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rm199 · Sep 21, 2005, 03:18 PM

10.4.2 is causing enough trouble that I'm about to hire a PC for a while to actually get some work done. Has anyone heard of how far away 10.4.3 might be?

jam8 · Sep 21, 2005, 03:27 PM

What kind of trouble?

Busemann · Sep 21, 2005, 03:33 PM

Seems weird it's really 10.4.2 that causes all the trouble..

alphasubzero949 · Sep 21, 2005, 04:40 PM

Ok.

rm199 · Sep 21, 2005, 05:06 PM

Well one can never be sure but it just 'seems' to have flared up since 10.4.2. Basically the problems happen under serious load (which never used to be a problem). It seems like a system memory leak or something of that nature - after a reboot and for an hour or so things are 'snappy' but give it a few hours and the system just gets slower and slower. If I'm lucky to make it four hours then I'll be greated with a kernal panic. So three reboots a day is pretty normal now.

This happens on both a powerbook 1.5 and a powermac G5 2ghz (however the symptoms are far more acute on the powerbook for obvious reasons).

Basically in 5 years I'd never experienced a multi tasking hiccup (and definitely not kernel panics) but in the last couple of months I'm now struggling to work on these things. So who knows if it is 10.4.2 but I just have this 'feeling'.

Please let 10.4.3 fix it!!! If not I'll end up throwing something out the window.

rickey939 · Sep 21, 2005, 06:56 PM

v10.4.4 is bugless™ if you can hold out for that long.

rm199 · Sep 22, 2005, 03:27 AM

I'll try hold on

Not sure I'll have enough disk space, this leak if that is what it is gobbles up disk space (went to bed last night and machine had 6Gb free, this morning it has 600Mb with disk full warning). Something is hungry hungry hungry.

Sophus · Sep 22, 2005, 04:09 AM

Originally Posted by rm199

I'll try hold on

Not sure I'll have enough disk space, this leak if that is what it is gobbles up disk space (went to bed last night and machine had 6Gb free, this morning it has 600Mb with disk full warning). Something is hungry hungry hungry.

Well, if that is the case, you should be able to find the culprit by having a look in System Monitor under Tools. Have a look at memory usage and virtual memory usage.

I also seem to remember that several programs were incompatible with 10.4.2 and ate diskspace in VM or wrote in a loop to the logfiles and filled them up quickly, eating diskspace non stop.

Obviously something is wrong with your installation. If you can't find the culprit, maybe you should consider a reinstall. If so, be sure to install only the newest versions of utilities and programs you need. Don't use the old programs etc. Consider not backing up preferences etc. also, but remember stuff like mail, keychains etc. in you backup.

Sophus · 08:37 AM

Originally Posted by rm199

I'll try hold on

Not sure I'll have enough disk space, this leak if that is what it is gobbles up disk space (went to bed last night and machine had 6Gb free, this morning it has 600Mb with disk full warning). Something is hungry hungry hungry.

Another comment: your situation is not a common experience. The fact that it happens on two of your macs are probably not an unfortunate conincidence or caused by a fault in 10.4.2, but more likely because you have more or less the same third party programs installed on both systems, and one of them may be the culprit. Yes there are memory leaks in Apples software, but not of this magnitude.

Grrr · Sep 22, 2005, 07:33 AM

Originally Posted by rm199

10.4.2 is causing enough trouble that I'm about to hire a PC for a while to actually get some work done. Has anyone heard of how far away 10.4.3 might be?

There are memory leak issues with 10.4, granted. I experience it more on my G4 powerbook, than I do on my G5 iMac.

However.. I can't believe you'd hire a PC as its so bad, that you might actually get some work done?? I call BS.
If the problem was really that bad, you could just go back to 10.3

chris v · Sep 22, 2005, 08:28 AM

Details-- how much RAM do these machines have, and how many swap files are you generating as it slows down, if any? Have you looked at your memory stats in either top or Activity Monitor? Do you have a ton of widgets active?

Did you upgrade, archive or clean install these machines?

Randman · Sep 22, 2005, 08:30 AM

Originally Posted by rm199

I'll try hold on

Not sure I'll have enough disk space, this leak if that is what it is gobbles up disk space (went to bed last night and machine had 6Gb free, this morning it has 600Mb with disk full warning). Something is hungry hungry hungry.

