[ATPTourFan]

I'm sure everyone has seen this before: the frontmost app freezes which renders the Apple menu and also apple-option-esc useless. Sometimes it is possible to click on the desktop or Dock to get into a properly running app where you can then force quit the misbehaving app.

While I can't remember the last time I got a kernel panic, every so often I have to try to logout or at least force quit apps that aren't responding. Sometimes it is not possible at all through the GUI since the mouse click events are ignored.

I wish it was possible like in Linux to shut down the windowserver or just fall back into the console or something. Is this possible??

[OAW]

I would like an answer to this as well. Over the last few days I've had to reboot my PowerBook several times a day because such freezes. The frontmost app .... usually Safari .... stops responding. It's almost like the network functionality just dies because Entourage starts throwing "server not responding" errors too. I shut down Safari and the next app becomes frontmost. It works but I can't open up the Apple Menu which is what I want to do. I want to just log off and have everything unload but I can't do that because the Apple Menu won't respond. I only get the beachball on that, the desktop, and whatever the active application is when I try it. I shut that application down via the Dock and this cycle continues until all the apps are shut down and the only thing left is the Finder/Desktop at which point nothing is accessible.

I'm not sure what is causing this since my system has been very stable. I've rebooted more in the last two days than I have in the last 2 years. The only thing different is that I installed Growl a few days back to use with Adium for notifications when people sign on. So I stopped that process just to see if things get any better. But in the meantime, does anyone have any suggestions on what to do when the Apple menu and CMD-Option-ESC no longer work? Oh yeah, I tried to launch Terminal or Activity Monitor when this happens but it just bounces continously and never launches. Any help would be greatly appreciated!

OAW

[ChasingApple]

Sounds like Finder is locking up on you guys when those apps hang. Once the finder takes a dive it can be hard to use hotkeys or get to activity monitor to kill it, you might want to repair permissions as this helps get rid of the finder problems. I use to see that when I first got my iMac, but then I loaded it with memory and I have no seen it happen in ages. Panther ran a little smoother with the finder then Tiger does, I do notice tiger just hogging up memory quickly.

I am not sure you can bounce the GUI out like in Linux with the old alt-enter or alt-f7 tricks, but it would be nice if you could. Apple really doesnt want the average user to ever see a terminal screen where they have to hit a hot-key or command to get back to a GUI. Apple wants all of that hidden.

I use OS 9 on my iBook Clamshell for speed reasons and its hot-keys for crashed apps work 9/10 times, I find it a little more stable then OS X in alot of ways. Cheers.

[Chuckit]

I'm not sure the two problems are the same thing. It sounds like other apps are still working for ATPTourFan. I have seen OAW's problem, though only once since I upgraded from Puma. The thing that's odd about that problem is, I don't think it's just a GUI problem. I've tried to kill the windowserver from Terminal when it happens, but the kill process never seems to be able to open up, just like GUI apps.

[ChasingApple]

I am sure memory is the cause on all those lockups. Is it possible to adjust the memory usage in OS X apps like you can with OS 9? The minumum and maximum allowed memory?

[Chuckit]

Why are you certain memory is the cause? That doesn't make much sense unless you're implying a bug in the VM system. Which it may be — it certainly seems to be something near the kernel. (And no, you cannot adjust minimum and preferred memory, because memory is allocated as needed rather than being thrown at the app when it's launched.)

[ChasingApple]

Originally Posted by Chuckit

Why are you certain memory is the cause? That doesn't make much sense unless you're implying a bug in the VM system. Which it may be — it certainly seems to be something near the kernel. (And no, you cannot adjust minimum and preferred memory, because memory is allocated as needed rather than being thrown at the app when it's launched.)

Well, when I first got my iMac G4, it came with 256MB of ram, I used to lock up finder alot and apps would hang here and there, then I put another 256MB in and the hangs were less. Finder didnt crash nearly as much and other apps seemed to hang less. Well after awhile a few apps I used needed more memory and 512MB wasnt cutting it (Im a speed freak) so I upped the iMac to 768MB and I have not seen a finder crash since, and not 1 of my apps hang now.

