Is there an Energy Saver Preference File?

Question

Is there an Energy Saver Preference File?

I found one article on this going back to 2008, but it did not solve my problem.

I would like to know if there is an Energy Saver Preference file that I could find in my user Library, perhaps, or even in the root Library. I have been having problems for years with my old MacBook Pro in that it will not sleep as scheduled. This problem 'migrated' to my new MBP. I sold my old computer and found out that re-initing the disk and installing from the install disks that came with it, and then upgrading to Snow Leopard, the old MBP would suddenly actually use the sleep settings so I surmise, again, that something migrated when I used Time Capsule to restore to my new MBP.

I have seen the problem of scheduled sleep not working on many threads, but have yet to find an answer. This is my last attempt - I'll just sleep manually if I have to but I would rather use the scheduled sleep feature.

Any help would be very much appreciated.

Thanks,

Clinton

MacBook Pro (15-inch Late 2011), Mac OS X (10.7.3), 8 GB RAM

Posted on Apr 13, 2012 12:34 AM

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Answer 1

Best reply

John Galt

Level 10

141,162 points

Apr 13, 2012 12:48 AM in response to clintonfrombirmingham

The insomnia is not likely to be fixed by copying the file but it is

/Library/Preferences/SystemConfiguration/com.apple.PowerManagement.plist

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Answer 2

X423424X

Level 6

14,265 points

Apr 13, 2012 1:00 AM in response to clintonfrombirmingham

Some of the info is in that plist but some of it is also in pram. You can see the pram settings using pmset -g in the terminal.

Some of these sleep problems are hard to solve. I never solved it on my machine although I suspect it is my non-apple keyboard's USB ports. I recommend trying PleaseSleep which tries to force the machine to obey the energy saver settings.

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Answer 3

Apr 13, 2012 1:43 AM in response to John Galt

Trashed that file (there were actually two - one with a ~ in the file name.

Now we'll see if that works!

Thanks,

Clinton

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Answer 4

Apr 13, 2012 1:44 AM in response to X423424X

Downloaded 'Please Sleep.' Going to try the deletion of prefs first and see if that works and, if not, will try the app.

Thanks so much,

Clinton

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Answer 5

Apr 13, 2012 1:47 AM in response to X423424X

Here were my pram settings:

Active Profiles:

Battery Power -1

AC Power -1*

Currently in use:

standbydelay 4200

standby 0

womp 1

halfdim 1

panicrestart 157680000

gpuswitch 2

hibernatefile /var/vm/sleepimage

sms 1

networkoversleep 0

disksleep 10

sleep 0 (imposed by 149)

hibernatemode 3

ttyskeepawake 1

displaysleep 10

acwake 0

lidwake 1

What in the world is that sleep 0?

Sleepless in B'ham,

Clinton

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Answer 6

X423424X

Level 6

14,265 points

Apr 13, 2012 1:50 AM in response to clintonfrombirmingham

Trashed that file (there were actually two - one with a ~ in the file name.

Huh? Not sure what you were looking at with one containing a tilde in it (or was it in front of it which might mean a backup?).

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Answer 7

Apr 13, 2012 2:36 AM in response to X423424X

X423424X wrote:

Trashed that file (there were actually two - one with a ~ in the file name.

Huh? Not sure what you were looking at with one containing a tilde in it (or was it in front of it which might mean a backup?).

The tilde was in the file name. It had a modified date in March (which is when it MIGHT have been restored from my TM back-up. I'm going to reset it for 15 minutes and go have a cup of coffee and see if it worked!

Thanks for everyone's help thus far - I'll marked 'Solved' if either of these things work!

Clinton

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Answer 8

Apr 13, 2012 3:41 AM in response to clintonfrombirmingham

Nope - deleting the plist did't work - trying "Please Sleep" now...

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Answer 9

Apr 13, 2012 5:45 AM in response to clintonfrombirmingham

"Please Sleep" doesn't work, either.

Heavy sigh... guess I'm just going to have to live with this - it has to be something I inherited from my TM migration.

Clinton

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Answer 10

John Galt

Level 10

141,162 points

Apr 13, 2012 6:03 AM in response to clintonfrombirmingham

What in the world is that sleep 0?

It sounds as though it is a process with a pid=149. Check Activity Monitor for that process ID.

Some more reading material: Mac OS X: Why your Mac might not sleep or stay in sleep mode

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Answer 11

X423424X

Level 6

14,265 points

Apr 13, 2012 11:53 AM in response to John Galt

Missed that in the pmset output. Yes, pmset sleep set to 0 means sleep is disabled. Do a pmset -g again to see if the process is still 149. Then do the following in terminal to find out what 149 corresponds to:

ps ax | grep 149

Substitute the appropriate pid for the 149 if it has changed.

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Answer 12

Apr 13, 2012 9:28 PM in response to X423424X

OK this is what I got this time (I subsituted "Users" for my name - just a privacy thing):

Active Profiles:

Battery Power -1

AC Power -1*

Currently in use:

standbydelay 4200

standby 0

womp 0

halfdim 1

panicrestart 157680000

gpuswitch 2

hibernatefile /var/vm/sleepimage

sms 1

networkoversleep 0

disksleep 10

sleep 0 (imposed by 7993, 149)

hibernatemode 3

ttyskeepawake 1

displaysleep 10

acwake 0

lidwake 1

Users-MacBook-Pro:~ users$ ps ax | grep 149

149 ?? Ss 8:55.67 /usr/sbin/coreaudiod

8035 s000 S+ 0:00.00 grep 149

...but I really don't know what it means (I'm not really up-to-date on Unix!).

Thanks,

Clinton

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Answer 13

Apr 13, 2012 9:34 PM in response to John Galt

John Galt,

149	coreaudiod

What in the world is that?

Thanks - let me look at the link you served up,

Clinton

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Answer 14

X423424X

Level 6

14,265 points

Apr 13, 2012 9:47 PM in response to clintonfrombirmingham

Now you seem to have another one, pid 7993. So do the grep again using 7993 instead of 149 in the grep.

coreaudiod is a audio daemon (Core Audio). Do you have any special audio connections hooked up or configured?

I just discovered we are covering some "old" gound. Look at this 16-page thread:

OS X Lion 10.7 Sleep Issue

with stuff similar to yours around page 7 of that thread. , Maybe you can find some ideas there although the thread is not flagged as "answered".

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Answer 15

John Galt

Level 10

141,162 points

Apr 13, 2012 10:12 PM in response to clintonfrombirmingham

coreaudiod could be a culprit. Among other things, iTunes would be using it and that would certainly prevent sleep.

Here are some more things to try that may point to a cause.

Copy (triple-click to select the entire line) and paste the following into Terminal:

launchctl list | sed 1d | awk '!/0x|com\.apple|edu\.mit|org\.(x|openbsd)/{print $3}'

This will produce a list of non-Apple daemon processes loaded. Post its output.

Next do the same with the following:

kextstat -kl | awk '!/com\.apple/{printf "%s %s\n", $6, $7}'

This will produce a list of non-Apple kernel extensions. Post it as well.

Perhaps the above will reveal the rogue process that is causing your insomnia.

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