Do you have FileVault enabled?

mrcorwin · Sep 22, 2005, 04:16 PM

Check your system log files. Something happens to my g5 and the log file fills the HD. I would look at my huge log file to find out whats going on but I cannot open the 8 gig

file in text edit!

TheSpaz · Sep 22, 2005, 09:02 PM

I have no problems whatsoever... oh yeah... I forgot... I'm running Panther. Hmm.

kcmac · Sep 22, 2005, 09:37 PM

Tiger has always worked well for me and dot2 is no different. However, I am looking forward to dot3. I like new stuff.

KP* · Sep 23, 2005, 07:46 AM

I'm glad to see this thread because I've been having mysterious slowdowns too. I can't remember exactly when I began noticing them, but it was no earlier than 10.4.2. It struck me as being some kind of memory leak too, but since it didn't seem to be happening to everyone, I started worrying that my PB might be going bad in some way. I find it happens most often in Safari and Entourage, where they will just start beachballing over the silliest things, like opening a new tab, or clicking from one e-mail to the other. Like 30 seconds of beachballing for something that small. To be fair, these are the apps I currently use most often, so that's where I'd be most likely to notice it. Eventually they go back to "normal" although it's not as fast as it used to be.

Interesting thing: Activity monitor says I have 995MB RAM used, but looking at the list of all processes, nothing seems to be using that much RAM. A quick adding up of the real memory column accounts for about 500MB of it. Am I missing something?

My specs:
15" Albook, 1.25
1 GB RAM
FileVault is on
I last did a clean install when Tiger came out
none of my log files are of unusual size

It's not so bad that I want to stop using it, but it's just made me worried that something was wrong with my PB. I've had two kernal panics in the last month, which is very rare for this machine.

Any help is appreciated.

Randman · Sep 23, 2005, 07:51 AM

Filevault.

rm199 · Sep 23, 2005, 10:35 AM

pc hired *sigh of relief* (using it via remote desktop - the macs are stable enough if they are basically idle).

now that the pressure is off to some degree I'm going to go through some of the suggestions below and try figure out what is wrong. just some quick replies to questions below: no filevault, clean install on one machine not on the other. PB has 1Gb RAM (nowhere near enough) and the PM 4Gb.

similar to the last post below, one of the symptoms when it is having a fit is that swapping between sheet in excel and tabs in safari can take over 1 minute. at the same time activity monitor shows nothing that I find unusual. very often that is the pre-warning of anotherl thing that happens, the machine will no longer load anything new. Something already running continues however nothing new can be loaded (an attempt to launch something new results in dock bounce until the machine is power cycled. There doesn't appear to be an ability to log out or reset that I have found so it gets power cycled.

I guess a reinstall is a good idea, its just not something I've had to worry about in years (I remember having to arrange for IT support to rebuild my windows notebook every 3 months to keep it usable.) Anyway off to find the log files.

KP* · Sep 23, 2005, 10:57 AM

Originally Posted by Randman

Filevault.

Are you saying the invisible RAM usage is a normal side-effect of Filevault, or that there is a bug in Filevault that's causing the slowdown? I kind of like the security of Filevault and don't want to get rid of it if I don't have to. BTW, I've had FV enabled for a long time before this big slowdown started.

moodymonster · Sep 23, 2005, 02:03 PM

Mine's taken to freezing up as of late, it comes up with this in the console:

Sep 23 13:42:42 crush DirectoryService[87]: Failed Authentication return is being delayed due to over five recent auth failures for username: mrx.

At first I forced a shutdown, but then tried closing the lid to force sleep. Everytime something like this happens the console displays the above.

The freezes take the form of locking up - the dock is clickable, but apps just bounce. The apple menu is unclickable, and the functions keys don't work. It is possible to switch between open apps - but not actually do anything + iTunes keeping playing throughout (5.0.1).

Hopefully 10.4.3 will sort this, I hear the kernel gets an upgrade.

Waking from forced sleep (sometimes it takes a while for it to register its gone to sleep), it has been ok thus far. I really don't want to reinstall everything.