Another thing is I actually close apps when I am done with them instead of just closing the window. I find that things run better the less apps you leave running when not in use. That is why I feel it is memory related, just from past experience. I could be wrong of course but I really do feel that memory is the issue.

[Steve]

You could probably solve it by ssh'ing into the box and restarting the Finder/WindowServer/whateverAppIsCausingTheHangup.

[ChasingApple]

Ita always finder that hangs I swear, lol. I think finder and low system memory = lockup.

[Steve]

I don't think memory is the issue. OS X handles memory management in a completely different way than OS 9 did (which, from your previous post, seems like what you use more). OS X offers dynamic memory allocation for any application that needs or does not need it. So if an app is sitting in the background, unused, it's footprint in memory is extrememly small. If you are trying to render a movie or do something intensive, OS X will automatically take any and all of the memory and give it to the application that needs it.

[ChasingApple]

Hmm, I have seen OS X take all my memory and not give any back, even when every app has been closed. It is disheartening to see 15MB of 768MB free with nothing running, and a whopping 5GB swap to go with it!

I prefer OS 9's memory managment, assign memory per app, and see instantly all that memory go back to free memory once the app is closed, not to mention choosing about this computer showing you the actual memory usage on the fly. Just seems better to me, and out of my 320MB of ram on my clamshell in OS 9, I have never run out of memory. In my opinion the OS should NEVER use VM unless there is no physical memory available, and OS X uses it no matter what.

[ChasingApple]

Oh, while im at it let me vent about OS X a little more. Now I know the value of an older computer, Apple makes the best computers in my opinion and they last for years. I am using my iBook clamshell from the year 2000 here! But OS X irks me something fierce. I understand wanting to use the latest software technologies and hense making hardware evolve into more and more powerful hardware. But forcing everyone and their mother using a mac to run an OpenGL layer, Java layer, quartz extreme, and all the other eye candy effects apps is a bad idea to me.

Apple says right on the website that a firewire iBook clamshell will run Tiger, and it will, but SLOWLY. These things have a whopping 8MB of video memory (ATI Rage 128 Mobile). Now how fast do you think the OS is going to feel while running all of the above said effects and then trying to get a few normal apps running, or even watching a quicktime video. Now before you comment on quicktime, Panther ran ANY quicktime full speed on this hardware with Quicktime 6.5. Once 7.0 hit I could go ahead and forget about it. Once I did a fresh install of Tiger then tried to watch anything streamed on the net (quicktime files) it was like watching a jerky slideshow, but according to Apple, my mac is fine with Tiger. Tiger of course added dashboard and probably even more things running in the background then there were before, all killing my poor little 8MB videocard.

Of course going back to Panther and running quicktime 6.5 cures most problems, but it is still rather slow. Running just in OS 9 I can run anything! All quicktimes files fly, streaming inside of a browser is fine, java and flash run fast on webpages, and the entire OS is snappy.

So, I wish Apple would allow people to turn off the waste of time eye candy in OS X, I dont need things scaling or genie'ing around, I dont need it to animate all of my windows if I hit F9, just show them all to me. Newer hardware of course has none of these problems, everything flies on my iMac, but if Apple would allow people to turn off the memory hogging eye candy, the OS would run so much better on older hardware, and making our Mac purchases even more sound because they will last even longer then they do now.

Just some thoughts.

[Chuckit]

What does eye candy have to do with QuickTime 7 being more GPU-bound than QuickTime 6?

[ChasingApple]

Originally Posted by Chuckit

What does eye candy have to do with QuickTime 7 being more GPU-bound than QuickTime 6?

You tell me!

[Jacob]

[ChasingApple]

Originally Posted by Chuckit

What does eye candy have to do with QuickTime 7 being more GPU-bound than QuickTime 6?

With a fresh install of Panther and quicktime 6.5, I can watch any quicktime and stream quicktime in a browser window. With Tiger I can watch quicktimes around 320x240 in full screen without slowdowns, but anything higher or streaming video in a browser is a no go without lots and lots of pauses.

