Months of crashing caused by display port daemon. Seeking fix.

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4 points

Months of crashing caused by display port daemon. Seeking fix.

I have a late 2012 iMac that I use as an external display for work frequently via target display mode.

My Mac has been crashing regularly for months now. The computer will just randomly turn off and require an SMC reset in order to turn back on. On Apple's recommendation, I've replaced the RAM. That didn't work. On Apple's recommendation, I brought the machine in. They reformatted it and returned it to me. That didn't work. I've had several chats with Mac support that never resulted in a solution.

The crashes persisted, so I've done some investigating myself. As far as I can tell, the crashes are being caused by the display port daemon. So, I've got (what I believe to be) the culprit, but no solution.

Can anyone help?

Mac info:

Mojave 10.14.1
iMac (27-inch, Late 2012)
3.4 GHz Intel Core i7
32 GB 1600 MHz DDR3
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 680MX 2048 MB

Here's an example of one of many crash logs (all pointing the finger at dpd):

Process:               dpd [4347]
Path:                  /usr/libexec/dpd
Identifier:            dpd
Version:               2.0.4 (2.0.5)
Code Type:             X86-64 (Native)
Parent Process:        launchd [1]
Responsible:           dpd [4347]
User ID:               0

Date/Time:             2019-04-17 10:41:35.196 -0700
OS Version:            Mac OS X 10.14.1 (18B75)
Report Version:        12
Anonymous UUID:        4234A46C-566A-2AFF-DBEF-B7F7D5780D27

Sleep/Wake UUID:       302F7266-4151-49B7-A7B0-7DF07B59427A

Time Awake Since Boot: 64000 seconds
Time Since Wake:       23000 seconds

System Integrity Protection: enabled

Crashed Thread:        0  Dispatch queue: com.apple.main-thread

Exception Type:        EXC_BAD_ACCESS (SIGSEGV)
Exception Codes:       KERN_INVALID_ADDRESS at 0x0000000000000018
Exception Note:        EXC_CORPSE_NOTIFY

Termination Signal:    Segmentation fault: 11
Termination Reason:    Namespace SIGNAL, Code 0xb
Terminating Process:   exc handler [4347]

And here's what Etrecheck say about it:

Diagnostics Information (past 7 days):
    2019-04-17 10:41:39 dpd Crash (7 times)
        Executable: /usr/libexec/dpd
        Details: 
            objc_msgSend() selector name: count
            dyld3 mode

All help is greatly appreciated! Thank you!

iMac 27", macOS 10.14

Posted on Apr 17, 2019 10:03 PM

Reply

Answer 1

Apr 18, 2019 11:35 AM in response to nick___

To verify if you have a failing drive as rkaufmann87 mentions, you can run DriveDX to check the drive's health. You will need to boot the iMac and run it from the iMac. If DriveDX reports the drive as healthy, then please post a screenshot or report of all the "Health Indicators" as it may provide more details about the drive.

When booted to the iMac, does the display go dark or the system shutdown unexpectedly?

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Answer 2

Apr 18, 2019 1:13 PM in response to nick___

Agreed, the internal hard drive looks healthy.

Is the external 500GB drive always connected? Does it have its own power adapter?

Try running the Apple Diagnostic.

Is it confirmed the iMac actually powers off or could it just have no backlight or video image on the LCD?

How often and how long does it take for the iMac to go dark/power off?

Does it also go dark/power off when used as just a display?

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Answer 3

rkaufmann87

Level 10

148,660 points

Apr 18, 2019 1:31 PM in response to HWTech

Another thought is a failing power supply! These can and do fail on occasion and are relatively inexpensive to replace but should be done by a professional as they can be extremely dangerous to do it yourself. To determine if I am right, take it to an AASP to be diagnosed and repaired.

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Answer 4

rkaufmann87

Level 10

148,660 points

Apr 18, 2019 6:04 AM in response to nick___

I suspect it has a failing HD which would cause the issue. Both Macs have to be working perfectly for Target Display Mode to work.

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Answer 5

rkaufmann87

Level 10

148,660 points

Apr 18, 2019 11:51 AM in response to nick___

I agree the HD does look okay. Let's look for some other possible obvious issues. Please do the following:

Please navigate to the Mac App Store and download the free version of EtreCheck OR please click www.EtreCheck.com where you will find the app. Once you downloaded the free app and created the report please post it as your reply to this post. In order to post it, please use the following link for more detailed instructions on how to correctly post the results:

https://discussions.apple.com/docs/DOC-250000211

We can then look for obvious issues that may be causing your problem.

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Answer 6

nick___ Author

Level 1

4 points

Apr 18, 2019 11:47 AM in response to HWTech

Thank you! The drive appears to be healthy, to my eye, according to DriveDX.

And yes, when booted to the iMac, the system shuts down unexpectedly. The crash reports still blame dpd.

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Answer 7

nick___ Author

Level 1

4 points

Apr 18, 2019 11:59 AM in response to rkaufmann87

EtreCheck Report

Thanks! All set!

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Answer 8

rkaufmann87

Level 10

148,660 points

Apr 18, 2019 1:24 PM in response to nick___

Nothing glaring shows up in the report however there are some suspects that I would recommend addressing.

Your system it is running short on RAM despite having 32 GB installed. It also shows that Google Chrome is being used, as Chrome is known as a major RAM hog i would recommend moving away from it and using Safari.

Next, I see you use Wacom software and hardware. These have a recent history of causing problems similar to yours since Mac OS 10.13. At a minimum ensure your software is up-to-date, if you cannot do this for some reason then temporarily uninstall the software an hardware and test to eliminate that as a cause.

Also, I would recommend going through ALL of your third party apps and ensure each are up-to-date.

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Answer 9

Old Toad

Level 10

216,792 points

Apr 18, 2019 2:20 PM in response to nick___

I had the same thing happen with my wife's 27" iMac. We had to unplug the power cable and plug it back in before we could reboot the iMac. It turned out to be the power supply. It took us 4 trips to the Genius Bar before they ruled out everything but the power supply. Luckily it was replaced under warranty and haven't had a problem since.

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Months of crashing caused by display port daemon. Seeking fix.

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