Tried permissions and keychain first aid.

kgforce · Sep 23, 2005, 02:07 PM

Originally Posted by rm199

Well one can never be sure but it just 'seems' to have flared up since 10.4.2. Basically the problems happen under serious load (which never used to be a problem). It seems like a system memory leak or something of that nature - after a reboot and for an hour or so things are 'snappy' but give it a few hours and the system just gets slower and slower. If I'm lucky to make it four hours then I'll be greated with a kernal panic. So three reboots a day is pretty normal now.

This happens on both a powerbook 1.5 and a powermac G5 2ghz (however the symptoms are far more acute on the powerbook for obvious reasons).

Basically in 5 years I'd never experienced a multi tasking hiccup (and definitely not kernel panics) but in the last couple of months I'm now struggling to work on these things. So who knows if it is 10.4.2 but I just have this 'feeling'.

Please let 10.4.3 fix it!!! If not I'll end up throwing something out the window.

If it makes you feel any better, I am having similar problems with 10.4.2 on my 2.5GHz G5 with 2.5GB RAM. It's been very frustrating! I've been running Activity Monitor for several days and haven't noticed anything out of the ordinary.

HOWEVER... a couple of days ago I stopped leaving iChat on all the time. Since then I haven't had any System crashes. I am having other programs crash with alarming frequency (Roxio Toast, Illustrator, Safari, and some others).

Big Mac · Sep 23, 2005, 02:10 PM

If you're using Filevault on a slower drive it makes a lot of sense that things will be appreciably slower and that things will get even slower as files are loaded in and out. Turn Filevault off. Apple's engineers were misguided in enabling it, thinking encrypting an entire Home folder would be a good choice for users.

Randman · Sep 23, 2005, 02:14 PM

Filevault on a desktop can be death. And it will eat space.

CaptainHaddock · Sep 23, 2005, 02:35 PM

" very often that is the pre-warning of anotherl thing that happens, the machine will no longer load anything new. Something already running continues however nothing new can be loaded (an attempt to launch something new results in dock bounce until the machine is power cycled. There doesn't appear to be an ability to log out or reset that I have found so it gets power cycled. "

And it always happens when you're using Safari, right? The Internet stops working, etc.

This is a known problem that existed sporadically on 10.4.2 and has just gotten a lot worse for some people with the Java Release 2 update. It's a conflict between launchd (whatever that is) and Java. I read a report on Macfixit.com this morning, and there's also a thread on the Apple.com forums. Additionally, I have filed a bug report with Apple (because I experienced this crash yesterday).

There are three ways to fix it if you're having serious problems.
1. When you start having the Safari problems, unplug your ethernet connection (if it's not wireless). This resets launchd.
2. Try running both Java utility programs in your Applications/Utilities folder. Reset or clear your Java caches.
3. If you must, archive-and-reinstall Tiger, but don't apply the Java Release 2 update afterwards.

This is a fairly serious issue for some users, so we can expect a patch or fix pretty soon.

moodymonster · Sep 23, 2005, 02:53 PM

Originally Posted by CaptainHaddock

" very often that is the pre-warning of anotherl thing that happens...
This is a fairly serious issue for some users, so we can expect a patch or fix pretty soon.

Thx for your input dude

bring on the Java update

iChick · Sep 23, 2005, 03:22 PM

I have a PowerBook and a G5 iMac with a lot of RAM. I have been noticing a huge slow-up and the "spinning pizza" on the PB IF I start up the Widgets.... If I don't, I'm OK.

rm199 · Sep 23, 2005, 04:05 PM

wow thanks for the 'drop the network connection' advice it just worked on one of those situations. Interestingly I am not running Safari right now but it still happened. Nice to know I can just turn off airport then turn it back on to get the system back (better than power cycling and losing tons of things!).

just an unrelated anecdote - as I've been doing a number of things on a pc through a remote desktop connection today it seems I've been giving pcs a bit too much stick of late. The thing really moves - very quick and seemingly stable so far. I might keep the thing and use it as a VPC replacement (and migrate more workflow onto the PC - I'm very impressed at Office performance on the PC vs native on the mac for example). The desktop still looks terrible though

luckily I hide that and just have apps up in the foreground.

cljmac · Sep 23, 2005, 04:43 PM

Originally Posted by rm199

Well one can never be sure but it just 'seems' to have flared up since 10.4.2. Basically the problems happen under serious load (which never used to be a problem). It seems like a system memory leak or something of that nature - after a reboot and for an hour or so things are 'snappy' but give it a few hours and the system just gets slower and slower. If I'm lucky to make it four hours then I'll be greated with a kernal panic. So three reboots a day is pretty normal now.