Tiger just has too much stuff running and my 8MB Rage 128 cant cope with it all.

[OAW]

Back to the original topic ....

Does anyone know exactly what would cause the Apple Menu to hang? That is, what would cause a beach ball when you attempt to open the Apple menu?

OAW

[ChasingApple]

Originally Posted by OAW

Back to the original topic ....

Does anyone know exactly what would cause the Apple Menu to hang? That is, what would cause a beach ball when you attempt to open the Apple menu?

OAW

How much memory do you have?

[OAW]

Originally Posted by ChasingApple

How much memory do you have?

768 MB of RAM.

Is the Apple Menu part of the Finder? The Dock? WindowServer? LoginWindow?

OAW

[Chuckit]

The menubar (aside from the Menu Extras on the right side, which are actually in a window that floats above the menubar) is handled by the frontmost application.

[OAW]

Well that's strange, because when my machine starts to lock up like that all the menus work except for the Apple menu.

OAW

[Chuckit]

Actually, now that I look, that may no longer be true. I remember it used to be that if you opened the Apple menu in a program localized for another language, the Apple menu would be in that language. It doesn't happen now, though.

[ChasingApple]

I have noticed in the past when the Finder crashed or locked up it took the apple menu with it, but I was still able to click the dock and icons on the desktop. Force quitting the finder would make the entire bar dissappear for a monent until it relaunched. They might be one now.

[Chuckit]

Force-quitting the Finder will only make the menubar disappear if you are on Finder when you do it, because the menubar is drawn by the frontmost application. That still holds true, as far as I can tell. It just looks like the content of the Apple menu comes from somewhere else.

[ATPTourFan]

Originally Posted by ChasingApple

Hmm, I have seen OS X take all my memory and not give any back, even when every app has been closed. It is disheartening to see 15MB of 768MB free with nothing running, and a whopping 5GB swap to go with it!

I think you're not fully understanding how Mac OS X reports memory usage. If you open Activity Monitor and click the memory tab, you'll see Wired, Active, Inactive, Used (which is the sum of the previous 3), Free, and VM Size.

Wired is memory that must stay in actual physical memory (never in VM). Active is memory that has been paged and is in use by active apps/processes. Inactive is memory that has previously been paged by a process or app, but it's ready to be instantly given up if any other active app needs it. Free memory is exactly that, free and not in use at all.

VM Size is not the same as the sum of your swapfiles. If you truly have gigs of swapfiles, you need more memory for optimal performance. My system has just one swapfile0 at 64MB size.

My system has 1GB RAM. Right now, I have 350MB Free and that's pretty typical. I have no page outs which means my system has never HAD to go to the hard drive to read VM (I have 46k page ins).

To say that Mac OS X uses VM all the time and that this behavior is worse than in OS 9 is misleading. Yes, VM is always on in OS X, and it's on by default in OS 9.x too, BTW. PPC apps in OS 9 actually use LESS memory when VM is active (set to something like actual memory plus 1MB). On my system right now, my VM is only there in the event some other app grabs the remaining portion of my memory and the only option is to page in and out from the hard drive. Other than that, my hard drive is not being used "as memory".

Now, my girlfriend's eMac has 384MB RAM running Tiger. After just booting up, she's only got like 5MB free memory and some page outs. This means that she's already using her hard drive to read/write VM, which slows the system quite a bit. As soon as my 512MB DIMM arrives and she's got 768MB, her system will be much faster and those page outs will be much more infrequent.

I prefer Mac OS X's intelligent use of memory much more than the "manual" style memory management in Classic Mac OS.

[ChasingApple]

Originally Posted by ATPTourFan

I think you're not fully understanding how Mac OS X reports memory usage. If you open Activity Monitor and click the memory tab, you'll see Wired, Active, Inactive, Used (which is the sum of the previous 3), Free, and VM Size.

