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Level 1

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Problems with kernel panics when sleeping since 10.6.8

Hi folks,

I installed 10.6.8 the day it was issued, and since then have had some very odd problems with sleeping my Mac Pro. Intermittently, it goes into a half-sleep state when I request sleep mode; the fans still spin, but the sleep light pulses. It refuses to wake up, requiring a hard reset. The console logs show:

Sleep: Drivers Failure Panic

The specific panic is:

panic(cpu X caller 0xffffff80002251fb): "TLB invalidation IPI timeout: " "CPU(s) failed to respond to interrupts, unresponsive CPU bitmap: 0x101, NMIPI acks: orig: 0x0, now: 0x0"@/SourceCache/xnu/xnu-1504.15.3/osfmk/x86_64/pmap.c:2741

where cpu X varies between any one of the 6 cores.

So far, I've tried

Resetting the PRAM and SMC
Disabling a raft of sleep related options (Wake on Bluetooth, etc)
Reinstalling the 10.6.8 update via the Combo updater
Repairing disk permissions
Reinstalling from the factory DVD and re-running the combo updater

And no doubt other things I've forgotten. The only thing that seems to fix it is to not install 10.6.8; when I reinstalled 10.6.4 (the factory OS), it slept and woke fine 10 times. As soon as the combo update was installed, it started sleep crashing again after 4-5 attempts.

I'm assuming this is some rogue driver bug introduced in the .8 release, but I've not seen anyone else suffering the problem. I would roll back onto .7, but will obviously need .8 to install Lion when it arrives.

Does anyone have any suggestions that I've missed, or has anyone else seen this problem?

Thanks,

adamw

Mac Pro, Mac OS X (10.6.7), 2010 6-Core Westmere; 5970 Radeon

Posted on Jun 26, 2011 6:46 AM

Best reply

The hatter

Level 9

60,990 points

Posted on Jun 26, 2011 6:54 AM

you should as you are finding always keep a bootable backup before updating.

there are 3rd party driver issues (there have always been such issues with every update btw)

5970? maybe there is a suspect.

Two sites that I follow that tend to get a lot of reader feedback and reports on OS issues:

MacFixit

MacInTouch

View in context

94 replies

Jun 27, 2011 3:14 PM in response to Adam Wright2

I have 4 cores, 12GB, same 5870, SSD main, HDs in other bays, 27" cinema + 30" Dell. I came to the same conclusion that waiting for Lion would be the most sensible thing to do. It's a bit annoying since I like to always leave it on and now I have to shut it down every time to prevent a crash but I can live with it for a few weeks.

RonL

Level 1

52 points

Jun 28, 2011 4:47 AM in response to Adam Wright2

Not a hardware fault.

Sleep problems that I've never had before with my 27" iMac (2010) until after the 10.6.8 update.

Jun 28, 2011 5:14 AM in response to Adam Wright2

Such a thing IS possible:

Remember all the way back to the G4? Installing certain USB2 PCI cards worked fine - except for sleep.

It is just within the realms of possibility that such a thing could happen again - although unlikely, I admit.

I always go through the hoops by downloading the combo updater, backing up the hard drive, restarting in safe mode, repairing permissions, and after the automatic reboot, I repair permissions again, then restart.

Bit of a fuss, I admit, but I haven't had an OS update go quirky on me (yet).

RonL

Level 1

52 points

Jun 28, 2011 3:12 PM in response to ttreen1950

I went through all of those steps too, as I always do, and it's been years since I have had a problem with updates.

This update was particularly problematic... for many people... as you can see by all of the posts on Apple and other forums.

10.6.7 is working fine for me again (reinstalled from a backup).

Nothing I really need in Lion anyway IF they don't get it sorted out and the sleep problem, etc. persists.

It does seem that it is usually the very last update before a transition to a new 'cat' or the very first version of the 'cat' that presents the most problems.

