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abbaj · Aug 19, 2004, 02:22 PM

Since 10.3.5 and Airport update and permissions repair my powerbook titanium no longer appears to have the cursor lock problem. Cross my fingers 5 days and counting. Maybe Apple really fixed this in 10.3.5 and Airport driver upgrade.

badtz · Aug 19, 2004, 04:45 PM

another point ...

in my case, it does seem to be a VM problem ....

reasoning:

when I leave somewhere for a long duration, I used to always get freezes. But now, if I leave, I turn off ALL programs that don't need to be on (mail, safari, iChat, etc. etc., which all used to stay on when I left) .... and the freezes don't occur.

But the moment I get home, and turn all the applications on again, and use my computer, it'll eventually freeze.

hmmmm

Big Mac · Aug 19, 2004, 07:18 PM

What if you use your computer for an equally long duration without any break, does it freeze then too? If it really is a VM issue then it should.

willrob · Aug 19, 2004, 07:38 PM

Some of us (including myself0 have reported the freezes at start-up. I'm not sure when during that process the first swap file is created, but it doesn't seem likely that vm alone can cause a freeze at that time. I can get freezes (three today so far) with only the first 64MB swap file created. At other times, when I spend half a day in photoshop, I can have over 512 MB of swap files and never a freeze.

Typically my freezes occur when I quit an application � even a small one like Text Edit. Since that process should be releasing swap memory (disk space), the freezes may be more about vm's release of space than it's tkaing up more space.

While I do use such add ons as QuicKeys and a Wacom tablet instead of a mouse, I have started up in safe mode and reverted to mouse only use and still have gotten the freezes.

Big Mac · Aug 19, 2004, 07:58 PM

As a general note, it's important to remember that not all freezes are the type that are being discussed in this thread. We don't want to confuse the issue anymore than it already is. This is the first time, for example, that I have heard of this particular freeze occurring at startup; I suspect the previous poster is talking about a completely different problem.

badtz · Aug 19, 2004, 08:39 PM

It doesn't last for long durations because when I'm at my computer, I turn on all my normal applications. The only time where there's a better chance at it not freezing, is when I turn off all unnecessary applications (basically leaving just EyeTV open, to record television shows).

I turn off all of the applications I normally would've left open [mail, safari, menucalendar, iChat agent, weatherpop, check off, etc.]

Kate · 05:38 AM

I checked my RAM today with a RAM checker utility called memtest. You can run this while logged in as >console user to avoid RAM beeing used for much more than the plain system. System usually uses around 80MB, so memtest can allocate all the other available RAM for checking and testing. If you have 1GB like me it works for half an hour or so to finish testing.

All my RAM passed the tests. So I think this might not be the cause, but sure I cannot rule this out completely.

As for the memory allocation and swapfile increase overnight I think there may have been some system task running, that could have caused VM to swap again and eventually be the cause for creating another swapfile, but how come I see a constant need for additional swapfiles since 10.3.5 ? Previously I had only 2 or three and now get 4 or 5. That is with the same apps as under 10.3.4 . If some app had a sufficient memory leak I would have had VM paging out under 10.3.4 too, no?

Kate · Aug 22, 2004, 03:06 AM

Bingo!

Today my first mouse-moves-but-nothing-else type freeze on an iBook since 10.3.5 update.

This is getting pretty mad.

I still have five Powermacs lacking the 10.3.5 update and without this type of freeze yet.
Shall I upgrade?

Busemann · Aug 22, 2004, 08:23 AM

Originally posted by Kate:
Bingo!

Today my first mouse-moves-but-nothing-else type freeze on an iBook since 10.3.5 update.

This is getting pretty mad.

I still have five Powermacs lacking the 10.3.5 update and without this type of freeze yet.
Shall I upgrade?

None of the 10.3.X updates have made matters better or worse. As far as the freezing is concerned there should be no difference between 10.3.4 & 10.3.5

mbi · Aug 22, 2004, 09:10 AM

It'd be interesting to see if someone with access to a preview version of OS X 10.4 Tiger still experiences these freezes on a machine freezing under Panther...

Kate · 08:39 PM

Originally posted by Busemann:
None of the 10.3.X updates have made matters better or worse. As far as the freezing is concerned there should be no difference between 10.3.4 & 10.3.5

Not for you at least, but I never saw this until 10.3.5 . It started after upgrading my Powermac and my iBook. My Powerbook seems sane so far. It is weird that before 10.3.5 my systems were running without that freeze.