This happens on both a powerbook 1.5 and a powermac G5 2ghz (however the symptoms are far more acute on the powerbook for obvious reasons).

Basically in 5 years I'd never experienced a multi tasking hiccup (and definitely not kernel panics) but in the last couple of months I'm now struggling to work on these things. So who knows if it is 10.4.2 but I just have this 'feeling'.

Please let 10.4.3 fix it!!! If not I'll end up throwing something out the window.

hmm... have you looked at your widgets? ive read a few places about a few of the widgets
having really bad memory leaks... especially the world clock. turn all the widgets off...
of course check to see what is eating the memory up in the utlities.

mrmister · Sep 23, 2005, 04:54 PM

Well, I need 10.4.3—where is it? I hope it drops soon, and that it fixes my bluetooth problems.

brokenjago · Sep 23, 2005, 05:05 PM

TS reports 10.4.3 is on the way soon. anywhere from 1-3 weeks? That's my estimation. Over 500 fixes supposedly. Jesus.

pliny · Sep 23, 2005, 05:42 PM

Have you looked at your widgets?
Have you repaired permissions?
Have you run disk utility?
Have you cleared your caches?
Have you turned off/removed any third party mods?
Have you tried removing EVERYTHING attached to your computer, so that you can see that without anything attached to it, it is no good for anything?
Have you backed up and erased your hd/whyinGod'snamedidyouarchiveandinstallyoufool???!!?
Have you considered that maybe it is just you?
Have you thought about returning your brand new machine? It is not the OS it is your hardware. IDIOT!

These are all BAD responses to why Tiger is slow and buggy. The best answer is that Tiger 10.4.x is coded inefficiently and quickly and that it is not the best release of OS X by far. WTF are they doing over at Apple??

moodymonster · Sep 23, 2005, 06:38 PM

*double post

moodymonster · Sep 23, 2005, 06:39 PM

roll on 10.4.3 - I really don't want to be in a situation where my mac freezes up in front of PC users

I'm not a zealot, but I can't resist the odd comment here and there.

I do agree with pliny's post though - we chose OS X so we didn't have to deal with this stuff (among other things)

Person Man · Sep 23, 2005, 06:47 PM

Originally Posted by pliny

Have you looked at your widgets?
Have you repaired permissions?
Have you run disk utility?
Have you cleared your caches?
Have you turned off/removed any third party mods?

<ridiculous questions snipped>

These are all BAD responses to why Tiger is slow and buggy. The best answer is that Tiger 10.4.x is coded inefficiently and quickly and that it is not the best release of OS X by far. WTF are they doing over at Apple??

These are all valid questions. And often people do not try these things and are too quick to blame the operating system first. The ones I erased were just stupid.

I mean, have you ever considered the fact that third-party addons may be buggy too?

Do all of the above first, and then, once you've determined they don't fix the problem, THEN and ONLY THEN can you really say with confidence that it's all Apple's fault.

tpressman · Sep 23, 2005, 07:03 PM

In my recent experience (and lots of past experience) the issue that you are talking about (missing memory, kernel panics) are all memory related issues.

I'd highly recommend running a memory testing program like memtest to see if you have defective RAM. I ran it on a system at the new job I have and when I showed up everyone was saying how the computer was a mess, defective, OS 10 was defective, buggy, etc, but it turned out to be a bad RAM stick. Swapped the RAM and everything is rock solid now.

The kernel panics are not usually related to software issues (they're like a bomb in the old os 9- days - 9/10 times memory related - particularly if the kernel panics are as consistent as you point out.

Good luck.

memtest
http://www.macupdate.com/info.php/id/14004
or
http://www.memtestosx.org/

pliny · Sep 23, 2005, 07:51 PM

Originally Posted by Person Man

The ones I erased were just stupid.

