OS X stability

[aaike]

I am using Mac Os X since 10.1 and it always provided me with great stability.

On my iBook I once had a problem with a trial version of DAVE that was expired (don't know exactly any more, I tried to change settings or something).
The trouble with the iBook is that it only has 3 Gig HD space which is very few if you're running OS X. Because the HD is almost full, I sometimes get a message to close some programs for not getting into trouble... but the system itself doesn't crash at all.

With the G4 I didn't have any problem until recently (3 restarts on 1 day). Does anyone know which of the following programs can crash the whole system by itself (those programs were running at the same time in each of the tree cases): Omniweb 4.0.6 (when trying to download QXP 5 Demo); Limewire (doesn't want to quit, I got a system crash when I tried to do a forced quit...); Virtual PC (5? - Highly suspected if you ask me, interferes with internet-radio broadcast all the time). I am also 'using' Folding@home a lot of the time. I wonder if this can cause other user tasks to take longer?

Anyway, don't forget that I never had to do a 'forced' restart except from these 4 examples and never lost critical information because it happened when I was just 'looking around' a little bis.

 

[Sogni]

Originally posted by gdanko

Now the worst is the occasional eternal spinning cursor when I wake from screen saver. :/

Mines used to do that alot too - I no longer let the Mac go to sleep anymore - I do set the screen saver and only allow the monitor to go to sleep, and I've never had that problem again...

Best way to find out what time it is in the middle of the night without struggling to see the time from across the room "Computer! What time is it?" since the computer is awake (just has it's eyes closed) heh

 

[Sogni]

Originally posted by aaike
Does anyone know which of the following programs can crash the whole system by itself (those programs were running at the same time in each of the tree cases): Omniweb 4.0.6 (when trying to download QXP 5 Demo);

Omniweb has never crashed on me - altho I don't use it as much as I use Mozilla...

Limewire (doesn't want to quit, I got a system crash when I tried to do a forced quit...);

I don't have a problem with Limewire at all - I use it all the time (sometimes forgetting it's running and leave it going for days on end until I figure out it's running! lol), but I have modified my settings - in Preferences, under Shutdown I've set it to "Shutdown Immediatly".

Virtual PC (5? - Highly suspected if you ask me, interferes with internet-radio broadcast all the time).

It hasn't acted up on me really - but I hardly use it now since I just can't stand Emulators on any OS.

Altho a combination of high-demanding apps might be doing it...
try increasing your RAM, and also be careful where you get your RAM from - I had purchased generic/cheap-o RAM from a PC-Only outlet that was the cause of all my problems/crashes and kernel panics on my Mac.

 

[aaike]

I have 1 Gig which seems a lot to me. VPC is probably very demanding indeed, so I am going to use it as little as possible and at least not letting it run in the bacground when it is not needed (most apps for wich I'd like to use it are replacable I think if I take some time to learn some X Window system stat apps).

 

[Scummer]

I only had my powermac for a little less than 1 month... but i think my uptime right now is something about 23 days... i received the powermac, put in the new graphics card, turned it on and since then never powered it down and it also never crashed since then...
But i have the sleep mode enabled, after 30 min the mac goes to sleep... i love the oscillating power button light...

Thomas

 

[gdanko]

Originally posted by ericmurphy


Apple HAS a lock workstation option. If I want to lock my workstation, I just slam the cursor down to the lower left hand corner, which cuts in the screensaver. It just doesn't work on your machine. Powerbook, right? Have you tried switching to a different screensaver, like the basic black one?

I want a lock workstation WITHOUT the screensaver. The screensaver will sometimes give me the spinning cursor of death and that is not acceptable!

 

[ericmurphy]

But if you want to lock the workstation, you presumably want to blank the screen as well, right? Otherwise, why bother to lock it in the first place? So probably some kind of screensaver is going to have to kick in anyway.

Have you considered that your tie-dye beach-ball that won't go away might be caused by the energy saver settings, and not the screensaver? Maybe you can try turning off sleep mode. It seems a lot more likely that waking from sleep mode would cause the machine to crash than just de-activating a screen saver.

But even if it is the screensaver that's locking up, that's a problem with the screensaver itself, and has nothing to do with whether the workstation locks or not.

 

[hunt045]

Interesting replies. The only time I reboot is when the applications I am running in the background eat up all the 1GB of available ram because of memory leaks. Acqusition seems to be the worse offender. It will easily consume 400MB over the course of a week. Once the upper limit of memory is exceeded then the OS starts page swapping and the spinning beach ball starts appearing more frequently. I know it is time to reboot again. I noticed that LimeWire will also eat up memory too!!!