Could it be that this is an issue linked to power management? I know there have been alterations in some of the recent upgrades.

I checked the logs for any entry that coincides with the freeze time. But I see nothing. There is no crash or other report to be found. Has anybody seen a log entry linked to the freeze?

ginoledesma · Aug 23, 2004, 02:04 AM

I guess I'm much luckier in that I've not seen this problem since 10.3.4 (using 10.3.5 now). I still leave my regular apps open all the time -- Mail, Safari, NetNewsWire, iChat, Adium, QuickSilver, BitTorrent, and the like.

But prior to moving to 10.3.5, I did a clean install of 10.3 and then just used the combined updates to get me to the latest versions.

Zim · Aug 23, 2004, 08:29 AM

Originally posted by Kate:
Not for you at least, but I never saw this until 10.3.5 . It started after upgrading my Powermac and my iBook. My Powerbook seems sane so far. It is weird that before 10.3.5 my systems were running without that freeze.

Could it be that this is an issue linked to power management? I know there have been alterations in some of the recent upgrades.

I checked the logs for any entry that coincides with the freeze time. But I see nothing. There is no crash or other report to be found. Has anybody seen a log entry linked to the freeze?

If you have a log entry, you are probably looking at a different freeze.

Having had this freeze issue on/off since 10.3.0, the only log "clue" is that during the freeze period there are NO log entries (in /var/logs, nor in ~/Library/Logs/Crashreporter)... and since I have a cron job that runs every minute (with a log entry), it tells me that the freeze goes to a pretty low level (cron jobs do not run) vs. just being a front-application/GUI freeze.

People are making this a lot more complicated than it is

(not directed at Kate, just the multitude of new theories that keep popping up.. I'm waiting for someone to pull out the green CD markers from the 1980's and start coloring their RAM or HD platters)

Cheers,
Mike

ginoledesma · Aug 23, 2004, 12:09 PM

Released by MacFixIt just recently:

Freezes during heavy network activity

Last week we reported on an issue where freezes can occur during periods of heavy network activity. Several readers have responded, confirming this issue with various versions of Mac OS X, and have come up with a couple of potential solutions.

MacFixIt reader Adam Lent writes "I can confirm frequent crashes, upon heavy network activity, especially a large download. It is not browser specific, as it happens in Safari as well as Firefox and OmniWeb. Attempting to download Office 2004 Test Drive caused 3 consecutive freezes (mouse moves, but nothing else) and restarts before the download would complete. Using a 667MHz DVI PowerBook with Airport. These kind of freezes have been occurring since 10.3.3. 10.3.5 is no better, but no worse. Time permitting, I will try connecting via Ethernet, in lieu of Airport and see if the behavior is the same. It would be nice to find out what�s causing this.

Joshua Ochs adds "I was pulling down feeds from a half-dozen newsgroups while some heavy compiling was going on in the background, and it froze everything but the pointer. No SSH access possible. I don't use Norton Antivirus, or any significant startup items. I only use Throttled (for BitTorrent), OSXvnc, and DNSUpdate."

Solutions

Download folder on a separate partition or drive Apparently, forcing network transfers to write to disk other than the startup volume can alleviate this issue in a number of cases.

MacFixIt reader PSmith writes "I have my download folder on a separate non-boot partition rather than a separate hard drive, and have not experienced any "freezes" during heavy network activity.

Defragmenting Another reader notes that using a defragmentation or directory rebuild tool like TechTool Pro or DiskWarrior resolves the issue:

"The problem is caused by a bug/flaw in Panther's VM management system and seems to be triggered by heavy network loads. Defragmenting your hard drive with Norton Speed Disk or TechTool Pro will temporarily stop the freezes in most cases, but only for a couple of weeks."

AirPort signal the culprit in some cases? MacFixIt reader Tom reports that in his case, system freezes during heavy network loads only occur when his iBook is carrying too-weak an AirPort signal - a problem we've yet to experience in-house with even the weakest of 802.11g reception:

"I suffered the same type of freezes, where the cursor moves but nothing else responds, on my iBook Dual USB for quite some time. I use AirPort to connect to an SMC Wireless Barricade. The freezes always happened when the iBook is far enough away from the wireless router to reduce the signal strength. Our G4 with Airport is in the room right over the router, good signal strength, and has never had one of these freezes.

