was safe boot. I got the idea to try an ethernet cable instead of airport and I've been stable for 3-4 hours.

[Link]

Originally posted by Azzgunther:
The problem with that assertion is that I've had a perfectly working Panther system for two months and then it suddenly began to freeze when 10.3.2 OR the Airport 3.3 update came out.

YUKON-

Did you ever upgrade to 10.3.2 or Airport 3.3?

Yes but I've been using it frmo 10.3 up and it has had the problem all the way through.. my airport card's also too old for 3.3

[Link]

Chalk up some more:
1. doesn't always happen with itunes
2. NEVER have had bt running when it happens.. 99% of the time not even in it's run (I seldom use bt)


I think it's more or less related to the swap file and the way it's handeled.. it always seems to lock up this way when my computer's about to get bombed (open a new window, new app, click a link, something dramatic)...

I dunno but this is begining to get annoying

[dfbills]

Starting?

Originally posted by Link:
Chalk up some more:
1. doesn't always happen with itunes
2. NEVER have had bt running when it happens.. 99% of the time not even in it's run (I seldom use bt)


I think it's more or less related to the swap file and the way it's handeled.. it always seems to lock up this way when my computer's about to get bombed (open a new window, new app, click a link, something dramatic)...

I dunno but this is begining to get annoying

[yukon]

I don't have any wireless on my G4, if that helps at all. could be the driver, if for some reason it's loading without the card.

swapfiles, could be, but usually OS X just says i'm running out of disk space when there's a memory leak somewhere....

[Bi@tch]

I've been having smimilar problems with my Dual 1.8 G5. I thought it was a G5 problem until I saw this thread.

It seems to be related to graphic intensive operations for me...

[pat++]

Originally posted by alphasubzero949:
Now, iChat will not open at all. I even tried installing the new beta. It still fails to open. I tried a few things. It now launches, but sporadically. The exec file within the package says there's a "Broken Pipe." (I started a thread about this in the Software forum).

I opened a bug on this to Apple months ago. From what i've seen, it seems to be related to upnp/ssdp.... do you have a DLink router (DLink DI-604) ? anyway, try to reboot your router/modem. It should fix the problem. Let us know if this helps.

[pimephalis]

Everyone posting here should also be reading the apple discussions that were linked on the previous page. Our thinking about Safari/Airport/Swap files is all apparently incorrect. What is happening is that lookupd is crashing, and unfortunately the crashreporterd routine then tries to log information about the crash. However, in order to operate, crashreporterd relies on lookupd -- this is what results in the hang up.

The good news is the admin crowd have more or less specified exactly what's going on and are sending crash reports to the Apple engineers. One poster also provided snippets from an Apple engineer's email which stated that they know of the problem, and are working to solve it.

Just thought I'd share...

EDIT:

Here are the relevant links to the apple discussion boards:

Discussion 1


Discussion 2

[Spliff]

Here's an apparent temporary fix for this problem (crashreporterd hanging when lookupd crashes) posted at the Apple Discussion forums:

The simplest way around it is to turn off crash logging. Here's how you would make changes to the file...

1. Log in as a user with administration privileges.
2. Run the Terminal application (in /Applications/Utilities)
3. Type "sudo pico /etc/hostconfig".
4. When asked, enter the password for your account -- not the root password.
5. Use Pico, a very easy to use text editor, to edit the hostconfig file. Change "CRASHREPORTER=-YES-" to "CRASHREPORTER=-NO-" , or add the line in the unlikely event that it doesn't exist.
5a; If you screw up the file, type Control-X, answer No to when asked if you want to save your changes, and then go back to step 3.
6. Type Control-O to write out the changes.
7. Type Control-X to quit Pico.
8. Re-start your server.

You can't simply edit this file from TextEdit because it's owned by the user "root", and (to simplify) you must use the "sudo" command to gain the right to make changes to it.

[yukon]

Thanks spliff, trying now. Too bad I'll lose the crashreporter, but that's not a big deal.

[rockhaus]

My TiBook 667 with 10.3.2, 1024K RAM and an older Travelstar 60GB does not lock up that way. In fact, since 10.3.2 it has not had problems waking from sleep. I use all the same apps, Macaroni included - except Entourage. It is not installed. Good luck.

