unknown network activity prevents sleep

Question

unknown network activity prevents sleep

Summary: starting a few months ago (not sure exactly when) my Power Mac would no longer go to sleep automatically on timeout. (It will go to sleep if I hit the power button on the monitor or on the case.)

Investigation yields the following information:
* Deleting the preference files and restarting (recommended by Dale Weisshaar on another thread) had no effect.
* Unplugging all USB devices (including keyboard and mouse) had no effect.
* No Bluetooth on this machine, nor wireless network.
* Wake on modem ring and wake on LAN are unchecked.

What does work: disconnecting the network, either:
- physically detaching the ethernet cable
or
- Network->Network Port Configurations->unchecking "Built-in Ethernet" [others already unchecked] and clicking "Apply"

So it's something to do with the network connection. Furthermore:
* Turning off firewall logging (as suggested by someone on a separate thread) has no effect.
* Quitting Safari and Mail has no effect.
* Unchecking all open ports in Sharing has no effect.

I'm about out of ideas. Any assistance would be greatly appreciated. Thanks!

Joshua O'Madadhain

Power Mac G5, 2.5 GHz Mac OS X (10.4.5)

Posted on Mar 20, 2006 12:26 PM

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Answer 1

Mar 20, 2006 12:32 PM in response to Joshua O'Madadhain

A couple more details:

(1) The display will sleep on timeout, but the computer will not.
(2) All OS X updates have been installed.
(3) Doesn't appear to matter whether the sleep timeouts for the display and for the computer are the same or not.

Joshua

Power Mac G5, 2.5 GHz Mac OS X (10.4.2)

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Answer 2

Mar 20, 2006 12:48 PM in response to Joshua O'Madadhain

Are you hooked in to a router? Did you by any chance replace a router a few months ago?

If you are have you tried powering down the router without physically disconnecting the ethernet cable and seeing if sleep works?

If you are hooked directly in to a DSL modem or cable modem without a router you might even try powering it down without disconnecting the ethernet cable and observing the behavior. If you are hooked in to a hub which is connected to the router or modem that could be a potential cause.

If the computer sleeps while the router/modem is off then the problem lies somewhere in the modem/roouter and how it is communicating with your Mac.

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Answer 3

Mar 20, 2006 1:05 PM in response to Al Van Malsen

Good question--I should have specified how I'm connected.

I'm connected via 10MB/s wired LAN (built into the apartment); no DSL or cable modem is involved.

This is what I have connected, and how:

* connected to the wall Ethernet jack: network hub [not router]
* connected to the hub:
- my Power Mac
- wife's PC (currently powered down)
- Airport Express wireless router
- note: my Power Mac has no wireless network card, but I do connect to the printer (connected directly to the Airport Express) through the network.

Powering down the wireless router has no effect on the problem. Disconnecting the wireless router from the network has no effect, either.

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Answer 4

Mar 20, 2006 1:30 PM in response to Joshua O'Madadhain

I can't imagine why or how it would do it but to me the next step would be to take the hub out of the equation and see if that resolves the issue. I realize that only you would be connected to the LAN, but for testing purposes it will answer a few questions.

Another question. Did sleep work fine with the system you have described before a few months ago? Have you always had the same hardware all connected the same way before all this started? Did you add any hardware prior to the sleep issue occurring?

Did the apartment complex make any service changes that you are aware of?

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Answer 5

Mar 20, 2006 2:47 PM in response to Al Van Malsen

Bypassing the hub doesn't resolve the issue, I'm afraid.

To answer your other questions:

(1) Sleep used to work fine with this system until a few months ago.

(2) I've had the same hardware connected the same way, I'm pretty sure, since considerably before this problem started happening. The only things that I can think of that have changed recently involve transient connections (i.e., a new digital camera, and occasional connection of an external hard drive).

(3) The apartment complex has not made any service changes that I'm aware of.

Thanks for your efforts.

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Answer 6

Dean Pahl

Level 4

3,870 points

Mar 20, 2006 3:32 PM in response to Joshua O'Madadhain

Hi, Joshua and Al —

Have you tried combing through your system.logs, console.logs, (and to a lesser extent) ipfw.logs, netinfo.logs, etc. to see whether you can identify the "unknown network activity" by correlating to (insomniac) time-stamps?

Unfortunately, troubleshooting sleep issues can be pretty aggravating...

Regards,
Dean

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Answer 7

Dr. Smoke

Level 9

56,586 points

Mar 20, 2006 5:26 PM in response to Joshua O'Madadhain

Hi, Joshua.

1. Along the lines of Dean's post, check Console for clues.

2. You might want to try the shareware application Little Snitch to see if it can pick up a process that is repeatedly attempting to connect to the Internet if none of the logs offer clues.

