Apple Event: May 7th at 7 am PT
The bird process on Ventura is running hot...30-50% CPU on a 2020 iMac with 72GB RAM in mint condition. (For those who don't know, this is the process iCloud uses to sync). I do have desktop and documents on and don't seem to have any errors on this device nor on any related iOS device on the account. Has anyone some advanced troubleshooting to attempt and/or anyone else monitoring this issue?
iMac
ovrdrvn wrote:
But i rely on this (very useful when working from multiple locations)
FWIW, you can test while in Safe Mode. If bird is no longer using so much CPU, then some third party app is the culprit.
I tried one of those AI drawing tools and I wasn't really impressed with the results:
They are all birds. Barely half of them seem to be actually surfing. I wouldn't classify any of them as silly.
AI fail.
dialabrain wrote:
I don't have Desktop & Documents enabled. Bird is using 0.0% of the CPU.
I do have Desktop & Documents enabled. However, my bird process is also only using 0.0% of the CPU. It was at 0.1% briefly, but it settled down.
ovrdrvn wrote:
Has anyone some advanced troubleshooting to attempt and/or anyone else monitoring this issue?
I normally don't monitor issues like this. I see too many posts about these problems. If there was a single smoking gun answer, then everyone would know.
There are a few general issues that regularly cause problems like this. Usually, however, people don't like to be told what they are. At the risk of triggering Yet Another Incident, these issues are:
1) incompatible 3rd party system modification software
2) incompatible 3rd party hardware modifications
I realize you mentioned that your compute is in "mint" condition. But you didn't define that term. My definition probably means something significantly different.
I run an MSP, and while I have third-party software, I've disabled it and seen no results. I also turned off iCloud, force quit bird, and turned it back on. While I tried to read the logs from bird in the terminal...far too much gibberish to decipher.
I will note that bird has gone down tremendously so I'd encourage this solution for anyone else despite there not being an obvious reason this happens.
ovrdrvn wrote:
I run an MSP, and while I have third-party software, I've disabled it and seen no results. I also turned off iCloud, force quit bird, and turned it back on. While I tried to read the logs from bird in the terminal...far too much gibberish to decipher.
A Medical Services Plan?
Force quitting a system daemon is always a bad idea. It will be restarted automatically. When it restarts, it will detect that it exited in an error state and will likely require additional CPU usage when it restarts.
Please, never, ever try to read logs on a Mac. At best, you will be completely unable to decipher the heavily redacted logs that scroll past 400 lines a second. I've seen more than one person completely lose touch with reality and develop some serious paranoid delusions. I realize people are suing Apple over AirTags, but I think Console on the Mac (and Analytics on the iPhone) causes more real-world mental distress for people than AirTags.
If you really, really want to dig into the internals of iCloud and bird, you will need to use the Terminal and become very familiar with the "brctl" tool.
I will note that bird has gone down tremendously
I sincerely doubt it. Turning iCloud off or on is a major operation. It is probably more significant than erasing the hard drive and reinstalling the operating system. Never do it unless you have exhausted all options. It may take a few hours for iCloud just to spin up again. Then, it may take a few days, running bird at 10x the CPU usage you had before, to download all of your data from iCloud again.
PS: The suggestion to use brctl is strictly for future reference. Since you've turned off iCloud and turned it back on, all of your data will be trash for the next week or so until everything settles down. After that time, you could then use brctl effectively. But for now, it will just be gibberish, 100,000 lines of gibberish.
Manged Service Provider (a term I hate, but the industry went this way) aka IT Geeks.
Sometimes, indeed a system daemon will run up the CPU but not always. And sometimes, it will run it up initially upon restart and then set back to normal if whatever the process was stuck on somehow resolved itself.
I agree with the logs and while I'm anti frivolous lawsuit (the AirTag case is truly a joke) I wholly agree that Apple could provide far better resources for troubleshooting in an advanced manner and it might even save them some consumer frustration and "genius" time, therefore, earning more dough for the stockholders (and I am indeed one).
Brctl was where I dipped and my toes are numb so I'm out of that birdbath for good!
I assure you, I hate turning off iCloud and usually avoid it like the plague, but as I really wanted to see if I could get this beast tamed, I tried. Bird is indeed no better at this juncture and I'm not betting on it settling down so tempted to file a bug report but need another heavy iCloud user (Desktop and Documents synced most notable) on Ventura to confirm my suspicions.
I really love having everything on multiple Macs and iOS devices and with no documents not in process, it begs the question as to what the heck is the pesky bird up to...I didn't leave any crumbs around despite other bad habits.
Happy to report to all that the bird has flown! Post resyncing all my stuff, there ain't no wing flapping. Thus if you are careful (have backups just in case) and can make your way through this process, you can get the dodo to leave the building.
Since this was posted, I can't get the silly Surfin' Bird out of my head.
I don't have Desktop & Documents enabled. Bird is using 0.0% of the CPU.
But i rely on this (very useful when working from multiple locations)
etresoft wrote:
They are all birds. Barely half of them seem to be actually surfing. I wouldn't classify any of them as silly.
AI fail.
Yep. Surfin Bird
Bird Is Again The Word...Beware of fall out