[hudson1]

Maybe this is why we haven't seen 10.3.3 yet. Apple could be trying to get a fix included for that release.

[tubagruv]

Man, misery loves company. I'm just glad to see I'm not the only one having these weird freezes. They just started a few days ago, even though I've been running 10.3.2 for a while now. I thought it was Safari, too, until other apps were crashing. It's always happening during heavy Airport use, be it Safari or Camino or Thoth... I'll try the fix in Terminal if things get too out of control. Hope this is fixed in 10.3.3!

[aol]

Just chiming in that this problem has been annoying me since 10.3. I'll try the fix of turning off the crash log. Just to clarify, I believe we are talking about one specific problem: the system will become totally unresponsive except that the mouse will continue to move properly. Interesting that 'book users may be able to force a "go to sleep" by putting the lid down and wait a few minutes to possibly have the problem go away.

My system: dual 1 GHz, two hard drives (three partitions on the first, one on the second), 10.3.2; crashes have happened ever since Panther but interestingly they seemed to abate for a single update, I think the first security update after Panther came out. A subsequent update re-enabled the crashes. I rebuilt the machine from scratch because of this problem, even reformatted the second hard drive, so I know I am using a rediculously clean system.

Crashes occur while using Thoth, MacPar Deluxe, and par2cmdline with almost 100% reliability. Watch Thoth, have MacPar Deluxe doing it's thing and par2cmdline doing it's thing, and when Thoth finishes a binary download, freeze.

Crash has also occurred with Toast while MacPar Deluxe and par2cmdline were running.

I had attributed it to some funkiness in using two hard drives, since it seems to happen with heavy hard drive use.

Thanks for the thread, I was beginning to think I was the only one that was having this issue. Now I know I'm certainly not!

Best,
Andrew

[Xapplimatic@Ade]

For those who have constant odd crashes that hang that aren't related to lookupd and crashreporter, I would be interested to know if they are using an Upgrade Panther install, or if they did archive and install (should have IMHO).

[Spliff]

Why the hell hasn't MacFixit.com reported on this? That website went to crap as a troubleshooting resource when they started charging for subscriptions.

[yukon]

I don't even bother with macfixit anymore, the forums seem to work better.

just a note, since turning off crashreporter, I haven't had any problems...."aol", try the crashreporter fix, then one of the applications causing the freezes, and see if anything is fixed, you may have either found another type of crash or a reproducable method of causing the crash we're all talking about.

[xe0]

Gaming is where my system gets date raped. I cant play any game for longer than a few minutes without a system-wide lockup. Quake 3 is the nastiest; if I play for longer than 5-10 min period, I am guaranteed a system lockup.

strangely, I noticed whilst at a LAN with a few PC mates of mine - my G5 did not lockup at all? (for which, Im quite thankful as i would have coped and ear-full from these blokes ). In fact I hosted most games we played all night- and Panther did not lock up once? Yet at home its a totally different story as mentioned above.

Anyone else experiencing similar gaming relatedlockups?

[ericdano]

I'm getting errors similar to the ones described above, but my Quicksilver shuts itself off. Any ideas?

[EdipisReks]

i get the hard lock problem too, but only when itunes is running. the machine freezes, with only the mouse cursor working and i have to hard reboot. the funny thing is, when i reboot my itunes library file has been corrupted and i have to reload it. damn irritating, having to redo the settings of 8100 songs. the only other thing that all lock situations have had in common has been airport usage, but the locks ONLY occur when itunes is running. everything is updated, and i've repaired permissions.

[Busemann]

Originally posted by EdipisReks:
i get the hard lock problem too, but only when itunes is running. the machine freezes, with only the mouse cursor working and i have to hard reboot. the funny thing is, when i reboot my itunes library file has been corrupted and i have to reload it. damn irritating, having to redo the settings of 8100 songs. the only other thing that all lock situations have had in common has been airport usage, but the locks ONLY occur when itunes is running. everything is updated, and i've repaired permissions.

That is exactly what i got as well. I now take weekly backups to the iTunes library file. what is weird is that it mostly happened while iTunes was doing something (changing song, adding songs etc)..