Wired is memory that must stay in actual physical memory (never in VM). Active is memory that has been paged and is in use by active apps/processes. Inactive is memory that has previously been paged by a process or app, but it's ready to be instantly given up if any other active app needs it. Free memory is exactly that, free and not in use at all.

VM Size is not the same as the sum of your swapfiles. If you truly have gigs of swapfiles, you need more memory for optimal performance. My system has just one swapfile0 at 64MB size.

My system has 1GB RAM. Right now, I have 350MB Free and that's pretty typical. I have no page outs which means my system has never HAD to go to the hard drive to read VM (I have 46k page ins).

To say that Mac OS X uses VM all the time and that this behavior is worse than in OS 9 is misleading. Yes, VM is always on in OS X, and it's on by default in OS 9.x too, BTW. PPC apps in OS 9 actually use LESS memory when VM is active (set to something like actual memory plus 1MB). On my system right now, my VM is only there in the event some other app grabs the remaining portion of my memory and the only option is to page in and out from the hard drive. Other than that, my hard drive is not being used "as memory".

Now, my girlfriend's eMac has 384MB RAM running Tiger. After just booting up, she's only got like 5MB free memory and some page outs. This means that she's already using her hard drive to read/write VM, which slows the system quite a bit. As soon as my 512MB DIMM arrives and she's got 768MB, her system will be much faster and those page outs will be much more infrequent.

I prefer Mac OS X's intelligent use of memory much more than the "manual" style memory management in Classic Mac OS.

Well I can say I understand it a bit more now that you layed it out for me, cheers for that. Maybe I am just used to seeing my memory per app in real time, then when said app gets closed that memory is right back to free. And controlling the memory per app also gives me the power to control how much memory an app hogs up.

Anyway, thanks for the info

[threestain]

So you've got 1Gb of RAM and never get page-outs? I've got 512Mb and have a swap file of 7.5GB, no matter what I do! What are you using that doesn't take up memory?

[Gee4orce]

One solution is to ssh from another computer on the network and kill the offending process (or your LoginWindow process, which will (forcibly) log you out).

I think Andrew Welch wrote a little app called something like Escape Pod to give you an way of recovering from these kinds of lockups.

[Gee4orce]

Ahhh, what a memory I have :

Escape Pod

[Chuckit]

Originally Posted by ChasingApple

And controlling the memory per app also gives me the power to control how much memory an app hogs up.

Yes, but how is that beneficial? If an app needs more memory but can't get it, that isn't going to help you. If it doesn't need more memory, it won't make any difference anyway.

[d.fine]

Originally Posted by Gee4orce

Ahhh, what a memory I have :
Escape Pod

From the link :

NOTE: escapepod is no longer needed (or functional) under MacOS X 10.3 and later; Apple built the functionality in escapepod into the operating system.

[Big Mac]

This was not the case in earlier versions of OS X, but in Panther and Tiger I have always been able to get out of a foreground application by pressing command+option+esc and then pressing return, even when the Force Quit dialog is not in the fore.

[OAW]

Well now I know that Growl isn't the culprit. I shut it off yesterday but my system has locked up 3 times today. Again, the Finder appears to be the main thing involved though I usually notice the problem in Safari or Entourage because I'm in those applications more than any other. The symptoms are as follows:

- Network acesss in Safari or Entourage ceases. Trying to navigate to a webpage or send/retrieve email just hangs.

- Right-Clicking the Finder icon in the Dock shows the "Application Not Responding" message. Right-clicking the Desktop or clicking the Apple Menu results in a beachball.

- The active application locks up and gives the "Application Not Responding" message when right-clicking on the Dock icon. All other applications work fine ....provided that they aren't trying to access the network. When you force quite the active app whatever application then becomes active immediately locks up.

- No other applications can be launched. The icon will just bounce in the Dock until it gets tired and gives up.

- Right-clicking the Finder icon in the Dock and selecting "Relaunch" will shut down the Finder but it never launches again. The icon doesn't bounce (the Finder icon never does that) but it doesn't get the black triangle underneath as it should. Perhaps this is related to the previous item.