"It was only about a week ago I saw a tip that downgrading to AirPort software v. 3.2 fixed the problems for many people. Downgrading has fixed the problem for me, as well. In areas of our house with only 1 bar of signal strength, a big download does not freeze the machine anymore. Previously, in areas of the house with the signal strength flickering between 2 and 3 bars, some light surfing or checking e-mail would freeze the machine."

Link · Aug 23, 2004, 04:28 PM

There's no one culprit, Seriously.. it's a VM management issue.

I've used every version of airport software..
every version of the damn OS from 10.3 and up..

doesn't matter! It still doesn't work -- to top that off I'm using a B card not a G one.

It's a VM issue

Luckily the fix dshadow made has worked great for me -- 7 days of uptime so far! (but I have yet to find out what causes this) -- and I'm still mad about it!

Keep in mind as of the minute I've got 50gb of disk free, and about 4mb ram free (I only have 256) -- but all seems well...

VM: 6.50G + 97.0M 4208901(29) pageins, 3423903(34) pageouts
13:28 up 7 days, 10:33, 2 users, load averages: 0.47 0.33 0.22

willrob · Aug 23, 2004, 05:03 PM

What was the fix dshadow suggested?

>>Luckily the fix dshadow made has worked great for me -- 7 days of uptime so far! (but I have yet to find out what causes this) -- and I'm still mad about it!
<<

Link · Aug 24, 2004, 12:07 AM

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

Kristoff · Aug 24, 2004, 02:28 AM

I posted this in another thread, but I guess I'll post it here too.

This is for all of those "It'll be fixed in 10.3.5" people (which obviously it wasn't).

I reported a similar bug in 5S60 on 17-Jun-2002 that is still in "Open/Analyze".

Hehehe.....I guess it's not one of their top priorities.

Incidentally, I haven't had the exact problem referred to in this thread, so I guess I'll consider myself lucky.

Big Mac · Aug 24, 2004, 03:01 AM

Originally posted by Link:
http://www.dshadow.com/software/unlockupd/

Well if this is a fix for the problem I've never seen myself, then I'm very happy to see it. Could it be that a second OS X show-stopper bug has again only been fixed by an enterprising, independent third party? Apple should be ashamed for letting this go for so long.

Link, I still have a question. Nothing that the dshadow page says indicates this a VM issue. Are you saying that during the Lookupd optimization phase it releases some memory that it shouldn't? If dshadow does have the fix, then it does not sound like a VM problem at all.

willrob · Aug 24, 2004, 10:13 AM

I did try the unlockupd when it was first posted. it didn't solve the problem for me. I also disabled crashreportd when it was first promoted as a solution. Neither have made any difference. i also cloned my start up disk to another drive and reformated and reinstalled�didn't help either (with 30 G of contiginous space for vm). I use Cocktail to clear my catches�including the vm swap files�and it seems to help some, but the freezes return. I've used CronX to retime my cron scripts so they run when the computer is up and running rather than late at night. I've swaped Ram, testing each chip alne and in pairs with my other two chips (1.25 G total). I've applied evry update Apple has presented, except for technology I don't have (iPod, iSync, Bluetooth, etc).

And yet here I am still checking this list everyday, hoping someone (perferably Apple) has some new insight or a solution. The Hardware test on the Apple CD don't show any problems, I should add. But I suppose there might be a problem with the logic board or the dual 1G procesors (or one of them) that can't be picked up by the test. The only thing I can see as a pattern, in my case, is that the freezes occur as I quit applications, either by doing Command-Q or by using the menu. When quitting, I suppose vm swap files might be affected. I monitor their growth with Swapmenu and have noticed that I can freeze with only 64 MB of swap and be crash free with as large as 512 MB of swap; so I'm not sure if vm is the culprit.

SMacTech · Aug 24, 2004, 10:40 AM

If the lookupd problem or even VM management were causing this freezing problem, then why is it not rearing its ugly head in the many OS X installs I manage as a sys admin?

If it were such a prevalent bug, then why does it affect so few? I feel it is some obscure hardware issue(s) and not one caused by 3rd party software or OS problems.

I can understand your anguish and feel fortunate that I don't suffer this problem with any of my own Macs or ones I admin.

Can an OS bug like this be so infrequent that it only affects a small percentage of people?

EmmEff · Aug 24, 2004, 11:02 AM

Just wanted to throw a "me too" in here as well...

