Mac Mini crashing on sleep

I installed Catalina on another partition with the same hopes. And no change with Mojave.

Catalina seems to work well though and I'm using it. All my software worked except Photoshop CS6, so I updated to PSCC. Works great.

Going to wait before deleting the Mojave partition, but I don't have much faith that Apple is fixing it.

Sayonara Mojave.

I've been watching the thread. I am absolutely positive the issue is the T2 firmware update, partly because I went back to pre-update Mojave-and-Safari on an external drive and the crash still occurred. It also happened if I booted in Safe Mode and immediately went to sleep without Safari. What's more, I run an almost identical system on my Macbook Pro (2015) and have not run into this problem at all.

The solution for me was simply to avoid sleep. Without sleep, no crash. It's not ideal because the machine uses 14 watts at idle, whereas in sleep I think it uses 3 watts; it's like leaving a single LED light on all the time. But it's nowhere as bad as it would be if it was a Mac Pro! (I shut it off overnight.)

There have been the following six macMini 2018 firmware updates since last March. The first one seems to have triggered this sleep crash and none of the later updates have fixed it:

Security Update 2020-002 Mojave & macOS 10.15.4 update:

Boot ROM Version: 1037.100.359.0.0 (iBridge: 17.16.14263.0.0,0)

macOS 10.15.4 Supplemental update:

Boot ROM Version: 1037.100.362.0.0 (iBridge: 17.16.14281.0.0,0)

Security Update 2020-003 Mojave:

Boot ROM Version: 1037.120.87.0.0 (iBridge: 17.16.15290.0.0,0)

macOS 10.15.5 update:

Boot ROM Version: 1037.120.87.0.0 (iBridge: 17.16.15300.0.0,0)

Security Update 2020-004 Mojave & macOS 10.15.6 update:

Boot ROM Version: 1037.147.1.0.0 (iBridge: 17.16.16065.0.0,0)

macOS 10.15.6 Supplemental update:

Boot ROM Version: 1037.147.4.0.0 (iBridge: 17.16.16610.0.0,0)

I unplugged my external drives and moved the monitor USB C cable to the port closest to the power cable and on VERY preliminary testing, it seems to wake from sleep with no error.

Nearly 3 weeks on Catalina: not a single crash on sleep.

Here’s what Apple has to say about Sleep issues:

If your Mac doesn't sleep or wake when expected - Apple Support

FWIW, I gave up on the Sleep function years ago. Ever since the inception of OS X there have been Sleep related issues. And even more lately. I just use Display Sleep and keep it set for 15 minutes so I'm not burning the screen. No put hard disks to sleep (they should spin down on their own after about 10 minutes of inactivity), no wake for network access.That way your Mac uses very little power over Sleep and is ready to use at the touch of a key without any grogginess. UNIX based systems were made to be always on and they’ve been running busy servers 24/7 for decades.

My own 2010 iMac has been used daily and has never slept a day in its life. It's still going strong.

> "Prevent computer from sleeping automatically when the display is off" and I disabled "Wake for network access" and "Enable Power Nap" in Energy Save settings.

Thanks for the tip but those settings didn't fix the Mac mini 2018 sleep crash with my setup.

I tested this while booted from three external USB drives and there the Mac mini sleep without those crashes (I could provoke only a few random crashes after putting the Mac mini to sleep, though...).

The Mojave sleep crash always occurs only when booted from the internal 1TB PCI-Express drive.

I unsuccessfully tried if removing all extra peripherals and re-resetting the system would help:

I disconnected the USB Canon scanner, external headphones, ethernet cable, OWC USB-C dual drive dock, changed the LG 4K Thunderbolt connector to the other end of the Mac mini's TB connector row, disconnected the power cable for a few minutes (reset SMC), powered down year old Apple Magic Keyboard and an old Apple Magic Mouse Bluetooth devices.

Then re-reset SMC by pressing the power button 10 seconds until it turned off, Command-Option-P-R reset PRAM, Shift-safe-boot, Command-R until Apple logo and Disk First Aid.

