How to tell if application is hanging or still working?

Question

Level 1

123 points

How to tell if application is hanging or still working?

I occasionally ask photoshop to do very large jobs such as joining many images into panoramas. This can take a very long time, and sometimes Photoshop will show as 'not responding' in red on the activity monitor or force quit window, and will hang until force-quit; sometimes it will show red but then 'come out of it' and complete the requested task. To save time waiting to see if it will snap out of it or not, I'd like to know if there is any way to tell whether the program is really crashed or is just working at the limit of the computer's capacity and will eventually complete the task.

One person suggested I use a sudo fs_usage command in terminal to see if photoshop is working, but didn't say what I would expect to see if it is irreversibly hanging.

Any suggestions?

MacBook Pro, Mac OS X (10.5.6), Photoshop CS3

Posted on Apr 11, 2009 3:58 PM

Reply

Answer 1

nerowolfe

Level 6

13,090 points

Apr 11, 2009 4:05 PM in response to Donot Haveone

If you simply run the Activity Monitor you can see if the process is using a lot of CPU or zero. If zero, it's most likely stuck.
You can also run
top
in a terminal
The other command you named requires root privileges and may not be necessary.

Reply

Answer 2

Donot Haveone Author

Level 1

123 points

Apr 11, 2009 4:12 PM in response to nerowolfe

It was using a lot of cpu in activity monitor, but the progress bar had not changed for 20 minutes (put a post-it on the screen to mark the spot).

What does the

top

command do?

Reply

Answer 3

nerowolfe

Level 6

13,090 points

Apr 11, 2009 4:28 PM in response to Donot Haveone

Donot Haveone wrote:
It was using a lot of cpu in activity monitor, but the progress bar had not changed for 20 minutes (put a post-it on the screen to mark the spot).

That may simply mean that a lot of CPU is going on and the progress bar may only show HD activity. This sometimes happens with programs and apps. If you open force quit it will say they are "not responding" but in fact they are simply very busy and apear "dead."

What does the

top

command do?

From the terminal man top command
top - display and update sorted information about processes

It's easier to see than explain
Open a terminal and enter
top
and watch.
Use Ctl-c to terminate it.

Reply

Answer 4

Donot Haveone Author

Level 1

123 points

Apr 11, 2009 4:35 PM in response to nerowolfe

That's helpful, thanks!

Is this a fair way to summarize your answer:

if the CPU is busy, don't give up on the process?

Reply

Answer 5

Donot Haveone Author

Level 1

123 points

Apr 11, 2009 7:17 PM in response to Donot Haveone

Ok, after playing some more, it is clear that it can sit in a 'not responding' state with no change in the progress bar, but massively using CPU, and eventually may come up with the goods.

Whew.

Reply

Answer 6

Apr 11, 2009 10:21 PM in response to Donot Haveone

HI Donot,

In particular when editing in Photoshop, if you are experiencing freezes, or a slight hang time, make sure and Save your work often just in case.

Carolyn 🙂

Reply

Answer 7

Donot Haveone Author

Level 1

123 points

Apr 25, 2009 1:30 PM in response to Carolyn Samit

In this case, there is nothing to save, as the thing I want to save is not yet created.

I always close all other images before starting these large panos, primarily for memory management.

I also don't start working on anything that I can't easily redo in other applications while Photoshop is working on these very large projects.

Reply