The machine is a 12" iBook (now 4 days old) with all available Apple software updates installed. It seems to be during or after using Expose, everything stops responding, the mouse cursor continues to move but eventually freezes up after a few seconds. The hardware checks out fine (and I was not using any third-party RAM when I first experienced the problem).

Kate · Aug 24, 2004, 03:59 PM

Originally posted by SMacTech:
If the lookupd problem or even VM management were causing this freezing problem, then why is it not rearing its ugly head in the many OS X installs I manage as a sys admin?

I'm managing a lot as well and have only two affected systems

Originally posted by SMacTech:
If it were such a prevalent bug, then why does it affect so few? I feel it is some obscure hardware issue(s) and not one caused by 3rd party software or OS problems.

There is a vast number of possible hard- and software combinations where only some might be affected.

Originally posted by SMacTech:
Can an OS bug like this be so infrequent that it only affects a small percentage of people?

It can. We had such a bug during one of our recent beta tests. A known Apple bug in one of the libraries caused it. The combination of needed triggers made it rare. It was a bit of a nightmare.

SMacTech · Aug 24, 2004, 04:20 PM

Originally posted by Kate:
I'm managing a lot as well and have only two affected systems

On the two affected systems, were you able to resolve the issues or does it continue?

I have seen posts where people have been affected by the freeze, just installing the OS. To me, that is indicative of a hardware problem. However, I am sure there are several factors at work in the myriad of posts in this thread.

EmmEff · Aug 24, 2004, 04:55 PM

Originally posted by SMacTech:
However, I am sure there are several factors at work in the myriad of posts in this thread.

At least the symptoms are very similar for most thread participants...

I experienced my first lockup in the first hour or so of Mac ownership, so that was a bit of a disappointment. It seems if I stay away from Expose, the machine is okay. The only thing I can think is that the video card is being taxed when using Expose. Maybe a bug in the video subsystem?

Link · Aug 24, 2004, 09:54 PM

Originally posted by Big Mac:
Well if this is a fix for the problem I've never seen myself, then I'm very happy to see it. Could it be that a second OS X show-stopper bug has again only been fixed by an enterprising, independent third party? Apple should be ashamed for letting this go for so long.

Link, I still have a question. Nothing that the dshadow page says indicates this a VM issue. Are you saying that during the Lookupd optimization phase it releases some memory that it shouldn't? If dshadow does have the fix, then it does not sound like a VM problem at all.

Unfortuantely I used the wrong words to describe unlockupd. All it does is throw a background process in your system that constantly checks lookupd. If it can't reach it, it kills/restarts it so the system doesn't freeze over. Something like that, at least.

Kate · Aug 25, 2004, 06:06 AM

Originally posted by SMacTech:
On the two affected systems, were you able to resolve the issues or does it continue?

I've installed unlockupd on the affected iBook to see whether this can help. It is too early to conclude anything. I the ibook runs without freeze for at least two consecutive weeks I'd be tempted to say that the lookupd bug might be it.

The other machine is a dual G5 and I'm trying to reinstall the os there as soon as it finished the current processes that might take the next 10-12 days.

Originally posted by SMacTech:
I have seen posts where people have been affected by the freeze, just installing the OS. To me, that is indicative of a hardware problem. However, I am sure there are several factors at work in the myriad of posts in this thread.

The dual G5 had this freeze instantly after applying the 10.3.5 combo update. I checked the RAM, but it passed all tests. The affected iBook and the dual G5 have no hardware in common. The iBook got a new mainboard just weeks ago as it took part in Apples mainboard exchange program.

The only common factor is 10.3.5 . Since there are many people reporting the same freeze with other Mac OS X versions it might just be, that the combination of failure triggering events is more likely in 10.3.5 due to alterations made. However, you cannot be sure of even this. The complete absence of log entries, the inability to remotely ssh in an affected machine at the time of the freeze prevent easier analysis of the bug for us.

Zim · Aug 25, 2004, 10:19 AM

Originally posted by SMacTech:
If the lookupd problem or even VM management were causing this freezing problem, then why is it not rearing its ugly head in the many OS X installs I manage as a sys admin?

If it were such a prevalent bug, then why does it affect so few? I feel it is some obscure hardware issue(s) and not one caused by 3rd party software or OS problems.

I can understand your anguish and feel fortunate that I don't suffer this problem with any of my own Macs or ones I admin.

Can an OS bug like this be so infrequent that it only affects a small percentage of people?

