Hi Chris,
I hope you are well. I’ve lately been experiencing an issue with MWorks where, while the experiment is running, the computer hard locks and has to be restarted by pressing and holding the power button. It happens approximately once every two weeks, so it is very hard to pin down the cause. The only preventative measure I’ve taken is restarting the computer before each day of experiments, but it doesn’t seem to have helped. Are there any logs I could send you so you can help me figure out what’s going on?
Simon
Hi Simon,
You mean the entire macOS user interface freezes up? That isn’t something that MWorks (or any other user-space software) is able to do – at least, not without help from a buggy kernel extension or graphics driver. Are you running any virtual machines or a remote desktop server? Those would be likely culprits, in my opinion.
Are there any logs I could send you so you can help me figure out what’s going on?
If, upon restarting your Mac, you see a “You shut down your computer because of a problem” dialog (or something similar), then whatever detailed info it provides would be helpful. Also, immediately after restart, the file /var/log/system.log may have some useful info. If you want to send either or both of those to me, I’ll take a look.
Cheers,
Chris
Very good to know, I would not be surprised if it was related to the
graphics driver. And thank you for taking a look at it for me even though
Mworks can’t cause it!
Here are two files, attached.
Simon
Hi Simon,
Thanks for sending the logs.
The cpu_resource.diag.txt file isn’t a crash log. Rather, it seems to be a note from the system that MWClient is using an excessive amount of CPU time. (This is probably due to the Eye Window, which is not very efficient.) I’m pretty sure this is just a diagnostic and doesn’t indicate a crash or any other functional issue with MWClient.
As for system.log, I see two reboots: one at Dec 13 13:27:59, the other at Dec 13 14:58:32. (You can find the relevant message by searching for “bootlog” in the file.) The first reboot is preceded by a message about the system shutting down, so I assume this was a normal, non-forced reboot. The second is not, so I assume it was a hard reset. Does that sound correct? Unfortunately, I don’t see anything in the log that indicates a problem.
You’re seeing this isse on a late-2013 Mac Pro (black cylinder), correct? That model has been prone to graphics cards failures (see here and here, for example). I’ve experienced this myself: After I started seeing a very messed up desktop and took my Mac Pro to the Apple Store, they replaced both of my graphics cards. (This was back in December 2015.) It might be worth getting in touch with Apple support, as you may have a hardware issue, too.
Chris