I've been using Macs since the mid-90s, and other computers before that, and this update is more buggy than most.

janalex

Level 1

9 points

Jun 29, 2011 2:07 PM in response to Speleding

I have exactly the same problem as you guys - intermittent sleep panics after installing 10.6.8 update. My HW setup is hexa-core Westmere Xeon, ATI 5870 1GB (Apple installed), 12 GB of memory (3x4GB DIMMs), two 27" cinema displays. I sure hope that Apple will sort this thing out before shipping Lion, especially given the fact that Mac Pro models are supposed to be the most reliable HW setups that Apple ships these days.

Adam, can you please share a link to the Radar bug that you filled with Apple?

Adam Wright2 Author

Level 1

0 points

Jun 29, 2011 2:24 PM in response to janalex

It's ID 9678390. I'm not entirely sure how to share a Radar URL, they look pretty personalised. It's still not been looked at by engineering.

The only common thread I can see so far is 27" Cinema Displays (i.e. Mini DisplayPort usage). Lots of other Mac Pro users seem to have upgraded successfully, so it's not universal. Also, in my "repairs", I seem to have broken things even more than previously - now, even when my machine gets off to sleep, it beachballs on awakening. Sigh 🙂

Jun 29, 2011 2:28 PM in response to Adam Wright2

@janalex Do you have an SSD? They added support for TRIM for SSDs in 10.6.8, so they must have changed something there. Perhaps that could be a common thread.

Adam Wright2 Author

Level 1

0 points

Jun 29, 2011 2:33 PM in response to Speleding

TRIM was only enabled for Apple supplied SSDs. My OWC Mercury Extreme is still trimless (verified by the System Profiler). My suspicitions are currently on the Mini DisplayPort drivers or the Radeon drivers (which might well be the same thing), as I know they received a pretty heavy update. Some Mac Pro 2010 users are fine, so it's obviously something subtle, like a specific monitor on a specific port. That, or no other Pro users ever sleep their machines 🙂

RonL

Level 1

52 points

Jun 29, 2011 2:41 PM in response to Adam Wright2

Adam... I have an external OWC Mercury Extreme also.

It's attached to my 27" iMac.

janalex

Level 1

9 points

Jun 29, 2011 3:27 PM in response to Speleding

Nope, no SSD. I have three 1TB WD HDDs installed (the one used as a boot drive installed from Apple).

It might also be an issue with the ATI Radeon 5870 card driver, not all Mac Pros have this one installed. I believe the default is 5770. Apparently some of the changes in 10.6.8 were related to graphics performance.

Jun 29, 2011 3:38 PM in response to janalex

I agree, the 5870 drivers seem a likely culprit then. If the system does go in to sleep successfully I hear the fans speed up for a second right before it sleeps, so something odd is going on there. I think it's the card fans but can't remember for sure whether that happened on 10.6.7 also.

janalex

Level 1

9 points

Jun 29, 2011 3:54 PM in response to Speleding

I've noticed the same behavior with the fans. I don't think it was happening on 10.6.7.

pecosron

Level 1

0 points

Jul 3, 2011 10:34 AM in response to Speleding

I finally rolled back to 10.6.7 and fan behavior is different. I have Mac Pro 4,1 with 5870 (installed by me). It sleeps fine in 10.6.7 and the fans do not speed up first (have not confirmed it is the graphics card fans). In 10.6.8 it appeared to sleep but the load never dropped below 170 watts. It was not an intermittent problem for me in 10.6.8 - it never recovered from sleep.

Adam Wright2 Author

Level 1

0 points

Jul 3, 2011 10:38 AM in response to Adam Wright2

So, at the request of Apple engineering, I properly removed the Parallels VM from my machine. I had (temporarily) removed the kexts before, to no avail, but have now properly expunged the daemons. Since then, I've not had any sleep hangs or panics. I still find it unlikely that this was the cause, as it was still happening when I previously unloaded the kexts. I've also not lived with the "solution" long enough to confirm that it is, in fact, a full time fix. However, it's hard to argue with the result so far.

How many others with this problem have Parallels (or perhaps another VM) installed?

Jul 3, 2011 10:52 AM in response to Adam Wright2

Hi Adam,

I have a MacPro 4,1 with VM Fusion installed (Windows 7) and going from 10.6.7 to 10.6.8 went completely smoothlly, with no sleep prpblems before or since.

FWIW

Ted

Problems with kernel panics when sleeping since 10.6.8