Absolutely. How many of your users are doing multiple simulataneous heavy network xfers at the same time. Probably very few.... ergo a bug that can affect most/all HW, but only by users in very specific usage cases.

Sorry, you are not as safe as you think you are, and my HW is not as faulty as you would like it to be.

Mike

willrob · Aug 25, 2004, 10:27 AM

Kate:

You may want to check out this discussion

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

These are G5 users with the same problem. Some have traced it to Samsung Ram installed by Apple (a faulty batch). Apple replaced same and all is well for those folks. The faulty Ram will pass all ram testing routines, so a software test can be deceptive.

EmmEff · Aug 25, 2004, 11:30 AM

IMHO, since this problem seems to be affecting dissimilar platforms (iBook vs. G5), I would lean towards the problem being software related rather than hardware.

willrob · Aug 25, 2004, 12:15 PM

The reason I mentioned the Ram problems on G5s is they shipped with a different version of OSX than we may have begun with. I had no freeze problems ever with any version of Jaguar. It was only with 10.3 that I started having problems. When Panther was first released, there as much talk (on MacIntouch and MacFixit web sites) about how it was using Ram more vigorously than Jag did.

i maybe remembering this incorrectly, but didn't the G5s ship with Panther as their operating system, or did they have a special version of Jaguar? Whichever, there is certainly the possibility of Ram issues being involved. But I agree with those who think thee are a number of issues (software and hardware) that may interact with Panther at some low level and cause the freeze. Same kind of freeze, but multiple causes. Which would explain why Apple can't come up with a fix for it that works for everyone with the problem.

SMacTech · Aug 25, 2004, 02:59 PM

Originally posted by Zim:
Absolutely. How many of your users are doing multiple simulataneous heavy network xfers at the same time. Probably very few.... ergo a bug that can affect most/all HW, but only by users in very specific usage cases.

Sorry, you are not as safe as you think you are, and my HW is not as faulty as you would like it to be.

Mike

I never inferred that I would like it to be a hardware problem, in particular, yours or that I was in some way 'safe' from the bug. I only stated that it hasn't affected us and that IMHO it may be a hardware issue, amongst other possible ' triggers' as Kate pointed out.

While I do a lot of network transfers, I don't know what your definition of heavy is. If it is from heavy network activity, why could it not be caused by a specific chip used on multiple Mac models? It could be similar to a problem I had with gigabit ethernet NICs using a Broadcom chip.

Kate · Aug 25, 2004, 04:32 PM

Originally posted by willrob:
Kate:

You may want to check out this discussion

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

These are G5 users with the same problem. Some have traced it to Samsung Ram installed by Apple (a faulty batch). Apple replaced same and all is well for those folks. The faulty Ram will pass all ram testing routines, so a software test can be deceptive.

Thank you, I was aware of the "Samsung RAM"-problem . I have none of this specific RAM installed.
However I'll test against another pair of PC3200 RAM DIMMS.

Meanwhile I made experiences that cause me to put my theory about swapfiles aside. There seems no real coincidence between the freeze and swapfile numbers or swapfile size.

As for the theory that network load or high network activity might be a factor, I must say that several dual G5 that do not exhibit the freeze are much more active on the network than the affected one. The amount of network data traffic exceeds that of the affected dual G5 by a factor of more than 20 . Concurrent data uploads and downloads at the same time etc. Those are 3 G5s with what I would call high constant network activity. All these are connected to the same 100MBit/s switch. So anything triggered by gigabit ethernet can be ruled out as a major factor.

Maybe one observation could give a hint to what may trigger the effect. According to my experience the freeze occurs right after a mouse click, be it a menu, or other gui element.
Is that a common factor?

In that case the GUI comes to mind, graphics drivers, graphics hardware, Quartz Extreme etc. Are all affected Macs running Quartz Extreme? Mine do.

Zim · Aug 25, 2004, 04:46 PM

For me, I had to have 2 different things going.

As a unix dinosaur, I still read newsgroups, and use trn. I was grabbing some comedy clips for a trip, and found that using the trn 's' store function, while another application download was in progress would cause this on a not-infrequent basis, whereas the 'e' extract command did not seem to. So 'e' was creating multiple file saves, where s was one long save. This did not lock up under 10.2.x, but started immediately with 10.3.0. I played around a bit to see if it was related to the 20M hot-file defrag that was new with 10.3, but could find no correlation.