Anyways, I did a fsck -f and it did fix one thing, and after that I haven't had the freezes anymore. It could come back, but you should try a fsck and see if it helps..

[Link]

weird, I've NEVER had it happen to itunes, while it was running but the library never went corrupt..

I am becoming overly positive it's lookupd crashing (as suggested), but here's a few thoughts..

first off SSHing in is sometimes possible, sometimes not. Whhen you can, killing what's labeled as windowserv in top will leave you stuck at a blue screen....

Of course, this rarely ever works... most of the time the machine's dead frozen.

Personally I think in the case where the first one happens, there should be a way to force kill the window server (like you can do with xfree86 on BSD or linux), which would automatically cause it to restart the window server...

[ginoledesma]

Add me to the list as well. I'm using Mac OS 10.3.2, with practically all of the Apple updates (Airport 3.3, Security Updates, etc), on an iBook G4/12"/800/256MB RAM.

I'd experience this at least once a week, and yes, it can get very, very annoying. For what its worth, I've not installed Cocktail, Macaroni, or other system maintenance apps since I've never felt I needed to. Heck, I seem to have been spared the problems caused by not repairing permissions before/after an OS update.

I've always attributed this to either the fact that my system is starved for RAM (256MB of RAM with a LOT of page-ins/page-outs), or that I have TechTool Pro maintenance running every 4 hours in the background (which, by the way, will cause a huge drop in performance like QT movie playback).

I'm using a Netgear MR814v2 wireless router as the access point for the Airport Extreme card I'm using. I can't say much for "heavy network traffic" since I _rarely_ even achieve a quarter of my bandwidth allocation (512Kbps Cable connection). And even then, I have a PC doing all the heavy-duty downloading (since it has the most disk space).

The system is definitely a _hard freeze_. The system will not even respond to ping requests, much less accept incoming SSH connections.

[Link]

Most of the time that explains all of us..

[abbaj]

Originally posted by MadBrowser:
I just started having a strange problem with Panther 10.3.2 on my 1GHz 15" TiBook.

All of a sudden I'm getting hard freezes (3 today). When this occurs, I can still move the mouse but nothing else.

I can't force quit apps. Mousing over them in the Dock does not pop up their name. I cannot Command-Tab between them.

I ran Hardware Test and no problems were found. I repaired the disk and repaired the permissions...

And still it just happened again...

Anyone else seen anything like this? I have had a pretty constant set of apps open:

Entourage, Safari, Preview, Terminal and SpamSieve. That's it.

Any help appreciated.

[abbaj]

I have been running 10.3.2 for some time with no problem. Just started having this lock up problem. I have had it happen mostly in safari with only safari running.

The culprit must be Airport 3.3.1 which I just installed 2 days ago or ipod mini, which I just installed yesterday. First problem was yesterday. 3 or 4 hard freezes today. (All on my PB 04)

Hardware Overview:

Machine Model: PowerBook3,5
CPU Type: PowerPC G4 (3.2)
Number Of CPUs: 1
CPU Speed: 1 GHz
L2 Cache (per CPU): 256 KB
L3 Cache (per CPU): 1 MB
Memory: 768 MB
Bus Speed: 133 MHz
Boot ROM Version: 4.53f2

I really think it is airport 3.3.1. I have cleaned out cache and repaired permissions as well as run hardware checks. Everything appears ok. Problem appears randomly. I leave my machine on 24 hrs but do sleep display. Seems to happen more shortly after a wake up and airport turn on!

[HorseyBoy]

In my case I'm pretty sure it was the problem (mentioned in the thread) with the crash reporter. Ever since I applied the pico fix I haven't had a problem. Uptime is now at 14 days, 5 hours and 47 minutes. And yes, I know I'm asking for trouble just by mentioning it. I'm off to touch some wood . . .

[Apfhex]

Originally posted by EdipisReks:
i get the hard lock problem too, but only when itunes is running. the machine freezes, with only the mouse cursor working and i have to hard reboot.

Yes. Since I mentioned iTunes earlier in this thread, I thought I'd add my reason why I suspect it being related to iTunes (since I forgot to in the previous post): when my machine is locked up as has been described, with only the cursor moving, there's one more thing - the currently playing song in iTunes will continue to play for a second or so, in about 15 second intervals (really seems to be random but I haven't timed it). This would lead me to believe the system would recover if I just left it, but I've left it alone for far longer than is worth it just to not have to force a restart.

