Since installing Catalina yesterday, multiple crashes from userspace watchdog timeout

Previously I had been having the crashing problem as reported by you above. I am NOT using a 2nd monitor. I have a Late 2105 IMac 5K with 32 Gig memory and a 2 TB Fusion Drive. Memory was upgraded after purchasing the unit from an Apple Dealer but it had all worked fine until the I upgraded to Catalina. Apple support had me down grade from Catalina to Mohave. Downgrading worked but I saw that Catalina was now at 10.15.2 so I thought I would try the upgrade. I hoped Apple got the problem fixed.

Unfortunately, I have had 2 crashes this evening. I started experimenting with Side Car which is when the first crash happened. With Side Car not activated the crash still happens.

I am afraid the problem is not resolved yet for me.

Richard

Yeah, I can see that right now. And find it bottom drawer not to fix such extreme bugs for weeks and months although the support forum fills with messages. It's really an absolute cheek. And I wonder why it is not recognized in the beta versions.

The error is not reproducible and has nothing to do with Sleep Mode or Screensaver. Because my crashes always came in the middle of working. But I found out two things.

1. for me the virtual machine was in the cloud because it was automatically created in the folder "documents". And every time the cloud wanted to upload the file, nothing worked with Windows anymore. I don't know if it has anything to do with the guard dog crash. I took the virtual machine out of the cloud and Parallels and Windows are running stable again.

2nd Since I have the Quicktime video in the continuous loop running, I have no watchdog crashes anymore. But it's completely nonsense for me.

I have been having the crashing problem too. I am in safe mode now and for 1 day and 15 the system has not crashed. There are two applications that I need to use on my iMac - both use Java as the underlying language. I also have a 2019 MacBook Pro with the Developer's version on the Catalina OS. I have never had the problem on my 2019 MacBook Pro.

Apple support helped me downgrade the OS on why iMac 5K ( Late 2015, 32 Gig Fusion Drive) which Apple replaced the Hard Drive and the wireless card in an attempt to solve the problem before it went out of warrantee. The hardware replacements did not fix the problem. Safemode and Mojavi work fine with the Catalina OS.

Is it possible that Java is not updated to the right version in order for my Java based apps to work properly?

Are you using any Java based applications on your machine? Is it possible that these are causing the problem?

I have a call into Apple Support again so we can try and reinstall parts of Catalina. Now that we have seen that Safe Mode seems to work for a long period of time.

Seeing the same issue on my new 16" MacBook. After resetting NVRAM, I was able to connect both monitors and close the lid, but only temporarily, same crash came back and resetting NVRAM again didn't fix.

benM3 wrote:

Anyone know if Apple ever acknowledges these issues, or if we'll just have to wait to see that it is fixed in an OS X build?

If they don't, do we just continue to beat this dead horse and bump the thread while crossing our fingers?

You are barking at the moon. I've been told by Apple that Apple does not look at these forums. Only way to make any progress is to ring them. A lot.

Issue continuing for me even after installing 10.15.3

Interestingly tho, it only occurs when logged into to my user account. Since day one it has never crashed my gf's user account on the same machine.

We are both admins, tho I believe her account is the original and mind was created after.

iMac 5k 2017, base model 1tb fusion.

The exact problem is happening to me constantly. I have a MBP 16" (AMD Radeon Pro 5500M 8 GB, Intel UHD Graphics 630 1536 MB) with MacOS Catalina. At work I connect it directly (no dock) to two 4K 27" LG monitors and whenever the Mac goes to sleep it crashes! Now at home I only have one 4K 27" monitor and it hasn't yet crashed, so I am assuming that this may be related to connecting to two monitors. Also it definitely is the video driver's problem or maybe even the graphic card itself.

I have an MBP 2018 13“ and it is even happening to me without being connected to a display. Most of the time it happens when I change the virtual desktop swiping left or right. WindowServer freezes, recovers, if I stay on the same screen it seems to work, moving to the next screen freezes again. This happens for about 2-3min until WindowServer gets killed and I find myself on the Login Screen.

Crash reports and Stack trace looks exactly the same as with the here reported issues.

tried everything, nothing worked, even updating to the just released OSX update had no effect

Would it be possible to share those crash logs so I can attach them to a bug report I have open with Apple? There shouldn’t be any personal info in them, just the model name of the computer.

Or we can wait to see what the 10.15.4 betas will bring...

Thx for sharing! Yeah: not deterministic in appearance: something gets stuck and blocks the kernel userspace for more than 120s. Hope a 10.15.4 update comes soon... for now i will default to mojave. Please, let’s update ourselves if any of us tests something that works, or figures out if a specific app is responsible for this...

star-affinity wrote:

I haven't seen the crash since 10.15.3 either, but maybe just luck so far? Anyone still seeing the problem have the possibility to try the 10.15.4 beta that's now also available to the public?

I've seen uptime of 10 days without a crash with the .3 release. I've also experienced 4 idle panics in one day with the same version.

If comment about the second thing, my post will be removed 🤷🏽‍♂️.

I don't think it's about keeping the GPU's busy - it's likely more about a bug in security mechanism Apple is implementing in the lower layers of GUI manager (WindowServer).

This is just my hypothesis: There is a bug somewhere that's related to the operation of external monitors in Mojave / Catalina.

Once a certain condition is met, some kernel level module goes out of control, eating up kernel resources and then crash the whole OS.

Something in QuicktimePlayer (HDCP related?) or terminal.app so just happens to prevent the condition from occurring.

Hope someone has a case open with Apple, working on it.

It seems like a simple petty error on Apple's side.

In case someone is tying out the quicktimeplayer.app method,

I tested it with a 32 x 32px, 5 seconds file playing looped, it worked just as well.

Leaving a terminal.app open is a lot easier I guess.

In case QTplayer is the only option, just make a really low-res file and leave it playing.

I used to get these crashes all the time until a few days ago. Two days ago I tried the absurd method of "Quicktime movies in endless loop" in combination with "open terminal". I haven't had a crash since then either. Already more than 48 hours.

It's simply an absolutely absurd solution.

"...Incredible you cannot downgrade to last installed version...."

Of course you can if you follow the advice of taking three backups on two different methods. Upgrade, then test, then decide to either carry on or roll back.