Doing any one thing by itself never caused a lockup, only multiple things at the same time. For other people it was iTunes/Airport related.

So call this heavy usage, or simultaneous usage, etc. I think it is beyond what many users will do. In a lab or work (ie. supported environment) I'd never/rarely be doing more than pulling down the occasional pdf file as an xfer.

Mike

EmmEff · Aug 25, 2004, 10:15 PM

Originally posted by Kate:
Maybe one observation could give a hint to what may trigger the effect. According to my experience the freeze occurs right after a mouse click, be it a menu, or other gui element.
Is that a common factor?

That's when I am seeing it, but only when using Expose. If I 'flail' on the Expose buttons (as I typically have done as a new Mac/OS X user), I can almost consistently crash it. Initially, the dock hangs, but the mouse cursor moves. Then after a few seconds (<5s), the mouse cursor freezes and holding the power button is the only remedy.

In that case the GUI comes to mind, graphics drivers, graphics hardware, Quartz Extreme etc. Are all affected Macs running Quartz Extreme? Mine do.

I am running a 12" iBook (less than a week old and my first Mac), so I presume QE is running?

Harry Schaefer · Aug 26, 2004, 01:19 AM

I am hesitant to jump ini but will. I have been monitoring this thread for some time. I had never experienced the lock up but have passed my A17 1G powerbook to my wife and am using an upgadeed powerbook. For the first time she experienced a freeze but wasn't sure what triggered it. She was working on a new recipe program but also seemed to have hit a right key on the mouse or some other mouse activity. The computer locked and the mouse could be moved but nothing else. We restarted and haven't encountered anything further. I noted Kate's reference to the mouse so wanted to make reference to our experience. Our problem could be something else. Will be watching to see if we have another lockup. Harry

Kate · 07:21 AM

Update on unlockupd: This is some days after having installed unlockupd on an iBook.
This program checks and restarts the lookupd process if it hangs to prevent freezes.
I can now confirm that the special freeze with a moving mouse on the iBook has since occured again.

I think that our special freeze is not caused by lookupd then. Which again shifts VM into perspective. Immediateley after the freeze I was at said machine and checked the logs after a restart. There was nothing.

addiecool · Aug 27, 2004, 03:55 PM

Ok count me in too. I am suddenly having KP's and freezes for no reason at all suddenly. I did not even change any hardware. There is a Panic thread that I started at http://forums.macnn.com/showthread.p...hreadid=225790

Cant seem to find and solution after trying all things mentioned in this thread. but a few main things I noticed:

1. Most of the times iTunes was running
2. 7 out of 10 freezes came while running DVDSP 3
3. I have set only my display to sllep after 5 minutes not the computer. May times I get freezes or KP's after waking the display from sleep.

for no apparent reason at all the system will crash. sometimes even when I double click the hard drive icon on the finder.

Kate · Aug 27, 2004, 09:01 PM

Originally posted by addiecool:
Ok count me in too.

According to your description you are seeing different problems than what is discussed here. The freeze mentioned here is a complete GUI freeze from a users perspective. Only the mouse can shoft around the screen, no GUI widget accepts any mouse action or at least does not shown any response or feedback.

If you do see kernel panics you may have a different sort of problem and cause.This sounds as if it could be RAM related.

While we try, well at least I do so, to narrow the amount of the possible causes for this special type of mouse-moves-but nothing-else-works, it would be helpful to focus on this before any or all types of failure get discussed in this thread.

Don't get me wrong, your problem is serious too and is worth to be sorted out, no doubt about it. But to solve things it is helpful to fiddle with one sort after the other, rather than hopping from one to the next without getting to the cause of the first one.

zerock · Aug 28, 2004, 09:56 AM

and its been ours and it hasnt happened since, plus my powerbook g4 1ghz titanium seems more cooler, my guess is defintely VM as previously stated here.

Hawkeye · Aug 28, 2004, 11:38 AM

How much hard drive space do you guys have available?

I get these freezes (occurring FREQUENTLY) but it seems to coincide with my hard drive getting full -- say, under 3GB. If I clean my hard drive off a bit, they usually seem to go away.

I really think the problem is VM. Have you guys seen how this OS handles resources? Look at Activity monitor:

http://homepage.mac.com/cellis/misc/activitymon.pdf (SCREENSHOT)

500MB+ VM to kernel_task
100MB+ VM to iChat
etc.

