10.5.7 stability

It's locked up three times on the iMac since I updated, once with Dashboard up and twice with the screensaver, each time when trying to exit from the programme. Both "full-screen" applications...

No problems with the MacBook, but I'm running dual displays on the iMac, which might be the problem.

Anyone else had bothers?

A couple of the iMacs at my school had some issues but they dissapeared on Friday

IIRC the first lockup was on Friday... how do I send the problem back to your school?

You should tie them to the desk so people can't take them!

Holding off on the update for now. Will see how it pans out.

not heard a complaint from MacFriar - will check with him

MacBook has been absolutely fine [ which is as well as I do NOT want any problems at present ]

Royal mail

Some have indeed been bolted down to the desk!

No joke!

OSX.5.7 rock solid on all the Mac's I have it installed on, but they are all new Machines lees than 6 months old.

The last remaining Mac here is currently fine...

Single or dual monitor?

I have a dual monitor config on my 1st generation Mac Pro.

I have only had one problem - my menu bar icons disappeared a day or two after the update, and I had to restart to reinstate them. It hasn't happened again yet, and it may not have been related to 10.5.7.

Cheers.

On thinking about it, it must have been around then that I installed the desktop clock app that I mentioned elsewhere in here... I'll try taking it off.

I hate intermittent faults, you can never be 100% sure that you've cured them

Single...

Thanks... I think

Something else got broke in the update too- I couldn't send from my @thinkbroadband.com email address. Bit of a snag for a moderator

Seems mail.app got updated to 3.6, and it wouldn't accept the SSL certificate. I had to set it to "Always Trust"

That sounds more like a problem at thinkbroadband than an Apple issue!

Apparently there is an oddity of some sort with the certificate, but it worked with Mail 3.5 and it still works with Vista and Windows Mail...

No problems on a variety of macs old and new.

OK, so I uninstalled the desktop clock I referred to earlier, and after a while it crashed again.

I'm also running a third-party screensaver, so I changed that to one of the built-in ones. Within minutes it locked up again, but this time I'd got some timings so went hunting in the system log. Found this:

May 21 12:45:10 bill-fords-imac kernel[0]: NVChannel(OpenGL): Graphics channel timeout!
May 21 12:45:15 bill-fords-imac kernel[0]: NVDA(OpenGL): Channel exception!  status = 0xffff info32 = 0x6 = Fifo: Parse Error
May 21 12:45:15 bill-fords-imac kernel[0]: 0000000c
May 21 12:45:15 bill-fords-imac kernel[0]: 00100000 00000039 00000000 00000800
May 21 12:45:15 bill-fords-imac kernel[0]: 00028212 00000328 00000000 00000002
May 21 12:45:15 bill-fords-imac kernel[0]: 00000000 beef3901 0000040d
May 21 12:45:15 bill-fords-imac kernel[0]: 0000000b
May 21 12:45:15: --- last message repeated 14 times ---
May 21 12:45:15 bill-fords-imac kernel[0]: NVDA(OpenGL): Channel exception!  status = 0xffff info32 = 0x6 = Fifo: Parse Error
May 21 12:45:15 bill-fords-imac kernel[0]: 0000000b
May 21 12:45:15: --- last message repeated 6 times ---
May 21 12:45:15 bill-fords-imac kernel[0]: NVDA(OpenGL): Channel exception!  status = 0xffff info32 = 0x3 = Fifo: Unknown Method Error
May 21 12:45:15 bill-fords-imac kernel[0]: 0000000b
May 21 12:45:15 bill-fords-imac kernel[0]: NVDA(OpenGL): Channel exception!  status = 0xffff info32 = 0x3 = Fifo: Unknown Method Error

with the last few lines seemingly repeating ad infinitum until I forced a restart.

The only thing (I think) that I haven't tried is to revert to a single monitor, because that would be a PITA. At the moment I'm running with the screensaver timing set to "Never", and keeping my fingers crossed

Anyone got any idea what the error messages in the log mean?

The nVidia graphics driver crashed, so either there's a problem with the driver, or with the graphics card. What card do you have?

In reply to a post by AlanH:

The nVidia graphics driver crashed, so either there's a problem with the driver, or with the graphics card. What card do you have?

From System Profiler:

NVIDIA GeForce 7300 GT:

  Chipset Model:	NVIDIA GeForce 7300 GT
  Type:	Display
  Bus:	PCIe
  PCIe Lane Width:	x16
  VRAM (Total):	128 MB
  Vendor:	NVIDIA (0x10de)
  Device ID:	0x0395
  Revision ID:	0x00a1
  ROM Revision:	3021
  Displays:
iMac:
  Resolution:	1920 x 1200
  Depth:	32-Bit Color
  Core Image:	Hardware Accelerated
  Main Display:	Yes
  Mirror:	Off
  Online:	Yes
  Quartz Extreme:	Supported
  Built-In:	Yes
L1917S:
  Resolution:	1280 x 1024 @ 75 Hz
  Depth:	32-Bit Color
  Core Image:	Hardware Accelerated
  Mirror:	Off
  Online:	Yes
  Quartz Extreme:	Supported
  Rotation:	Supported

It hasn't (yet) given any trouble unless a "full screen" process is running... not sure if that's any help in deciding between a software or hardware problem?

