send_event using high CPU

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142 points

send_event using high CPU

Running Big Sur 11.0.1 on a 2018 MBP, periodically send_event will start using about 90% of a CPU core for hours at a time. It's using almost no RAM (maybe 4MB real), no disk access to speak of (4KB in and out, then nothing), and no network access. The parent process is sudo under launchd, so I don't know what's starting it up.

I haven't identified what causes it to start doing this, but once it starts rebooting seems to be the only thing that stops it.

In addition to wasting battery and heating the laptop up noticeably, it also seems to be interfering with sleep when the lid is closed, although I haven't confirmed that definitively and Activity Monitor shows "Preventing Sleep" as "no".

I haven't been able to find out what this even is or what it does, let alone what might be causing it to go berserk or how to stop it.

MacBook Pro 15″, macOS 11.0

Posted on Dec 2, 2020 4:18 PM

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Answer 1

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Marc Marshall Author

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142 points

Dec 6, 2020 12:28 AM in response to Marc Marshall

Looks like there are at least a few other people seeing this issue.

Just adding a bit more information, whatever send_event is, it can be quit via Activity Monitor (it isn't stuck, since it responds to a regular quit request) and will not respawn for at least several hours. It does come back and do the same thing eventually, though.

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Answer 2

Marc Marshall Author

Level 1

142 points

Mar 26, 2021 9:18 AM in response to dino_llama

Interestingly, I have not had this occur since updating to I believe 11.2. Clearly others who are at 11.2 or above are still seeing it, so that may not have been what fixed it (or something , but I didn't change anything else apart from whatever software auto-updates install themselves.

I did remove Edge a while ago, but it still reoccurred after doing that so I don't thin that was the reason (I may try reinstalling it to test).

The only thing I can think of that might be relevant: Do others having this issue use Chrome? I used to keep it open as a "this site seems broken" browser and for embedded video downloading, but after the video downloaders stopped working I switched to Firefox for that, and thinking back it was around the time this stopped happening.

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