No, you.

boazh · Sep 23, 2005, 09:42 PM

hmmm... I am another happy maccnn forum reader that someone started with this thread...
and I was thinking I got crazy... Apple tech support reps keep telling me to wait for an update...
I have been waiting for along time now for something to fix my network! Ok, I agree that I'm not an expert like many of the readers here, but I know enough to say that I tried everything I can do to network my mac with my pc without any luck... before 10.4.2 I didn't have to think twice... just turned on file sharing and that's it... I even restored to 10.4.0 and the network still didn't work... Apple reps now tell me it's my computer... so they send a tech to my house...and guess what he did? he replaced the whole motherboard (is this becuase I complained that my G5 will decide to blow it's all, is that 9? FANS.. if you ever heard them all blow at once, you know what I mean...) but that didn't make any difference... network is still crippled! Apple fourms indicate that other G5 users have similar problems, and I really hope that Apple will fix it on the next update... me too find myself needing to restart more often then ever before... still not bad as OS 9 days but it doesn't make OS X reputation look so good

tpressman · Sep 23, 2005, 09:58 PM

I have 4 systems at work and all are running flawlessly - no fan issues, etc - had the memory issue, but resolved it with new RAM.

-t

KP* · Sep 24, 2005, 12:21 AM

Today I had a really scary thing happen where all my user preferences got lost (documented in this thread here, if anyone's interested). I decided that between the problems I reported in this thread, and whatever the

happened today, I am going to stop using Filevault. It's less of a hassle to run without it in general, and I'm tired of wondering if it's the source of my various problems.

I will probably have to create a new user now anyway, so bye-bye FV for me!

moodymonster · Sep 24, 2005, 05:52 AM

Even if you don't use filevault you can still create an encrypted disk image using disk utility and store any sensitive info in there - only mounting the image when needed.

rm199 · Sep 24, 2005, 06:15 AM

darn - the cycle network connection fix only seems to work for the first couple of times the problem manifests. Still better than nothing, saves a couple of cycles a day which is better than a poke in the eye with a burnt stick. In any case I don't mind power cycling now as everything is running on another machine and the remote desktop connection just resumes where it was left off - a true godsend!

Tarcat · Sep 24, 2005, 08:54 AM

I have the same exact problem many describe. I have a new G5 and sometimes for seemingly no reason the system just bogs down. I'm not doing anything intensive, but all of the sudden things like dock magnification become very slow and jerky, and things like basic web browsing become far slower than on my old G4 running 10.3. They slow down to the point of being unusable. A restart fixes it every time.

siMac · Sep 24, 2005, 09:04 AM

Originally Posted by rm199

darn - the cycle network connection fix only seems to work for the first couple of times the problem manifests. Still better than nothing, saves a couple of cycles a day which is better than a poke in the eye with a burnt stick. In any case I don't mind power cycling now as everything is running on another machine and the remote desktop connection just resumes where it was left off - a true godsend!

Why are you running the PC via remote desktop anyway? Do you love your Mac's keyboard and mouse that much? If so you can probably use them with the PC, maybe even your monitor too!

CaptainHaddock · Sep 24, 2005, 09:54 AM

Originally Posted by tpressman

In my recent experience (and lots of past experience) the issue that you are talking about (missing memory, kernel panics) are all memory related issues.

I'd highly recommend running a memory testing program like memtest to see if you have defective RAM. I ran it on a system at the new job I have and when I showed up everyone was saying how the computer was a mess, defective, OS 10 was defective, buggy, etc, but it turned out to be a bad RAM stick. Swapped the RAM and everything is rock solid now.

The kernel panics are not usually related to software issues (they're like a bomb in the old os 9- days - 9/10 times memory related - particularly if the kernel panics are as consistent as you point out.

Good luck.

memtest
http://www.macupdate.com/info.php/id/14004
or
http://www.memtestosx.org/

If you guys would read the whole thread, you'd see this is a new, widespread problem that people are having with 10.4.2. It is a serious conflict between a kernel process and Java that will hopefully soon be fixed.

