Since installing Catalina yesterday, multiple crashes from userspace watchdog timeout

I'm also experiencing crashes (watchdog time out etc.) after unplugging the external monitor (connected via a Apple USB-C HDMI converter). After multiple crashes and much debugging of different setups, it seems to me like Catalina is not updating the Window management to detect the external display is being unplugged as I can see that the windows are not moving into my Macbook screen and it thinks there's still an external display connected (as seen in Settings>Display). I'm downgrading back to Mojave via a tedious erase/restore. I've reported this here:

https://discussions.apple.com/thread/251048307?page=1

I've also filed a bug report via Apple Feedback (link won't work as Feedback is not an open system) https://feedbackassistant.apple.com/feedback/7547651

When I read the other reports, I find it very strange that my crashes are removed since 10.15.4. I haven't had a crash for 3-4 days of continuous use. With 10.15.3 I had at least 3 crashes a day.

iMac (Retina 5K, 27-inch, Late 2015)

4 GHz Quad-Core Intel Core i7

16 GB 1867 Mhz DDR3

AMD Radeeon R9 M395 2 GB

Second Monitor - Erazer 32 Zoll UHD per HDMI

The only way I could avoid the watchdog timeout crash was to keep a Quicktime movie looping in the background. (I tried all sorts of other things from flashing RAM to keeping terminal open but nothing worked.) However when I plugged in an eGPU, the problem went away. Certainly this is not an ideal solution, but it works (and I have speedier graphics).

FYI I'm running OS 10.15.4 on a 2018 15" Touch Bar MacBook with 32 GB of RAM Pro Vega 20 with a One World Computing eGPU containing a Radeon RX 5700 XT.

Google Drive File Stream may indeed be the cause.

Since upgrading to Catalina (fresh install on iMac 5K 2015, SSD swap)

GDFS is painfully slow.

Opening a small .psd file on google drive makes photoshop freeze for 10 seconds, same happens when saving.

This did not happen when I was on Mojave. it was almost instantaneous. (both off/online files)

I hope this isn't a case of Apple blaming Google and not taking any action.

While the problem is occurring is best I believe.

So as mentioned I kept a terminal window open, and when the hang started ran the sysdiagnose command in terminal as the key sequence didn't seem to get a sysdiagnose.

This problem has still not been resolved. I installed Catalina last week (15.5) and whenever I leave my computer for more than 2 minutes it will restart. Also with same errors as mentioned in this chain. Working on an iMac Pro of 2019, with 4 4k LG displays on USB C.

panic(cpu 2 caller 0xffffff7f817a1ad5): userspace watchdog timeout: no successful checkins from com.apple.WindowServer in 120 seconds

service: com.apple.logd, total successful checkins since load (12200 seconds ago): 1221, last successful checkin: 0 seconds ago

service: com.apple.WindowServer, total successful checkins since load (12170 seconds ago): 1205, last successful checkin: 120 seconds ago

Backtrace (CPU 2), Frame : Return Address

0xffffffa3cc4ab720 : 0xffffff8000d1f5cd

0xffffffa3cc4ab770 : 0xffffff8000e58b05

0xffffffa3cc4ab7b0 : 0xffffff8000e4a68e

0xffffffa3cc4ab800 : 0xffffff8000cc5a40

0xffffffa3cc4ab820 : 0xffffff8000d1ec97

0xffffffa3cc4ab920 : 0xffffff8000d1f087

0xffffffa3cc4ab970 : 0xffffff80014c2838

0xffffffa3cc4ab9e0 : 0xffffff7f817a1ad5

0xffffffa3cc4ab9f0 : 0xffffff7f817a17fa

0xffffffa3cc4aba10 : 0xffffff8001454a8e

0xffffffa3cc4aba60 : 0xffffff7f817a0cfe

0xffffffa3cc4abb60 : 0xffffff800145dcb3

0xffffffa3cc4abca0 : 0xffffff8000e082b2

0xffffffa3cc4abdb0 : 0xffffff8000d25328

0xffffffa3cc4abe10 : 0xffffff8000cfbcc5

0xffffffa3cc4abe70 : 0xffffff8000d12aa2

0xffffffa3cc4abf00 : 0xffffff8000e30d05

0xffffffa3cc4abfa0 : 0xffffff8000cc6226

Kernel Extensions in backtrace:

com.apple.driver.watchdog(1.0)[B435C72B-B311-3C67-8AA1-1D5CE0FAD429]@0xffffff7f817a0000->0xffffff7f817a8fff

BSD process name corresponding to current thread: watchdogd

Boot args: chunklist-security-epoch=0 -chunklist-no-rev2-dev

Mac OS version:

19F101

Kernel version:

Darwin Kernel Version 19.5.0: Tue May 26 20:41:44 PDT 2020; root:xnu-6153.121.2~2/RELEASE_X86_64

Kernel UUID: 54F1A78D-6F41-32BD-BFED-4381F9F6E2EF

Kernel slide: 0x0000000000a00000

Kernel text base: 0xffffff8000c00000

__HIB text base: 0xffffff8000b00000

System model name: iMacPro1,1 (Mac-7BA5B2D9E42DDD94)

I also have this issue. The only change was a new 49" Samsung C49HG90 monitor, running my laptop with the lid closed while connected to the monitor with HDMI. Consistently happens if I leave my laptop idle for a few hours. Catalina 10.15.5, MacBook Pro 2019.

