# Does jaguar crash more than OSX.1 ?



## toast (Nov 2, 2002)

I just noticed some threads appeared every day in the System and Software section of this forum, all with a subject saying something like : "I have a severe problem with Jaguar."

Most of the time, the users are desperate and don't know what to do. They usually have tried the fsck, or have tried reinstalling. Also, the crashes often occur at startup, concerning endless cursors, kernel panics, or such.

I have the feeling Jaguar has multiplied the number of crashes by at least three for many users (though this is absolutely not my case, Jaguar runs perfectly at home). Am I right ? That's my poll.

PS: my question concerns all bugs, even those you may have after booting. In fact, I'd like to know if Jaguar makes you more frown at bugs/errors/crashes than OSX.1 .


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## kendall (Nov 2, 2002)

I found when running Jaguar that it required twice as much ram as 10.1.  

Apps like Mozilla and Word would crash all the time for me with only 256 MB of RAM on my PowerBook G4 667 DVI.

I check "top" to find that my pageouts were huge.  Jaguar was accessing the swap memory a lot more than 10.1 did.  

It is also my opinion that virtual memory in OS X is handled very poorly compared to Linux or FreeBSD. 

I setup OS X so that the swap file was accessed from a seperate partition and found that to alleviate some of the slowdowns.  

I also purchased a 512 MB DIMM for a total of 768 MB of RAM and didn't have any apps crash after that.

The only time my PowerBook completely crashed was while running Jaguar as well.

Another problem with OS X is the file system.  If you shutdown improperly, chances are you're not going to be able to recover completely just by running fsck.  Irreversable damage has likely been done.  

Why Apple decided to run a Unix OS on a HFS+ partition is beyond me.  Likely it was to not break compatibility with OS 9.  

It is my guess 10.3 will likely install on a completely different file system since OS 9 will no longer be shipping by then.


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## toast (Nov 2, 2002)

I also hope 10.3 will be on UFS.

Interesting to learn buying RAM could reduce my crashes... my 'top' command tells me I have accessed SWAP dozens of times !!! And when I look at my disk with hidden files visible : I have FOUR SWAP files, 73.4 Mb each ... grr.


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## fryke (Nov 2, 2002)

Jaguar doesn't crash for me. When I first saw the new kernel panic screenshots in betas, I was hoping to see that one for myself. Never happened. It's a pity that they had those ugly kernel panic messages when OS X still DID have them more often.


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## voice- (Nov 2, 2002)

I've experienced extreme stability from both. Apart from 2 kernel panics on 10.1 long ago and a weird case of Warcraft 3 wiping Jaguar out as a boot disk I haven't experienced any trouble.

These cases were all bad, but nowhere as frequent as with other OSs, so I'll go for same


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## ddma (Nov 2, 2002)

When I got my new iMacc 17" in August, it crashed nearly every 1 or 2 days, and sometimes ever crashed a few times in a day! But later on, I found out that I had used some bad memory. After I replaced the memory, it crashed lesser. Around 3 - 6 days uptime, when it was running 10.2.0. It was not as stable as 10.1.5.

But recently, I installed 10.2.1, it is rock solid now. I have 9 days and 22 hours uptime last week and it is having 4 days uptime. But sometimes it has wired problem when the uptime is getting longer, such as logout would make my iMac to command line interface or iTunes won't play songs. 

P.S. The lightblue input text is hardly to be read in the form.


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## toast (Nov 3, 2002)

> *P.S. The lightblue input text is hardly to be read in the form.*


Not sure I can change this by any means, sorry 

I'm getting more and more convinced I need two more things for my G3/500 iMac:

1) *More RAM*. There's many threads here where more RAM is the solution to crashes, to excessive slowness etc. My 256 Mb RAM won't be enough from now if I want to run Photoshop + Illustrator + Quark, as I did in OS9.

2) *More HD space*. 20 Gb are so quickly full... when you have Carracho and XNap and a passion for Stanley Kubrick movies 

Could you all tell me (in this thread, or just spam me with Private Messages) where to find the cheapest 512 Mb RAM chip and the cheapest 40 Gb FireWire external HD ? Thanx to all !


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## hulkaros (Nov 3, 2002)

For me X.2 NEVER crashed! In X.1 my wife while using MAME crashed the whole system (not just the app but everything went bad)...

However, for our customers we propose to them 256 MB of RAM if X.2 is the OS they gonna use and so far NO ONE said that he/she had a crash on X.2. The same with X.1! All but only one customer in X.1 got a few kernel panics but that's why he installed 3 or 4 times 9.2 and then he went on and installed X.1 2 or 3 times and then he had his share of kernel panics...