That's ridiculous! The computer is consuming over 3.6GB in VM!

So you can see, when I get less than 3GB free on my hard drive, the computer's going to get a little cranky because it doesn't have enough HD space to suck up for VM!

Check your free space vs. virtual memory consumption. Tell me it's not just me.

--
Powerbook G4 500MHz
512MB RAM
30GB HD

zerock · Aug 28, 2004, 12:28 PM

that could be it Hawkeye, but since i have disabled APE, and shapeshifter my freezes are gone it seems, and my powerbook doesnt get as hot. But my guess is that APE is causing VM to go way up higher than supposed to, or either my disk is fragmented, and has problems using VM with the fragmented parts, So a program like ShapeShifter sucking VM, would make it freeze.And in case this is also related to having less free space than the VM file, I'm gonna get a external HDD and try to free HDD space on the startup disk.

Hawkeye · Aug 28, 2004, 12:38 PM

Originally posted by zerock:
that could be it Hawkeye, but since i have disabled APE, and shapeshifter my freezes are gone it seems, and my powerbook doesnt get as hot. But my guess is that APE is causing VM to go way up higher than supposed to, or either my disk is fragmented, and has problems using VM with the fragmented parts, So a program like ShapeShifter sucking VM, would make it freeze.And in case this is also related to having less free space than the VM file, I'm gonna get a external HDD and try to free HDD space on the startup disk.

Yeah, I don't even have APE installed.

EmmEff · Aug 28, 2004, 11:30 PM

FWIW, I have almost 20GB of free disk space and my iBook (w/all updates) still crashes regularly...

I just took a peek at Activity Monitor and see that Safari is using 279MB of virtual memory, which seems QUITE excessive on a machine with 768MB of physical memory. On a perhaps related note, Safari needs help... how is it possibly using 10% of the CPU while sitting idle (display a static page without animated GIFs or using a plug-in)?

As a new Mac user, this is such a disappointment. I was told about how stable OS X is compared to Windows XP. On OS X, I get 2 day uptimes TOPS (!!!)...

zerock · Aug 29, 2004, 01:49 AM

ok i pin pointed my problem to itunes (apparently big library causing problems), so i disabled auto-manage, and all appears good, i will reply here tomorrow, letting ppl know if it did freeze again, or if this fixed it till i get the External Drive.

addiecool · Aug 29, 2004, 07:45 AM

Originally posted by zerock:
ok i pin pointed my problem to itunes (apparently big library causing problems), so i disabled auto-manage, and all appears good, i will reply here tomorrow, letting ppl know if it did freeze again, or if this fixed it till i get the External Drive.

How big is big? I have a 22GB Library with around 3200 Songs. Is that big?

Peabo · Aug 30, 2004, 09:56 PM

Ok, it's happening to me too now. I thought it might be a problem with my newly purchased wacom tablet or maybe my extermal lacie drive or something...

The mouse also seems to almost freeze when it happens - it often jerks around then sticks etc. Nothing but a forced reboot will fix it. I've just installed the 'unlockupd' fix - I'll see if it does anything to help.

This is on my rev b Al powerbook 17" btw.

ETPhoneHome815 · Aug 31, 2004, 01:36 AM

Symptoms: everything freezes except the mouse... sometimes it recovers... sometimes reboot required

Conditions: iTunes + Safari (no AirPort, no APE, no haxies, no iPod)

Timeframe: started happening in about the past month or so (since maybe around 1 AUG 2004 - not a precise date, just a guesstimate)

System: 1.25 GHz mirror-door G4 (tested with 512 MB (stock) RAM and 1GB (512 stock + 512 Kensington RAM), 10.3.5

Temporary Fix(?): no running iTunes = no more crashing (stable for almost a week now)

Link · Aug 31, 2004, 02:27 AM

Funny, I only have 263 songs in itunes..

Azzgunther · Aug 31, 2004, 02:38 AM

Originally posted by ETPhoneHome815:

Temporary Fix(?): no running iTunes = no more crashing (stable for almost a week now)

It seems to be iTunes related a lot of the time for me. I'll start a song up, and within 2 minutes the thing is hanging. Defragmenting the startup drive DOES make the freezes end for about 5 days. However, I can ruin things by using Bittorrent, thus returning the computer to it's normal flawed state.

Basically, 5 days w/out freezes can be achieved (in my case) by not using Bittorrent. After the 5 days or bittorrent, iTunes starts freezing the thing again.