Good luck!

😉 Dr. Smoke
Author: Troubleshooting Mac® OS X

---
Note: The information provided in the link(s) above is freely available. However, because I own The X Lab™, a commercial Web site to which some of these links point, the Apple Discussions Terms of Use require I include the following disclosure statement with this post:

I may receive some form of compensation, financial or otherwise, from my recommendation or link.

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Answer 8

Mar 21, 2006 12:01 PM in response to Dr. Smoke

Dr. Smoke, Dean:

Thanks for the suggestion to check the Console--and thanks for the links--but I'm not precisely sure what I should be looking for in those logs. Any specific suggestions?

Joshua

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Answer 9

Dr. Smoke

Level 9

56,586 points

Mar 21, 2006 3:48 PM in response to Joshua O'Madadhain

• Messages related to failures of sleep.

• Messages related to Ethernet or other comm-related / network related messages.

• Rapidly repeating blocks of messages that occur at regular intervals.

Generally, you should check after you've had a failure of idle sleep. For example, set System sleep to 5 minutes, then do nothing with the computer. Watch the clock. After six minutes, check Console for clues. Look through the logs for the last few minutes based on the time stamps on messages at the end of the logs.

Good luck!

😉 Dr. Smoke
Author: Troubleshooting Mac® OS X

---
Note: The information provided in the link(s) above is freely available. However, because I own The X Lab™, a commercial Web site to which some of these links point, the Apple Discussions Terms of Use require I include the following disclosure statement with this post:

I may receive some form of compensation, financial or otherwise, from my recommendation or link.

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Answer 10

Mar 22, 2006 3:22 AM in response to Joshua O'Madadhain

Hi Joshua,

Sorry I had to leave in the middle of this. I am a volunteer firefighter and we had a call so I had to go.

I think Doc and Dean are on the right track at this point. I was trying to rule out any hardware issues before moving on. If you don't see anything that looks suspicious in the logs you could try creating a new user and see if you can get sleep to work properly under the new user. This will continue to narrow down the possibilities by helping determine if this is a system related issue or some sort of user preference or other type of corruption issue.

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Answer 11

Mar 22, 2006 3:31 AM in response to Joshua O'Madadhain

Hi

Just supplementing the more expert help you are getting:

Do you have a Canon scanner? (This problem would be picked up by the repeating messages in Console that Dr. Smoke refers to)

Do you have Virex installed, and if so which version?

Matthew Whiting

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Answer 12

Mar 22, 2006 8:48 AM in response to matthew whiting

Thanks, Matthew. No Canon scanner (I do have an Epson printer/scanner, but one of my previous tests involved disconnecting that, which had no effect). No Virex installed.

Joshua

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Answer 13

Mar 22, 2006 9:03 AM in response to Al Van Malsen

No problem, Al, I think I'd have to agree that your fire is more important than my months-old computer insomnia. 🙂

As for the new user idea: I shifted to the rarely-used admin user and it had the same problem, so that's probably not it, but thanks for the suggestion.

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Answer 14

Mar 25, 2006 7:25 PM in response to Dr. Smoke

Well, I got a chance to try this out. Unfortunately, I didn't get anything useful out of the logs (nor from Little Snitch, although perhaps I didn't set it up correctly to learn anything).

The netinfo log is empty; system and console logs show nothing recent; and the ipfw log is updated multiple times each minute (denying incoming UDP traffic mostly), but it doesn't show outgoing traffic.

Any more ideas? In any case, thanks for your time...

Joshua

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Answer 15

Dean Pahl

Level 4

3,870 points

Mar 25, 2006 10:09 PM in response to Joshua O'Madadhain

Hi again, Joshua —

I suggested sleuthing in log entries partly in response to your presentation of the problem — and what appeared to be a ~thorough course of action(s) you've tried. Perhaps it'd be worth a moment to back up a bit and think about HD standby itself, your Power Mac G5's "needs," and all your related settings. I'm wondering about the problem statement itself — particularly since we're discussing a Power Mac and not a portable. Is your metric hearing HD spin-up, or fans, or...?

Nah ! Never mind: I probably shouldn't open that can of worms. And I think you may've done
enough troubleshooting on this one, so...

Instead —»»
Have you considered/tried a 3rd-party sleep utility, such as
(a) NMS - 2.3b3 (freeware)
(b) Lights Out 2.2.7 ($8.95 shareware, from the author of Tiger Cache Cleaner) ?
From the ~limited number of reader reports for (a) and (b) I checked, they seem to help folks with Mac-insomnia problems pretty well...
I realize work-arounds aren't as satisfying as "cures" — but, in this case...
Best of good luck!
Dean

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