The Macs that our customers have are anything between: iMac, eMac, New iMac, PowerMac, iBook, PowerBook, with 128 MB of RAM but mostly with 256 MB of RAM.

But with 9.2 (including 9.2.1 and 9.2.2) ALL of them had crashes ALMOST every single day!!!

Our customers mostly use: Photoshop, Corel, iApps, DVD Studio Pro, Final Cut Pro, Premiere, Office X and 2001, Macromedia apps, Mame, Warcraft 3, Star Wars GB, Sims, Age of Empires, Quake, Unreal Tournament, Rune, some greek apps and even Windows via VirtualPC! Now, that I remembered: At least 5 customers needed tech support for Win98, Win2K, WinXP running under VPC because they had problems with Windows


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## MacLuv (Nov 3, 2002)

as much as i like to bitch about Apple... and even though i still think OS X could be FASTER (ahem) I always knew that OS X would be stable... only becuase when i had to use Windows 95 and then 98 i found those systems very stable compared to our old pal 9... I have only had one problem on OS X 2.1 and that's becuase I interrupted the beachball during some process (i can't remember what it was)--but I've never had a kernel panic or a sanders picnic.

Toast, you might have to buy a new mac... i think that my success with stability is because i have a new eMac w/512 RAM... technically you should be able to run Jag on a G3 but that doesn't mean it will run WELL... Apple's software/hardware gap is always an issue and this is why I wish we had more choices when it came to processors... but we won't go there right now...

I know this may not be an option for you but if you really want that performance you just might have to upgrade your machine...


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## toast (Nov 3, 2002)

Not sure. The G3 has been VERY satisfying with OS9, which I still use a LOT because it's stable at home,n with my own config.

I'm just looking forward to buying some RAM. I have many friends with 384 RAM on G3/400's and their OSX workflow is ok. They have very little access to SWAP files while I have thousands accesses...

But true, the best solution would be a new Mac. As always ...


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## gumse (Nov 3, 2002)

I found out (the hard way) that I need to have the same amount (or more) free disk space as I have Ram (512Mb).
I think this has something to do with some calculation errors regarding free space on the disk.

When the finder reported 200Mb free I got disk full error when trying to duplicate a 10Mb file in Terminal on several occasions. I also got strange hangups and loss of preference files.

Since i freed up 1 Gig on the startup volume I had no problems at all.


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## shatfield1529 (Nov 4, 2002)

All I know is that whenever I quit OmniWeb, there's an 80% chance that it will lock up the machine, and I'll have to do a hard restart. Clock will freeze, and cursor gets jumpy.

Has anyone else had this issue? Or better yet, has OmniGroup addressed it?


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## toast (Nov 4, 2002)

Strange bug you're having, shatfield. Reinstall ?


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## Rhino_G3 (Nov 4, 2002)

If there was a "Jaguar has not crashed to this day" option how many people would have voted there.  

I know it'd have one vote


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## toast (Nov 4, 2002)

Sorry, can't edit the poll Rhino .


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## sheepguy42 (Nov 4, 2002)

I know my Cube has yet to crash (at least kernel panic) in Jaguar; on the other hand for two weeks I was working on an iBook, and the second to last day it had a kernel panic on opening word. Man, I am so hooked on that machine, I wish I hadn't had to give it back. Maybe I'll buy one at the King of Prussia store.


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## Factor41 (Nov 5, 2002)

I had a few panics on 10.1, but so far none on 10.2.1 - i'd have clicked that button.



> Toast, you might have to buy a new mac...  technically you should be able to run Jag on a G3 but that doesn't mean it will run WELL...



No panics and pretty decent performance on my PBG3/300 which was rescued from near death, so a decent speed G3 that hasn't been dropped quite so frequently should be perky as anything I would have thought!


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## Sharky (Nov 5, 2002)

Classic has crashed both X.1 and X.2, but neither has crashed without classic running, so purely in terms of OSX stability I would say the same.


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## solrac (Nov 6, 2002)

Jaguar kernel panicked for me once so far.....

it was crazy! The screen dimmed with a quartz effect and smooth anti-aliased text told me this:

"You need to restart your computer."

(Not verbatim) and that's it.

How did they quartz-ify the kernel panic??!!!


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## ddma (Nov 6, 2002)

I think it is a picture only.


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## kendall (Nov 6, 2002)

This makes me sad.  I've had my new iBook 800 running for 10 minutes and this is the second application crash already.

I'm pretty sure its due to my RAM, or lack there of.  Not to worry, 512 MB is on the way!


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## Greystroke (Nov 7, 2002)

I believe that Stuffit Crash is due to security issues. I have had the same problem, but last night I downloaded the security patch or what not through Software Update and it hasn't happened since. I don't think it could be Ram, because well, I have 894mb of it and it still happened to me.