Darksider · Sep 24, 2005, 05:26 PM

VLC bombs on me when I play a video now. Other than that, no problems.

production_coordinator · Sep 24, 2005, 08:45 PM

I have 10.4.3... and it's awesome... it's snappy® and makes my iMac - 333MHz run like a dual G5

TheSpaz · Sep 24, 2005, 10:39 PM

Originally Posted by pliny

Have you looked at your widgets?
Have you repaired permissions?
Have you run disk utility?
Have you cleared your caches?
Have you turned off/removed any third party mods?
Have you tried removing EVERYTHING attached to your computer, so that you can see that without anything attached to it, it is no good for anything?
Have you backed up and erased your hd/whyinGod'snamedidyouarchiveandinstallyoufool???!!?
Have you considered that maybe it is just you?
Have you thought about returning your brand new machine? It is not the OS it is your hardware. IDIOT!

These are all BAD responses to why Tiger is slow and buggy. The best answer is that Tiger 10.4.x is coded inefficiently and quickly and that it is not the best release of OS X by far. WTF are they doing over at Apple??

You know... this is the very reason I don't upgrade to Tiger. Panther is working wonderfully for me and I don't really need or care about the new fancy widgets. Tiger is a joke! And you shouldn't have to reset permissions and clear caches and delete widgets and stuff like that because Mac OS X was designed to be operated by a new computer user and everything is supposed to be automatic and happening in the background so the user doesn't have to worry about all that crap.

Originally Posted by Randman

Filevault.

Oh, and Randman... I really really really hate you... with your STUPID one word answers... you are hardly ever a help to people because everytime someone has a problem... you have to go and post a one answer solution (by the way... Apple designed Filevault too... why shouldn't the user be able to use it?)... also, what's with the "I never experience any of the problems that anyone has because my compuer is perfect... you must be doing something wrong." type of posts?

I'm going off on a tangent. Tiger sucks. That's that.

DeeKat · Sep 25, 2005, 12:01 AM

i dont know if this is my experience is related to the java issue but my PB is experiencing some VERY frustrating slowdowns in mundane tasks. basically the spinning ball appers ALL the time! So i have to add my voice to the above posters as a very disapointed Apple user... And I did upgrade to Tiger with a clean install and then migrated my home folder & apps. I'm happy someone mention in this thread that maybe some apps aren't compatible with Tiger and reintalling without migrating the apps would help. Woohoo reintalling...

I'm even more disapointed that I waited until 10.4.2 was out to ugrade thinking that most problems would be solved! guest i'm naive. So far I really regret Panther...

Gus · Sep 25, 2005, 06:29 AM

Are any of you, having these problems, using Adobe Acrobat or Adobe Reader by chance?
Version 7.x has a problem which generates a message in the console or system log (i think both) a few times every second. Something about like this: /Applications/Adobe Reader 7.0/Adobe Reader 7.0.app/Contents/MacOS/Adobe Reader: Invalid color: colored pattern specified with uncolored pattern colorspace.

Adobes "solution" to this is rather ridiculous: select the lines in the log and delete them. Hah!

My solution is not to use Reader anymore unless I really have to because Preview has some trouble with specific PDF files.

Just a thought...

FYI, I'm not having any problems with 10.4.2 apart from the above.

chris v · Sep 25, 2005, 09:45 AM

Originally Posted by pliny

Have you looked at your widgets?
Have you repaired permissions?
Have you run disk utility?
Have you cleared your caches?
Have you turned off/removed any third party mods?
Have you tried removing EVERYTHING attached to your computer, so that you can see that without anything attached to it, it is no good for anything?
Have you backed up and erased your hd/whyinGod'snamedidyouarchiveandinstallyoufool???!!?
Have you considered that maybe it is just you?
Have you thought about returning your brand new machine? It is not the OS it is your hardware. IDIOT!

These are all BAD responses to why Tiger is slow and buggy. The best answer is that Tiger 10.4.x is coded inefficiently and quickly and that it is not the best release of OS X by far. WTF are they doing over at Apple??

The guy is having a problem. Most of those questions (at least the ones actually asked in the thread above your post) were asked in order to gather enough information to be able to help. In order to troubleshoot, you have to gather information and eliminate variables in an attempt to find the problem and eliminate it. We were trying to help, and you are being an ass.