Q: Random freezing from Snow Leopard - total lock-up for about 30 seconds

Dale, I did exactly that: repair permissions, update to 10.6.1, then repair permissions again. Unfortunately my issue, which others have described before me (random freezes, hangs, lock-ups for about 30 seconds or so, beginning right after an upgrade to Snow Leopard from Leopard), has not gone away.

I also discovered this related thread: http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=2146412&tstart=0

In that thread, some suggestions include updating to the latest version of SIMBL and triple-checking any Safari plugins like PithHelmet (and, I'll add the Safari Microformats Plugin) which use SIMBL. This seems to make a lot of sense to me since the freezing is very noticeably tied to using Safari, at least in my case.

My workaround in the mean time is simply not to launch Safari, which works, but is very annoying. I'm going to update SIMBL and do the recommended repair permissions/repair disk/etc. tasks and report back to see if the issue is resolved.

Good luck, everyone.

Hi, I'm having the same issue from a clean install. My gut is that this may be drive-sleep related. See if changing the drive sleep in Energy Saver cures this. But, if it does, what is 10.6.1 (yes, I updated and not seeing any fix) doing differently from 10.5.8 that makes a sleeping drive lock up the entire system?!

Anyone else seeing this? It's getting really annoying.

Sadly, despite uninstalling SIMBL entirely, repairing permissions, and so forth, I still experience the intermittent freezing issue when Safari is open. Interestingly, I discovered these entries in my system.log file, which may prove helpful in debugging the issue (for someone other than me):

---- BEGIN LOG CLIP ----

bash-3.2$ tail -f /var/log/system.log
Sep 11 18:01:45: --- last message repeated 1 time ---
Sep 11 18:01:45 Perseus Safari Webpage Preview Fetcher[257]: INSERT-HANG-DETECTED: Tx time:25.181051, # of Inserts: 0, # of bytes written: 0, Did shrink: NO
Sep 11 18:02:08 Perseus /System/Library/CoreServices/CCacheServer.app/Contents/MacOS/CCacheServer[163]: No valid tickets, timing out
Sep 11 18:03:00 Perseus kernel[0]:
Sep 11 18:03:01: --- last message repeated 1 time ---
Sep 11 18:03:01 Perseus Safari[254]: INSERT-HANG-DETECTED: Tx time:21.280277, # of Inserts: 1, # of bytes written: 157639, Did shrink: NO
Sep 11 18:06:57 Perseus kernel[0]:
Sep 11 18:07:22: --- last message repeated 3 times ---
Sep 11 18:07:22 Perseus Safari[254]: INSERT-HANG-DETECTED: Tx time:46.772571, # of Inserts: 1, # of bytes written: 1150, Did shrink: NO
Sep 11 18:07:38 Perseus su[280]: maymay to admin on /dev/ttys000
Sep 11 18:11:02 Perseus com.apple.WebKit.PluginAgent[283]: Debugger() was called!
Sep 11 18:11:34 Perseus com.apple.WebKit.PluginAgent[283]: Debugger() was called!
Sep 11 18:12:00 Perseus kernel[0]:
Sep 11 18:12:30: --- last message repeated 3 times ---
Sep 11 18:26:37 Perseus kernel[0]:
Sep 11 18:27:02: --- last message repeated 3 times ---
Sep 11 18:27:02 Perseus Safari[254]: INSERT-HANG-DETECTED: Tx time:47.268470, # of Inserts: 1, # of bytes written: 7985, Did shrink: NO
Sep 11 18:27:08 Perseus com.apple.WebKit.PluginAgent[283]: Debugger() was called!

---- END LOG CLIP ----

At this point I decided to give up for the time being and use Firefox again. If anyone knows of a fix for the intermittent freezes, I'm eagerly all ears. Thanks.

and triple-checking any Safari plugins like PithHelmet

Plugins, especially for Safari, always cause trouble in OSX upgrades. I would suggest deleting them for now.

My workaround in the mean time is simply not to launch Safari,

That wouldn't bother me. I like Firefox better anyway.
Dale

New update did not fix the issue. It still exists.

Not sure if this helps, but I never use Safari, only Firefox and it still hangs. Just installed 10.6.1 so we'll see...