Though I think it's only happened when I have several of my most used apps opened (iTunes, Safari, Text Edit, Preview), so I can't pinpoint it. I also use Airport for my internet so that's always there too.

This crashreporterd thing sounds interesting...

[yukon]

I've had no crashing since i disabled crashreporter. that is all

[badtz]

Originally posted by yukon:
I've had no crashing since i disabled crashreporter. that is all

how was it disabled? [how would you re-enable it later?]

[Footy]

Originally posted by badtz:
how was it disabled? [how would you re-enable it later?]

Just open Activity Monitor highlight "crashreporterd", click Quit Process then select Force Quit. It will reload on your next restart.

That seemed to work for me for about 3 days. Then another crash. I ended up doing a clean install and staying at 10.3... No crashes since.

[badtz]

Originally posted by Footy:
Just open Activity Monitor highlight "crashreporterd", click Quit Process then select Force Quit. It will reload on your next restart.

That seemed to work for me for about 3 days. Then another crash. I ended up doing a clean install and staying at 10.3... No crashes since.

so eventually it crashed on you again w/out crashreporterd running?

[Spliff]

Originally posted by badtz:
how was it disabled? [how would you re-enable it later?]

When crashreportd locks up it is because lookupd has crashed. When lookupd crashes, crashreporter tries to write out the crash log. To do this it calls lookupd. Since it has crashed already, things lock up.

http://discusssearch.info.apple.com/WebX?128@@.599e4376

To turn of crash reporting:

1. Log in as a user with administration privileges.
2. Run the Terminal application (in /Applications/Utilities)
3. Type "sudo pico /etc/hostconfig".
4. When asked, enter the password for your account -- not the root password.
5. Use Pico, a very easy to use text editor, to edit the hostconfig file. Change "CRASHREPORTER=-YES-" to "CRASHREPORTER=-NO-" , or add the line in the unlikely event that it doesn't exist.
5a; If you screw up the file, type Control-X, answer No to when asked if you want to save your changes, and then go back to step 3.
6. Type Control-O to write out the changes.
7. Type Control-X to quit Pico.
8. Re-start your server.

You can't simply edit this file from TextEdit because it's owned by the user "root", and (to simplify) you must use the "sudo" command to gain the right to make changes to it.

[badtz]

if anyone can confirm if this problem has been fixed in 10.3.3 that'd be great ?

[nforcer]

On 10.3.2 I experienced quite a few freezes.

I downloaded a file with 'curl' in the terminal, and it did its thing and soon reported the download as complete. Finder size was 14 MB. I opened it to have Stuffit Expander try to uncompress the file. Then the system freeze occurred. I waited 12 minutes until I hit the off switch and restarted. Upon restart, I decided to expand the file again, noticing the file size was now listed as 13.9 MB. Instead of experiencing a freeze this time, Expander put up an error stating the file might be incomplete or damaged. I went back to the terminal, "resumed" the download that was already completed previously. About 130k more was added on to it. Then I opened it and things worked as expected.

At the time of the freeze I was running: Finder, Terminal, Launchbar, TextEdit, Safari, Mail, Adium, iChat, Preview, Quicktime Player, BBEdit, REALbasic 5.5.1, BitTorrent, and Stuffit Expander. Was going on an uptime of 2 or 3 days in 10.3.2. Only about 150,000 pageins and pageouts when I checked a few hours before the freeze. Special Hardware: 2 external Firewire hard drives (only 1 mounted), Logitech MX 500 mouse. Special software: USB Overdrive 10.3.2, Wiretap (it installs a kext, but I was not running the app), Little Snitch (might install something, but was not running at the time).

Just installed 10.3.3 right now. We'll see how things go.

[Link]

10.3.3 does NOT fix this issue. I've confirmed it

For me, 75% of the times when I have itunes playing either internet radio OR regular music, and happen to be mounting an external disk or disk image.. the comp freezes...

Just like candy..

*sigh* apple's programmers are begining to annoy me. They must code with their asses or something.