- Hitting Shift-CMD-Q sometimes brings up the Log Out dialog. Clicking OK will terminate all non-active applications ... but once it gets to the Finder it just hangs and never completes the logout process.

- Hitting CMD-OPT-ESC never brings up the Force Quite dialog once the problem starts.

- Right-clicking the Finder icon in the Dock and selecting "Relaunch" will shut down the Finder but it never launches again.

- Outside of installing and using Growl and Adium, nothing of any significance has changed on my machine recently ... but all of this drama started a few days ago.

- I did Repair Permissions ... twice. It doesn't appear to have any affect.

- Safari has been a little flaky lately. It seems to be crashing more often. But I just fire it back up and keep going.

- I have no crash logs being updated other than the one for Safari.


For now, I've decided to launch Terminal and Activity Monitor and keep them running since I can't launch them after the problem begins. I can try to manually kill the offending process, but I'm not sure how to identify that particular one. The entry in Activity Monitor doesn't always show up in red even when the active app locks up. And the Finder never seems to show up in red when this happens. Which process should I kill to clear things up? As it stands now the only thing I can do when this happens is quit all the apps that I can and then perform a 3 finger salute to reboot the machine. Any help would be greatly appreciated!

OAW

[Chuckit]

Have you checked your disk? (This is much more important than repairing permissions, which almost never matters.)

Also, are there any interesting entries in your system log?

At any rate, I don't think it sounds like there's an app you could kill. I mean, there is no app responsible for network functionality, starting programs and the Finder (unless you count the kernel).

[MarkDouma™]

You can sometimes use the 'top' command in Terminal (or by ssh'ing in) to see if there are any stuck processes.

Also, if I have a situation like that, I'll usually run

ps auxww

in the Terminal to get a list of all the processes and their statuses. (process status)

In the list of processes that's printed out, look at the STAT column for any processes that have a U, which signifies "Marks a process in an uninterruptible wait". Basically, you can use 'ps' to figure out which processes are causing the problems (including any background processes that might not be visible in the Force Quit window).

I've had the UI freeze up on me from time to time, and using 'ssh' to connect remotely from another computer can be really helpful. To enable that, check the box for "Remote Login" in the Sharing preference pane of System Preferences.

Sometimes I've been able to work my way out of this type of a "freeze" and get the Mac responsive again by killing higher-level processes and working my way down. (By higher-level processes, I mean those with a higher PID which are basically running in the user space). Other times, I'll just issue a 'reboot' command through ssh to get the machine to restart (which is much, much better than pushing the reset button or pulling the plug).

Hope this helps....

[OAW]

Thanks for the info MarkDouma! I'll try that the next time my machine freaks out.

One thing I noticed. The last time it did this the machine eventually recovered. I got the same symptoms but I already had Activity Monitor running. This time the Finder showed up in red. The machine seriously bogged down and Safari stopped loading pages. I noticed several other apps in red .... Safari, Adium, iCal ... even a low level process called "coreaudiod". I did a force quit of the Finder process in Activity Monitor. The black triangle under the Finder went away but the machine was still extremely sluggish and non-responsive. After 3 or 4 minutes the Finder eventually relaunched and was back to normal. One by one the other apps that were listed in red in Activity Monitor returned to normal.

So now this has me wondering if the problem isn't as bad as I had initially thought if it is in fact possible to recover and not have to reboot. Again, it seems like the Finder is always in the mix when this happens. Is there anything I can do to make it more stable? Also, if the Finder is "just another app" in OS X ... why does the entire system (the GUI in particular) seem to bog down when it flakes out?

OAW

[Chuckit]

I don't think it is fair to say "the entire system seems to bog down" when the Finder flakes out. In this particular case, the Finder is going down along with a lot of the rest of the system, but you could totally disable the Finder and you wouldn't get the behavior you're describing.

As for why the Finder could bring the system to its knees — Finder's networking has always been flaky, and could actually cause kernel panics in 10.0, if I recall. Which kinda-sorta makes sense, since networking is ultimately handled at a kernel level. I have no idea why Finder would be so evil, though.