Then rebooted, put the Mac mini to sleep for 3-10 minutes a few times: no crash. Then launched Safari (to an empty page) and quit it, and put the Mac to sleep: crashed after 1.5 minutes as currently always with my setup after touching Safari v2.1.2-3.1 in Mojave (clean 10.14.6 install or fully updated)!

I suspect this is a firmware issue.

p.s. I have planned to keep using Mojave 1-2 years. When I am forced to update to Catalina+, maybe I use VMware to run some older OS X like 10.6.3 Server (I already occasionally run some PowerPC apps like MT-NewsWacher via Rosetta emulation that route in Mojave), or 10.8-10.11 to run old applications like MPEG Streamclip, Lightroom 6.14 (needs 10.8 or later), Photoshop CS6. (I have tested Mojave in VMware but there lacking accelerated video drivers in AFAIK all VMs make disturbing artifacts to some GUI elements). Or maybe boot to an external disk to run old applications in Mojave. LibreOffice suits my Office needs and runs on Catalina.

I too have this problem. It started happening since I installed the 10.14.6 -2 update. I installed Catalina to comfirm it was a software problem and indeed, on Catalina it does not happen.

Unfortunately some software I use on a daily basis is only compatible with Mojave, otherwise I would have settled with Catalina already.

Had the impression that Catalina indeed has also troubles which came with .14.5 which weren' cured by the subsequent Supplemental Update (i.e. copying of large data blocks and some others), but wasn't affected by these sleep and shut down issues.

Seems, Apple still has some work to do.

Personally, I can get round the sleep and shut down related BridgeOS crashes by not launching Safari. To avoid crashes of macOS .14.6, I have to keep the eGPU always connected or disconnect only when Mac mini is turned off.

Still hope that Apple will fix the troubles finally.

In that thread user user bazaarsoft later replied that the replaced motherboard did not fix the bug after all.

I think it is the updated firmware that causes the sleep/shutdown crashes on Mojave. And Apple is in no hurry to fix it. The recent Mojave Security Update 2020-003 updated the firmware one notch and Catalina 10.15.5 another notch but after both updates the over two month old Mojave sleep/shutdown crash still persists.

I can always trigger the crash by juts opening Safari to an empty page and then closing it. I have switched to Chrome because of this. Sigh.

Yes, these problems are almost all due to the T2 firmware update. Supposedly Apple is aware of this and working on it - ever so slowly, it seems. I believe Mojave will also get updated when they find a cure. Otherwise, I guess you install Catalina on an external drive to get the update?

This is why the problem is most common on the Mini 8,1 and Macbook Pro 16”.

Mine always crashes on sleep, period, end of story, no Safari needed, safe mode or not.

@noonn

[noonn] So this issue is confirmed to be related to Safari? …

No, not necessarily.

Some users only get BridgeOS crashes with sleep and shut down when they had at least once launched Safari during their computer session.

Others experience random restarts during work.

And others however, like Lexvold, see restarts or crashes when they actually wanted to send the Mac to sleep (without having used Safari beforehand).

But they all have in common that their troubles began with the installation of the Security Update 2020-002 for Mojave.

And so far, I’ve not seen one single report that the SecUpd 2020-003 fixed any issue they had (despite the once again upgraded BridgeOS build).

It seems that Apple really screwed things up this time. Just hope they get it finally sorted.

Even more. I assume, there are a lot of owners of newer minis here, but this issue (crashes on sleep) is not only about T2, BridgeOS, Safari, Catalina or Mojave. Security Update 2020-002 for High Sierra made older Mac minis (with no T2) crash on sleep too. The problem lays somewhere deeper than BridgeOS or Safari live. Crash reports with 'BridgeOS' show only that BridgeOS crashed, but it is not necessarily BridgeOS was the cause of the crash. My Mac mini 2011 after applying of Security Update 2020-002 crashes on sleep every time because of HDMI issue. And random restarts. And there are some other owners of Mac mini 2011 with very similar problem. In my case I deleted one kext and now it is stable, though I have limited hardware GPU acceleration.

So now I believe dancing around T2 or Safari is not a right way to find roots of the crash on sleep issue.