 

[AlanBDahl]

Both my G4 iMac and my mother's G3 iMac have a tendency to get into this weird half-dead mode when waking from sleep. The GUI reponds normally as so some simple apps but you can't launch new apps (they bounce and bounce before ending up in this "not responding" state) and if you try to use any more complex app it will hang pretty quickly. Also you usually can't exit any app without hanging it (spinning beachball of death).

I've tried force-quitting all the apps and then trying to log out, shutdown or restart and I always end up with a blue screen (shades of windows!) and the beachball spinning forever. The only solution is to power-cycle the machine (which usually requires running Disk Doctor or Disk First Aid to fix some HD problems).

I leave my machine on all the time so that could be related to the problem. It only happens every 2-3 weeks but it's very irritating when it does since it takes forever to rebuild my 60gb hard drive.

The problem started with 10.1.4, went away with 10.1.5 and came back with one of the July security updates.

It's been suggested to me that Mail may be the culprit so I've taken to exiting mail each night, we'll see if that does the trick. I now also leave Terminal running all the time so the next time it happens I can hopefully run "top" and figure out which process is causing the problem.

 

[thwomp]

I encountered the same spinning beachball thing (coming back from screensaver) a while back. Two things:

I got back to the finder eventually, without rebooting. I don't recall exactly what I did, but I think I spent a little while moving the mouse around until the login box popped up (it will, briefly). But it took a little while. Patience recommended.

The cause of the problem for me was that our network admins wiped the list of detected computers, requiring me to tell them my hardware address again. In the mean time, my computer was getting all antsy that it couldn't find the network, causing the beachball. Since my computer was re-detected, I haven't had the problem. And I use the corner screensaver thing all the time.

 

[NielZ]

I choose "once a month".
Sometimes it just crashes. I know technically it's not crashed (you can enter it with telnet bla bla bla), but for mé, a nórmal user (no offence ), it's crashed.
Blue Screen Of Death (10.0 & 10.1) while shutting down, White Screen Of Death (10.2) while shutting down, kernel panics, no responce anymore at áll (only mouse movement), etc.
But it's far more stable then OS 9, of course..

 

[earthshine]

I got a kernel panic from doing a 10.1.x update. It was a memory exception something. Since I am Mac Power User Extraordinaire I went right out and bought RAM, going from 96 MB to 288MB on my PowerBook. Everything went smoothly until the day I had to reformat the internal drive and reinstall everything, but, hey, that happens to my Windows XP-using roommate about once a month, on average.

I got a kernel panic on a G3 iMac of last known vintage, simply by plugging in a USB Zip 250 drive. Huh. Wasn't expecting that.

eshine$eshine

 

[Excalibur]

Why not just log out? If you are running a server, the services will still run even though you are logged out. Works for me.

 

[Hypernate]

Originally posted by Excalibur
Why not just log out? If you are running a server, the services will still run even though you are logged out. Works for me.

Because all your apps quit.

 

[Excalibur]

Thought you were referring to a 'server', aka processes... so that wouldn't be an issue. However if you want to keep running apps you might be SOL on that one. Hmm.

 

[evildan]

I almost never restart my machine since the upgrade to OSX.

My restarts happen when I do a system update, install software or have to kill the power for some reason.

This post isn't meant to be a "I'm better then you" post, so if it comes off that way, please forgive me.

 

[Lazzo]

Installation restarts aside, mine crashes three times a week on average.

Running OS X since January, three kernel panics in that period otherwise fine.

All the every-other-day forced restarts (freezes, bluescreen etc.) are thanks to having to run Classic for Xpress. Three times a week still beats the **** out of three times a day with the old OS 9!

Definately fewer crashes than with 9.

 

[RS2_Russ]

Just the one panic since 10.0 (how long ago is that now?) and that was due to DoubleCommand extension which has now been fixed. Restarts about once a week, otherwise put Pismo to sleep every night. LOTS of tinkering though (try the excellent "Ad Hosts Revisited" piece on macwrite.com to block ad servers, guys) so a FAR more stable OS than 8,9, etc. and as for Windoze, well.....!

 

[hazmat]

I have only ever gotten three kernel panics, and they were all within a few days of each other. I think it was due to one build of Chimera. It's been fine since I updated it. Those were the only system crashes I ever got since owning this computer since last Nov. As for Windows NT or 2000, on 2000 at home I don't think it has ever crashed in all the years I've been running it, and NT4 the same. I remember getting a BSOD at work running NT4 and laughed since it was such a novelty.

 

[plastic]

I run an iMac G4/800 with 10.1.5, and have yet to face a crash or lock up. Guess I am one of the lucky ones. I run design software like Adobe and macromedia stuff simultanously all the time, and with ftp software running in the background because I do web design stuff. And so far so good. Today is the launch of jaguar, so I should be getting it.

Will post the stability of Jaguar once I get it. Damn excited. They are giving out T-Shirts! Woot!