And on topic except for a few driver issues that plagued me until i removed them, and bought a different ethernet card with Jaguar drivers, No crashes for me. 

I am very happy with Jaguar so far. Not bad for an $80 upgrade!!


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## kendall (Nov 7, 2002)

The first application crash was iChat.  Is there a patch for that as well?


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## Greystroke (Nov 7, 2002)

To itanium -
I'm not sure, i don't remember seeing one on software update. the iChat crash could possibly be due to minimal ram. Oh and i'm merely theorizing on that one since i don't use it and don't know how demanding it is. That stick of 512 should help out a bunch though. 

-Greystroke-


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## Jason (Nov 7, 2002)

i originally had a bad install, but since the reinstall everything has been fine and dandy


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## kendall (Nov 8, 2002)

Ok, someone help me out here because I'm getting kind of annoyed.

I've had my iBook two days and iChat has crashed twice and Stuffit three times.  No big deal, probably due to lack of RAM.

Now, for some reason unknown to me, TextEdit just decides to hang, giving me the spinning beach ball of death.  I have to force quit it to make it close.

It used to work but now it doesn't.  What the hell is going on?

I don't want to have to reinstall, I've only had the iBook two days.  Why is it giving me so much trouble?  Aaaaaarg!


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## ex2bot (Nov 9, 2002)

itanium: 

Have you fsck'd yet?

Also, are you updated to 10.2.1?

I had a ton of weird crashes when I first installed Jaguar. After a while, it stopped crashing.


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## kendall (Nov 9, 2002)

I didn't just install Jaguar, it came with the new iBook.  Its version 10.2.1.  I don't know why I should have to use "fsck" because I haven't shutdown improperly or had a system crash.


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## MacLuv (Nov 9, 2002)

what the hell is fsck?


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## MacLuv (Nov 9, 2002)

Itanium, are you using stuffit 7.01? It fixes all that crashing crap.


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## kendall (Nov 9, 2002)

fsck is a utility used to fix corrupt system disks.


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## edX (Nov 9, 2002)

well not exactly, fsck is a command line that is excuted in single user mode during startup that will scan repair your main harddrive. essentially it runs disk first aid manually as opposed to the automatic check and repair that occurs after faulty shutdown. 

there are tons of threads about fsck and fsck-y on the site.


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## MacLuv (Nov 9, 2002)

fsck this man, i'm outta here...


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## kendall (Nov 9, 2002)

Acutally, fsck in OS X runs a program called fsck_hfs to repair HFS+ partitions.

The original fsck can't do anything for HFS+ partitions.  It is used to repair UFS partitions.  Inodes, link counts, data blocks, etc, don't exactly correspond the same way with HFS+.

fsck_hfs uses the same diagnostic and repair libraries as Disk First Aid therefor there is no benefit of running fsck over Disk First Aid.

It has been my experience with UFS that if you have to run fsck, you're pretty much fscked.

Thanks to JFS, fsck is unnecessary.


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## edX (Nov 9, 2002)

ok, so i'm half right - fsck is the command and it runs an app that is equivilent to disk first aid. makes sense. when things get that screwed up i tend to just go ahead and run diskwarrior and then maybe plus optimizer. there's so many things that disk first aid just doesn't fix yet the system will run "o.k." like that. better to just go ahead and let the advanced app check it over good. something i plan to do tomorrow while i watch some football since i had a pair of power outages last night.

but fsck is certainly popular with the 'nix crowd and the rest of the mac community who don't want to shell out for a real disk repair app.


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## Ebonit (Nov 9, 2002)

I think jaguar crashes more than osx10.1.x .... on my powerbook wallstreet. Every so now and then I get a "grey screen of death". Since I've seen many posts about this and powerbooks I guess it's a powerbook thing. 

As soon as I installed, or tried to install, jaguar on my powerbook it crashed, forcing me to reformat my harddrive and all. Then it ran well but still I get those crashes so now and then, even after I upgraded my PB to a 500Mhz G4 processor. 

I also use a Umax s900with a 350MHZ G4 Upgrade. That one never crashed and is rock solid. So I had some problems voting but voted for "crashes more" anyway.


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## solrac (Nov 9, 2002)

woah, Jaguar just crashed again today! Second time since I installed it... which was the day it came out... hmm I forget when that was (huge line @ apple store)

It has a totally different kernel panic that is quartz-beautified. It says simply "You must restart your comptuer" in like 5 different languages.


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## plastic (Nov 9, 2002)

See, you learn 5 new languages with Jaguar. Truely an international OS.


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