OS X stability

How often do your OS X machine crash?

  • Once a week

  • Once a month

  • A few times a year

  • Never

Results are only viewable after voting.
E

ericmurphy

Registered
I'm interested in taking a little informal survey here. What are users' general experience with OS X vis a vis system stability? How often does the UI freeze up on you, forcing you either to ssh in to restart (as opposed to just killing a rogue process), or how often does the system refuse remote connections, forcing you to do a hardware restart? How often do you get a kernel panic?

I have a G4/500 with a gig and a quarter of RAM, and I seem to get some kind of system crash (kernel panic, lock-up, etc.) once every couple of months. I also have a G3 iMac/600 with a half-gig of ram, and that machine seems rarely to run more than a week without a forced restart.

These machines run 24/7 (never powered down; they're servers, for crying out loud!), and they never run Classic or OS 9. I run a pretty diverse set of apps, and often I'll have Photoshop, Illustrator, GoLive, InDesign, Mail, OmniWeb, Explorer, iTunes, and a half-dozen other apps up simlutaneously. So I guess I shouldn't compare my uptimes to a machine that's just file- and web-serving all the time.

So what does YOUR uptime look like?
 
Dad gum screen saver will lock up the system when I wake it up. Spinning rainbow cursor never goes away. Apple needs a "lock workstation" mode like Windows.
 
If you're looking for a way to keep people from using your computer while you're away, I believe the easiest way to do this is to require entry of your password to get past the screensaver. I'm not in front of my Mac right now so I can't be absolutely sure, but I believe there's a checkbox in the screensaver dialog that allows you to require entry of your login password to get around the screensaver.

Of course, this isn't quite as effective as just having the screensaver lock up the whole computer, but it does result in less data-loss. :)
 
My uptime right now is very low -- but only because I manually restarted to do an fsck. Which I didn't need to do, but I come from the Windows world so if I am not doing computer maintenance every week or so I think I'm missing something... :p
 
Originally posted by ericmurphy
If you're looking for a way to keep people from using your computer while you're away, I believe the easiest way to do this is to require entry of your password to get past the screensaver.
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That's what locks me up. I move the mouse to unlock the saver and the cursor spins forever. I want a non-SS locking mode.
 
up time isn't really reflective of how long it goes between crashes because of updates. but you really made me think. I can't remember a crash of any kind in over 2 months. The updates must be working.:)

so i put a few times a year cause that would be about what it averages out to be since stability has improved even more.
 
Originally posted by gdanko
Dad gum screen saver will lock up the system when I wake it up. Spinning rainbow cursor never goes away. Apple needs a "lock workstation" mode like Windows.
Click to expand...

Yes it does! :D
 
Originally posted by Ed Spruiell
up time isn't really reflective of how long it goes between crashes because of updates.
Click to expand...

I agree. I probably restart way more after installing upgrades or software that requires a restart. I'm hoping the poll responses accurately reflect that.

For example, I had a kernel panic last week. The last time before that I had a system error that required a restart was on March 7. So I had a time between crashes of over seven weeks. But I restarted seven times between those two dates, for things like iTunes updates, the 10.1.4 update, etc.
 
I configured my screensaver to require my user password on waking, and it seemed to work fine. Maybe there's something wrong with your system? I often come across weird quirks like that in OS X (or OS 9, or any flavor of Windows, for that matter).
 
I have to admit that I only recall OS X crashing on me once the since I started using it 8 months ago. I think part of the problem was that I was manually configuring and changing some of the system files. I did a clean install since then, and it's been working great!

I now have the habit of leaving my computer on almost all the time, and I notice no gradual degradation of system performance like I usually do with Windows NT/2000.

EXCELLENT OS!
 
30ish days, then updated, restart required.
another 30ish days, another update, restart required.
52 days, restarted instead of sleeping (4:30am) :D
89 days, awesome thunderstorm, shutdown required.

Not one crash/freeze/kernel panic...knock wood.
 
Earlier builds had a tendency to panic, and DAVE sure gave Marvin the willies... Nowadays it never crashes, but still I restart once a while due to installs/fsck. My longest uptime is 7 days. Its a laptop btw, so naturally it shuts down on account of the battery sometimes.
 
Originally posted by gdanko
Dad gum screen saver will lock up the system when I wake it up. Spinning rainbow cursor never goes away. Apple needs a "lock workstation" mode like Windows.
Click to expand...

Wait. Soon it will be released. An awesome app by a great guy and NeXT/Cocoa developer named Mike Elston, that uses the screensaver engine, but independent of your regular screensaver settings. See attached image of my Apple menu. I hope Mike releases it soon, because it's something a lot of people will want, plus something any OS which requires a login should have. Shame on Apple. :)
 
So far, it looks like almost half the people who have responded to this survey have never had an OS X system crash. I wonder how long they've been using OS X. I have to say my own experience hasn't been quite as good, but then I've been using OS X since the Public Beta came out, and I use a lot of beta software. Plus, my machines run 24/7, so I guess sooner or later they're pretty much bound to crash, right?
 
I can remember each REAL crash.

First few were user error. I did not upgrade the firmware prior to installing 10.0.

I had a panic with Samba once. Not sure of the cause.

In the 10.0.x days the GUI would just stop responding and I'd have to hard boot.

Now the worst is the occasional eternal spinning cursor when I wake from screen saver. :/
 
Originally posted by Frederic
My B&W G3 never crashed. And I don't even know what a Kernel Panic is :D

So far, so good... ;)
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Oh, I havent had a panic in AGES, but I get tha darn spinning cursor. I am just going to disable the screensaver.

Apple needs a lock workstation option, dang it.
 
Originally posted by gdanko


Oh, I havent had a panic in AGES, but I get tha darn spinning cursor. I am just going to disable the screensaver.

Apple needs a lock workstation option, dang it.
Click to expand...

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?
 
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