10.1.2 stability

[georgemp]

hi,
is anybody having stability issues with 10.1.2. My computer occasionally freezes (more than once a day) and I'm trying to track down the problem. I have a SOnnet Ultra ATA 66 card, radeon pci and a macally pci usb card installed. All these functioned fine under 10.1. When I upgraded to 10.1.1 I noticed that Kensington mouseworks used to break my system. With mouseworks loaded the system used to hang within half an hour of boot. But, it was pretty stable without mouseworks. Now, 10.1.2 is unstable without mouseworks either. I'm hoping on being able to resolve this as I don't want to go thru another 10.1_>security update->installer update -> 10.1.1 update again. Thanks in advance for any help.

[griffman]

I haven't had a single kernel panic under 10.1.2 across three machines (G4/350, G4/733, and iBook 500). I've had a couple minor application crashes, and two major ones where an older version of XDarwin seemed to kill the LoginWindow server. As an aside, if you ever want to get back to the login prompt in a hurry, just kill the LoginWindow server. Zoom, instant login box. NOT the safest nor most recommended way to to it, but it appears to be what XDarwin was doing.

I would venture to guess it's one of the third-party cards. Is there any way you can test without the ATA or USB cards?

-rob.

[edlake]

I've had 2 kernal panics since the Public Beta: both happened Wednesday and were due to a bad ram chip. Other than that, I never had a problem that wasn't caused by the application, and it never brought down the os.
G4/450 SP 512 (Was 1024 but I had to send back the chip)

[Craig R. Arko]

Yup, you can pretty much guaranty that a kernel panic is the result of either bad hardware, a buggy driver (.kext), or rarely, a memory leak causing VM thrashing.

Be sure to post a report to Apple feedback including the hardware config and the contents of the k.p. display message.

Haven't had one since 10.0.4, myself, with the wacky USB support.

[georgemp]

Thanks once again for all the replies. I don't get kernel panics. Instead my system just freezes. The mouse locks up and doesn't move. I don't even get the spinning rainbow. I now have gone back to 10.1.1 as it has been crashing too often. I too suspect the PCI cards, but since all the drivers for these cards are made by apple I don't see why there should be a problem. It could be the USB card and the radeon conflicting tho. I had trouble with these in OS 9 too when running 3D games. Anyway, i will send a report to apple and hope it is addressed in future releases.

[mervTormel]

yep. i've gotta agree with Craig here.

and to flesh this out a little more in the hardware arena...

i was running multiple machines on a StarView 4-port USB KVM switch, model SV421USB

works top notch with OS 9, Linux, Windows, until OS X

then, no discernable event, but kernel panics, sometimes often, sometimes long intervals of stability.

unplug that KVM from the USB port of my G4/500 AGP and nary a panic in sight for days and days. plug it back in and kerpow, back to a fretful kernel.

those third party cards are murder, but this KVM is an external USB box of wires that shouldn't have much impact, but it does.

[doctorsid]

HARDWARE...
Since upgrading to .2 I have not had one single panic or freeze. I work on 300+MB Photoshop Files while also having FreeHand, GoLive,Outlook Express, and others running at the ssame time. I did have a lot of freezes and some panics with .0, .04 and .1

But all seems to be gone. It appears as if it is not made by Radeon or Nvida that it is not 100% compatible with Apple. But don't tell Bill Gates or he will start some sort of antitrust crap to get even and try to draw real computer graphics people to using secretary bookkeeping machines.

[jeffbellamy]

My Computer freezes overnight G4 Dual 450 OSX 10.1.2 could it have something to do with the sleep function. In the morning I have to push the power button to get it to wake up but the cursor is frozen and I can't force quit anything.

It's a mystery.....

[xLEE]

Since upgrading to 10.1.2 I have had almost no problems, I did screw around with things to much and had to re-install the system, it was still running fine but i wanted to get everything back to standard.

The only other problem I have had is sleeping on my PBG3, once I left it unplugged for too long (expected), but once I had upptime of about 27 days and I went away for a holiday, when I got back I thought I would have broken the 30 Day barrier, but it wouldn't turn on. I had this same problem with waking in 9.1 too so I think it must be a hardware problem.

I'm surprised that you are having problems, more than one crash a day, I did have quite a few crashes in 10.0 on my PBG3, I re-installed and it was as stable as it gets. So I'd try that.

[mervTormel]

sleep is problematic. if you crash because of sleep, turn sleep off/don't sleep.

on this G4/500 AGP with OEM scsi card, it slept fine under os 9 until 9.1.2, i think. then that broke it.

under OSX, it don't crash, but it don't deep sleep (processor/disk sleep).

i miss sleep. power costs in CA, USA make me have to shutdown at nite.

i would like to see long uptimes, but, alas...

does the new iron from apple sleep well?

[xLEE]

Yeah, my $2000 iron does sleep well, irons pretty good too. I guess it was intended for buisness men who need to flatten out their krinkly pants after a flight.:D

[smith]

I have a consistent problem that has cropped up in the last week or so. My Apple brand menu bar icons (script.menu, sound, airport, battery/energy) sometimes stop updating after a sleep. not all sleeps, however, just some. Any ideas?

I had a few instances of the machine not waking up at all, and a search on apple's knowledge base reveals that faulty ram may be the cause. However, in those cases the machines *never* woke up from sleep -- mine *usually* wakes up from sleep, only failing to wake up a few times in 6 weeks of ownership (iBook 500, post october version).

Any ideas? If I log out and log back in the icons update themselves, and go back to normal, but that is tiresome. Simply restarting the finder does *not* solve the problem.

...r

[xchanyazy]

smith,
Open up process viewer and double click on SystemUIServer, then tell it to quit. This will reload your clock and such.

[smith]

Originally posted by xchanyazy
smith,
Open up process viewer and double click on SystemUIServer, then tell it to quit. This will reload your clock and such.

That did it! Thanks a lot! I wonder what I have that is killing the systemUIprocess. Have you ever heard of that problem?

[xchanyazy]

Yes, it happens to me every once in a while, but I have never been able to pin down a specific reason, and I always forget to look in the console when it happens.

[jeffbellamy]

Originally posted by jeffbellamy
My Computer freezes overnight G4 Dual 450 OSX 10.1.2 could it have something to do with the sleep function. In the morning I have to push the power button to get it to wake up but the cursor is frozen and I can't force quit anything.

It's a mystery.....

So i went to System Preferences Energy Saver and put "Put system to sleep" to never. This morning all is well.

go figure

jeff