Were you by any chance also running Time Machine backup?

Someone at work thinks Time Machine maybe a common trigger for some users. I'm just trying to gather any supporting evidence, or refute the claim so time is not wasted looking explicitly at Time Machine, but maybe on the conditions running Time Machine creates, and then see if there are other apps that create similar conditions.

Someone else found the panics went away after removing a USB dongle for wireless mouse, so it is also possible that Time Machine was talking to a USB disk, and it is the USB device that is the common item.

Anyway, I would be interested in what information you can pass along.

I see a correlation. The only time my machine crashes is when I leave the external monitor plugged in and I've seen both of the errors in the crash report. Likely means that there's something else as the root cause and these are just downstream errors.

Madsalmartron wrote:

...

As a final test, I unplugged everything from the laptop and disabled "automatic graphics switching" to force the AMD to be used even with no external display. Sure enough, I was able to reproduce the issue. So it seems not related to an external display, but the AMD card itself (which is always used when an external display is connected).

There are users that have the watchdog timeout issue on 13" Macbook Pros which ONLY have the integrated intel graphics.

Different people are finding crutches to survive this, but so far, I have not found a single situation where there is one common item that explains or fixes this.

I'm basically convinced this is a bad macOS kernel issue. Apple has been very good over the years about providing a stable kernel when there are no 3rd party kernel extensions, and no broken external devices attached. But there are users that have not external devices, and no kernel extensions experiencing this issue. It seems the configuration, 3rd party software, external devices, type of Mac, etc... does not matter.

My 16” Macbook Pro has got a new logic board now, they changed it preventively as they couldn’t rep the error. Hard for me to believe they couldn’t.

Thing is, with the new main board and the latest release of Catalina it seems that my problems have gone away.

As I immediately updated to last Catalina, I now cannot say if it was the new logic board or the OS update. For all of you with a Mac in guarantee, I recommend them to bring it in to the technical support. It may be a hardware issue.

Have a nice weekend

My MBP15 2018 doesn't crash on 10.15.5 or 10.15.6 unless it's connected to one or more external monitors.

When connected to external monitors, it will crash at least once every 2 hours, sometimes more frequently.

This is regardless of the combination of settings in the Energy Saver panel.

My MBP15 2018 with Sidecar "unchecked" ran from Saturday night until this morning when I joined a Microsoft Teams meeting and my MBP crashed with the regular symptoms of this problem. After it rebooted, I dropped back to two external monitors, and participated in an afternoon Teams meeting, and my MBP is still running. I think it is progress because previously, once it started rebooting, it would repeatedly do so every hour or so. Only time will tell.

I agree with your observation about avoiding VMWare Fusion. I had no crashes today after avoiding running a Windows 8 VM in VMWare Fusion (as I normally do). And I have all of the bad-for-this crash problem energy saver items checked (i.e., turned on): Put hard disks to sleep, Enable Power Nap, and "Prevent computer from sleeping" as unchecked. I still have all Sidecar items unchecked as I mentioned in previous posts. I have 3 external monitors connected and have been running MS Teams in the 3rd monitor, which is usually the kiss of death wrt causing an upcoming crash.

I have had no problems with VMWare Fusion (CentOS7 and VoidLinux) triggering this watchdog panic. Since the 10.15.6 update I have had no crash/reboot instances whether running Fusion or not. Under 10.15.5 I had watchdog crashes related to the system going to sleep while connected to an external monitor in clamshell mode. While I was often running Fusion at those times, the system *never* crashed while I was actively working, but rather only when I tried to wake it up after a sleep. When I successfully implemented the 'caffeinated -d -u' workaround advertised in this thread the system never crashed even under the more problematic 10.15.5 while running Fusion and/or after sleeping.

I heartily agree with danpalmer that it's rather shocking this issue isn't a lot more public at this point. I first tuned in due to my own clamshell/extmonitor crashes which began with the 10.15.5 update, but it seems more and more that there are a LOT of conditions which trigger this other than my own (which I am certainly delighted seems to be fixed for the moment by 10.15.6). This is atrociously unacceptable OS performance for a major vendor. Hope Apple starts selling more watches -- between the POS broke-keyboard 2016 MBP they sold me (which I had to ship off for factory repair THREE TIMES), this fiasco, and the long-time-broken Terminal app that took them about a year to fix, my estimation of Apple's hardware and software capabilities have plummeted over the last 3 years.