'ReportCrash' process in activity monitor popping out with high cpu usage

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Level 1

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'ReportCrash' process in activity monitor popping out with high cpu usage

Hello,
I've upgraded my macbook white to Leopard and did all the usual mantainance routines.

However my fan noise has gone up considerably from Tiger infact fan is always spinning at around 6000 rpm. CPU temp is about 60 degree.

I've just Firefox open and looking at the activity monitor for possible CPU eaters the only abnormal thing I can find is this 'ReportCrash' process continuosly popping in and out and taking between 50 and 99% of CPU usage.

Any ideas why and if it's indeed a normal behaviour?

thanks in advance

val

macbook white 2Ghz Core 2 Duo, Mac OS X (10.5.8), Fireface 400

Posted on May 1, 2010 4:27 AM

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Answer 1

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Camelot

Level 9

54,333 points

May 1, 2010 10:20 AM in response to valevari

The CrashReporter kicks in any time an application crashes. It saves the application state to (hopefully) aid the developer in working out why the app crashed.

In your case it sounds like you have some process that's launching, crashing (and invoking CrashReporter) and then re-launching, repeating this cycle ad infinitum.

You need to identify which process is triggering this cycle and stop it.

Fortunately CrashReporter is pretty verbose in its logging and given the frequency it shouldn't be hard to find the culprit. Just look towards the end of your system.log, either via /Applications/Utilities/Console.app or via the terminal.

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Answer 2

valevari Author

Level 1

28 points

May 1, 2010 12:30 PM in response to Camelot

thanks camelot, much appreciated.

will investigate further and report back

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Answer 3

valevari Author

Level 1

28 points

May 1, 2010 12:55 PM in response to valevari

ok i've looked into the logs and what seems to trigger the cicle is 'qmasterd'.. I must admit I had never heard of it before.

It's not in the login items list and i just have Firefox running.
I'm running no mac clusters and as far as I know the only software that I have that could use Qmaster is Logic Pro.

So i'm wondering: how to kill this cicle? trashing Qmaster app perhaps?

thanks again

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Answer 4

valevari Author

Level 1

28 points

May 1, 2010 2:51 PM in response to valevari

Actually, I've now found Qmaster to be in the StartupItems folder and removed it

Not sur eif it was a good idea, but this seems to have stopped the CrashReport behaviour

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Answer 5

Camelot

Level 9

54,333 points

May 2, 2010 9:40 AM in response to valevari

QMaster is the distributed processing engine of Final Cut Studio - it allows Final Cut Pro/Shake and similar projects to be rendered/processed across a range of computers to improve processing time.

If this machine is part of a cluster of machines running Final Cut Studio then removing this might impact your workflow (although it sounds like it wasn't running correctly in the first place anyway). You'll need to decide whether or not to try and re-instate this process.

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Answer 6

valevari Author

Level 1

28 points

May 2, 2010 11:54 AM in response to Camelot

Thanks camelot,
As far as I understand (and I might be wrong) Qmaster it's also part of Logic - which can be used on a node network.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_Qmaster

However I have no cluster so I'll just kill it for now.

thanks for the advice, it was very helpful

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