[ChasingApple]

I think Apple should go ahead and rewrite the finder code for OS X 10.5. It is in dire need of an upgrade. To me is seems as though Apple has revised it with each new OS but that reminds me of what MS does with Windows. Rebuild Steve!

[Chuckit]

A ground-up rewrite could easily just make it buggier.

[ChasingApple]

Originally Posted by Chuckit

A ground-up rewrite could easily just make it buggier.

Wow, that kind of thinking has kept Windows in the dark ages for years. I see your not an optimist :-P

[Chuckit]

Uh…that kind of thinking is how pretty much all software development works. You don't up and completely rewrite a program unless your old codebase is either unmaintainable or so bad that it all needs to be changed anyway.

Seriously, what makes you think a complete rewrite of the Finder would be better than the first rewrite has become after years of testing? It's not as though OS X's Finder was written so long ago that technology or programming techniques have changed a lot since then.

[ChasingApple]

The finder has been around since at least OS 9, and was updated for OS X. Now that Apple has had years of code creation, testing, and tweaking it should be easy for them to put all of their knowledge into a brand new code. More optimized for speed, more stable because of past experience, and probably more powerful as they integrate it into the new OS (10.5). Apple has done this before, and you can bet it will happen again. You sound like you dont like change, that is too bad. But lets get back to the subject at hand, perhaps someone else has something to add to the possible hangups our friend is having.

[ChasingApple]

I would like to also point you to this thread, there are more that would like a Finder upgrade

http://forums.macnn.com/showthread.php?t=264686

[Big Mac]

What do Finder rewrites have to do with GUI freezes? The reason why everything seems to bog down when the Finder "flakes out" (for those who experience that) is because there are things tied to a lower level of the system such as disk access, and all the applications that rely on that will then have problems. The Finder itself really isn't to blame necessarily, and anyway such occurrences should be very rare; if they're not, your system very likely has more serious issues. I personally have not had any annoying issues like lockups with the Tiger Finder. There are some fundamental usability issues with OS X's Finder, but those are distinctly different from bugs.

[Chuckit]

I'm not denying it would be good to improve the Finder. It's one thing to say that Finder should be better — it's another thing altogether to recommend how this should be done internally. Do you have much experience with application development?

[ChasingApple]

Originally Posted by Chuckit

I'm not denying it would be good to improve the Finder. It's one thing to say that Finder should be better — it's another thing altogether to recommend how this should be done internally. Do you have much experience with application development?

I do, but more or less for videogames. I have around 12 games under my belt, and I understand the need for code rewrites when they get old, or obsolete

[Chuckit]

But that's what I'm getting at — we don't know the state of the Finder's code. So it seems kind of knee-jerk to say it needs a rewrite.

As for being old, I haven't even seen any good evidence that Finder in OS X is actually related to Finder in OS 9. In early versions of OS X, it seemed more like a quick knock-off of OS 9's Finder than a port. So it seems that Finder is at most 5 years old, which hardly seems old enough to require a complete rewrite.

[ChasingApple]

Originally Posted by Chuckit

But that's what I'm getting at — we don't know the state of the Finder's code. So it seems kind of knee-jerk to say it needs a rewrite.

As for being old, I haven't even seen any good evidence that Finder in OS X is actually related to Finder in OS 9. In early versions of OS X, it seemed more like a quick knock-off of OS 9's Finder than a port. So it seems that Finder is at most 5 years old, which hardly seems old enough to require a complete rewrite.

5 years is a lifetime in the computer world. Windows 95-XP, OS 9 to Tiger. G3 to Dual G5 2.7Ghz. You get the point

[Gee4orce]

Originally Posted by d.fine

From the link :

Did he say he was running 10.3 or 10.4 ?

In any case, the built-in OS X key combo only works with Cocoa Apps, that are responding. Which kind of defeats the purpose if you ask me !

[Big Mac]

There's no need for escapepod functionality since the Force Quit key combo is dependable, even when the dialog is not in the foreground.