Catalina 10.15.6 keeps crashing

After I did had serious problems with 10.15.6 and needed to revert to 10.15.5, thanks to TimeMachine, everything is fine with 10.15.7.

VMWare Fusion is working all the time after the install, and no reboot while on idle. 8 days uptime.

Try it? Your decision.

But! I will never be the first one who updates my system. Sorry Apple, that 10.15.6 was a glitch which ruined my trust in you.

Until a solution is found you may have to revert to your previous system: Revert your Mac to a previous macOS version - Apple Support 

It's a new memory leak in the 10.15.6 kernel related to VMware Fusion:

https://communities.vmware.com/thread/640143?start=45&tstart=0

"macOS Catalina 10.15.6 Supplemental Update" released this afternoon. Hopefully it will fix at least some of the issues reported in this thread.

Check your software update tab in system preferences, or "softwareupdate -l" in the CLI.

It has been 5 days since applied the 10.15.6 Supplemental Update, and it does seem to have resolved my issue.

This is sad. I upgraded on 7/19/2020 and my MacBook Pro has been crashing randomly (about twice a day) with the same symptoms.

I have a Time Machine backup to restore 10.15.5 from, but will lose 1 week worth of work. Help!

Seriously Apple? Do you not thoroughly test your software before release?

I tried:

1. Disk Utility repair disk
2. Resetting NVRAM and SMC
3. Reinstalling 10.15.6

Nothing worked so far. On another laptop where I did the same upgrade, got the same symptoms, but restored that machine to 10.15.5 and the problems are gone.

I really hope Apple will fix this ASAP.

It appears that virtual imaging software might cause a kernel extension conflict with macOS 10.15.6. This specific problem affects users who installed the latest versions of VirtualBox and VMware Fusion on their computers.

The folks @ Cupertino are actually working on a supplemental update for macOS 10.15.6 containing a fix for the App Sandbox which caused virtualization software to crash with memory leaks and "watchdog timeout" kernel panics.

Thanks for pointing this out. Let's hope it will be released soon.

Ok, i've figured out a workaround. After your computer just randomly shuts down / restarts itself - DONT CLOSE the little pop up that says "Your computer was restarted because of a problem." (then it asks you to click ignore or report)

... just push it to the right or on the bottom of the main window without clicking ignore or report.

I've been running smooth for 3 days now

I just want to add my voice here, I've had constant, consistent crashing in mac os x 10.15.6 - I've since reverted to 10.15.5 and - touch wood - things seem to be fine.

Here's what would happen:

It would be working fine for a few hours, then the dock and file menus would vanish, and reappear (and sometimes they'd reappear with multiple instances of any open apps in the dock - so I'd have twenty icons for the mail.app, for example).

It would appear to have lost access to all passwords - and would ask me to login again to icloud and gmail (typing the password and hitting return would do nothing)

I'd get dialogue like "accountsd wants access to use the "login" keychain with a password prompt (and some others I've expunged from my memory).

I tried various things, including a total system wipe, and reinstall. Problems persisted. In the end, going back to the previous version has fixed it so I'm sticking with that for now.

(I'd run etrecheck, but I've only just found out about it, and I've basically given up on trying to get 10.15.6 to work now)

Regarding your Mac not going "off", which I assume you mean sleeping. Try running Activity Monitor, then in the CPU tab enable the column "Preventing Sleep" and sort on that column. That might give you some clues.

Following a hint from another thread*, it becomes more and more likely that either Microsoft Office or Adobe Creative Cloud is the software responsible for the crashes. Both packages install a number of background apps that run all around the clock, and therefore might cause trouble even when the Mac is not actively used / on idle.

It would be nice to know if those of you who experience random kernel panics / unexpected reboots have either of these software packages installed.

*) https://discussions.apple.com/thread/251604884?page=2

I had the same exact word for word issue. I brought it into apple, and my laptop, the 13 inch 2017 model is still under the keyboard replacement program, so they replaced my Touch Bar for me under that warranty, and it just came back, in perfect condition. So far the Touch Bar is working and my sleep is functioning as well. So I genuinely believe that the issue is a Touch Bar/Keyboard issue if everyone else is having this occur with their Touch Bar MacBook. It makes sense because the Touch Bar is always functioning, so it could have something to do with the kernel and that maybe.

Since my first post I've been able to avoid crashes by doing two things (or it could be completely random):

• Use the screen saver instead of sleep mode (and shutting down once a week)
• Monitor the CPU using Clean My Mac and freeing up RAM if it ever starts looking dicey (in the mid-to-upper 30s and beyond

Other than that, no changes. And no crashes, so I'm going to keep doing that and wearing my lucky Groot (TM) socks until there's a definitive fix.