I think this INSERT HANG has something to do with it

I have been getting these random freezes too, and it seems to be mostly in Safari

I just checked the logs today and I got this each time its happened this afternoon
Sep 14 13:02:50 ATHMBP Safari Webpage Preview Fetcher[4652]: INSERT-HANG-DETECTED: Tx time:30.767458, # of Inserts: 12, # of bytes written: 294498, Did shrink: NO

EDIT: On further investigation in the logs It seems that its not just Safari but also Mail which is reporting this

I have three different apps reporting it, Safari, the Safari previewer and Mail
This leads me to suspect that the problem is likely to do with webkit or something related

Sep 13 13:17:09 athmbp Mail[234]: INSERT-HANG-DETECTED: Tx time:15.932584, # of Inserts: 30, # of bytes written: 200237, Did shrink: NO

Sep 13 13:20:16 athmbp Safari[1234]: INSERT-HANG-DETECTED: Tx time:3.958238, # of Inserts: 28, # of bytes written: 66993, Did shrink: YES

Message was edited by: AdmiralTriggerHappy

Same here, Safari so far:

Sep 13 22:25:51 Macintosh com.apple.WebKit.PluginAgent[1630]: Debugger() was called!
Sep 13 22:29:56 Macintosh Safari[1581]: INSERT-HANG-DETECTED: Tx time:16.450340, # of Inserts: 44, # of bytes written: 89557, Did shrink: NO
Sep 13 22:41:40 Macintosh com.apple.WebKit.PluginAgent[1630]: Debugger() was called!
Sep 13 22:42:54 Macintosh Safari[1581]: INSERT-HANG-DETECTED: Tx time:30.018788, # of Inserts: 1, # of bytes written: 1414, Did shrink: NO
Sep 13 22:43:39 Macintosh Safari[1581]: INSERT-HANG-DETECTED: Tx time:29.488951, # of Inserts: 7, # of bytes written: 132878, Did shrink: NO
Sep 13 22:44:13 Macintosh Safari[1581]: INSERT-HANG-DETECTED: Tx time:28.321082, # of Inserts: 1, # of bytes written: 1188, Did shrink: NO
Sep 13 22:44:46 Macintosh Safari[1581]: INSERT-HANG-DETECTED: Tx time:26.359192, # of Inserts: 1, # of bytes written: 357, Did shrink: NO

I've had the same problem and posted about it as well. Often times, as you said, only one program freezes and I can still use others. Sometimes, the programs just close.

*It's been happening a REMARKABLY increased amount since I upgraded to Snow Leopard*. That makes me sad. I used to be VERY happy with the stability of Leopard...I didn't expect this instability from Mac. I wonder if I should downgrade...

I have the stock 2.8 with the 5400 RPM hard drive, running 10.6.1 and the system freezes up several times per day.

I haven't yet to find any Apple acknowledgement of this problem. I have seen talk about the 7200 RPM drive causing issues, but not an understanding that it is affecting other users as well.

I tried permission repairs, and I tried deleting various cache directories... problem always returns. I understand that it may take some time to release an update for this, but is there any way to at least verify that Apple knows of the issue and is working on it? It seems clear that it isn't something that us users can address ourselves. Perhaps we need to stop trying to figure it out and just start going to the Genius Bar and making sure it's a recorded complaint?

I've been having the same problems. It seems mostly to come from Safari, and I never had this problem before I upgraded to Snow Leopard. It's very frustrating. I've only had this 13-in Macbook since March, and it was my first ever Mac. I finally jumped ship from PC to ESCAPE problems like this, and now I'm having freezes frequently. I was very happy with Mac up until now. I hope Apple releases a patch that fixes this soon (10.6.1 didn't fix squat).

Another symptom I've noticed is that if I leave the Macbook alone for a long time and then come back after a few hours, I can move the mouse but not do anything (not even get the dock to pop up) and it will show the incorrect charging level until it sorta "wakes up" again and allows me to use things again.

I don't think this is a disk issue as some have suggested
I'm pretty sure its related to the INSERT-HANG-DETECTED errors that many of us have reported

I'm a registered developer so I have filed a nice Bug report for Apple to check out, hopefully something will come of that.

I just want to hear Apple acknowledge this problem and assure us that they are indeed working on it, so it's going to be fixed soon.

Thank you! I am having the same issue...mostly with Safari, Firefox, Chrome, Mail, Espresso...ya...pretty much every program. (but random).

Hopefully there's a fix soon!!!!!!!!!!!!!!