If it were a software issue then I guess it would affect anyone using a 7300 GT in that mode. I would have thought there would be some reports on the Apple Discussions forums if this were the case. I don't see any significant volume of such reports, which suggests it's more likely to be a hardware issue.

In reply to a post by AlanH:

which suggests it's more likely to be a hardware issue.

Just what I needed

I was browsing the system log (as one does ), and there's a lot of very strange-looking errors coming up in there. Far too many to include in a post, but a few examples, the last two of which are generated several times::

May 21 12:51:01 bill-fords-imac mds[35]: (/Volumes/Data 2/.Spotlight-V100/Store-V1/Stores/9710DC80-C440-410E-82F4-40D0991D3DFB)(Error) IndexCI in ContentIndexOpenBulk:Could not open /Volumes/Data 2/.Spotlight-V100/Store-V1/Stores/9710DC80-C440-410E-82F4-40D0991D3DFB/live.2.; needs recovery

(That one turned up on the forced restart, on all three external drives)

May 21 13:01:46 bill-fords-imac [0x0-0x23023].com.apple.systempreferences[239]: objc[239]: Class O3Panel is implemented in both /System/Library/MonitorPanels/AppleDisplay.monitorPanels/Contents/Resources/Authorization.monitorPanel/Contents/MacOS/Authorization and /System/Library/MonitorPanels/AppleDisplay.monitorPanels/Contents/Resources/TVOptions.monitorPanel/Contents/MacOS/TVOptions. Using implementation from /System/Library/MonitorPanels/AppleDisplay.monitorPanels/Contents/Resources/TVOptions.monitorPanel/Contents/MacOS/TVOptions.

and

May 21 13:57:13 bill-fords-imac /System/Library/CoreServices/backupd[321]: Node requires deep traversal:/Volumes/Data 1 reason:kFSEDBEventFlagMustScanSubDirs|kFSEDBEventFlagReasonEventDBUntrustable|

Disk Utility finds no problems... could something have got corrupted (re-install?) or should I start trying to find my nearest Genius?

My suggestion that it's hardware assumed that your software is the same as everyone else's. But if there is some general system software corruption then the display issue could possibly be related.

An archive and restore, using your system software DVD, may well be worth trying. It should leave your existing user data and prefs unaltered but replace your system software.

In reply to a post by AlanH:

An archive and restore, using your system software DVD, may well be worth trying. It should leave your existing user data and prefs unaltered but replace your system software.

I've seen this referred to before, is it an option if I boot up from the install DVD or is the archiving something I need to do first?

My install DVD is the original 10.5 Leopard, so I'd better allow plenty of time and bandwidth for Software Update to do it's thing

It's an option in the installer. Watch out for an Options button bottom left as you run through the installer screens.

The other options are erase and install, which reformats your hard drive first, or update, which will probably not replace existing faulty system files.

Thanks Alan, I'll probably give it a try tomorrow.

A&I is the way to go - don't forget to check "Preserve user settings"

Well, that seemed to go more-or-less OK. Only problem was that it decided it didn't want to know about the admin password after the restart, so I had to reboot from the DVD and re-set it, which led to one or two access problems. They seem to be sorted out now though.

Updating everything to 10.5.7 took a while though, getting on for a GB of download

I'll leave the screensaver off for a while to make sure everything is OK, then enable it again and cross everything I've got two of that will cross

One query- can I get rid of the "Previous Systems" folder without doing any harm?

I'm never sure what that "Previous Systems" folder is good for. I've certainly never had cause to go into it, and I'd be very reluctant to start moving bits and pieces from it into the live system.

Roughly what I thought

OK thanks, I'll wait until Time Machine has had a crack at it then delete it.

It's the equivalent of the old Clean Install on OS9 isn't it, so you can rescue any particularly import app pref files and whatnot? Certainly wouldn't pull anything OS related out of it tho'.

Well, archive and install didn't work

But I think I've sussed it... without going through all the gory details, it would seem that Shades was the culprit, which I was running as a more convenient way to control two monitors.

The system also starts a lot faster and generally feels a bit "snappier"... I'll give it a while and try running Shades again, a brief attempt seemed to indicate that quitting it and restarting might have been sufficient.

I suppose having the graphics drivers update whilst it was still running could have got it confused?

did you use software update ?

i always download the combo update after issues, with previous updates.

bs0d.

Yes, I always use software update, and install all the updates as they occur even if they don't look particularly relevant to what I use.

In this case, it seems as though something in either 10.5.6 or 10.5.7 can break the way Shades works when you've got two monitors. Since I've stopped using it, nary a hint of trouble...