Power Nap not working correctly

I turned off the screensaver password so I'd be better able to see what was happening with my rMBP when it woke. It's easy for me to check on Mail. If Power Nap is working the junk mail is filtered out by the rMBP when I check my email on the iPad.

Well, Power Nap WAS working until last night. As best I can tell, Mail and TM didn't run even once all night.

I know it was active because I was testing to see whether Power Nap was working with Find My iPhone from my iPad. The rMBP showed up after it went to sleep and again before I woke it up. Also the rMBP's casing was slightly warm...it's normally cold after a night's nap.

Console didn't reveal anything interesting that I could spot, except for two warnings about Mail...

8/4/12 12:34:32.941 AM SyncServer[1378]: [0x7fbfd040bd60] |DataManager|Warning| Client com.apple.Mail sync alert tool path /System/Library/Frameworks/Message.framework/Resources/MailSync does not exist.

8/4/12 4:05:50.917 AM SyncServer[1561]: [0x7fc933c0bd60] |DataManager|Warning| Client com.apple.Mail sync alert tool path /System/Library/Frameworks/Message.framework/Resources/MailSync does not exist.

Oh well, back to the drawing board.😉

I reset my SMC for the second time and installed Mountain Lion again.

It still doesn't look like my Mail is getting checked. Am I missing something? Does the Mail app have to be running before I close the lid for it to check mail?

wesman246 wrote:

I reset my SMC for the second time and installed Mountain Lion again.

It still doesn't look like my Mail is getting checked. Am I missing something? Does the Mail app have to be running before I close the lid for it to check mail?

If Time Machine is turned on it'll kick in and do its backups, but for Mail, the app needs to be running.

Looking at Console's log file, it looks like the app Weatherman might have had a problem last night. I closed Weatherman and now Power Nap is working again. I don't know if I'd pin the blame on Weatherman since it has been running in the past and didn't cause any problems.

When I set up my new rMBP I used Migration Assistant to populate the accounts. How about the rest of you who have been having problems with Power Nap? Was everything all new or did you use Migration Assistant?

Well, needless to say I feel like an idiot because my problem was that I didn't know Mail had to be running!

I'll confirm this later as I leave Mail open and put my rMBP to sleep for a bit. Thanks for the info!

wesman246 wrote:

Well, needless to say I feel like an idiot because my problem was that I didn't know Mail had to be running!

I'll confirm this later as I leave Mail open and put my rMBP to sleep for a bit. Thanks for the info!

No worries. Apple wasn't very clear about what conditions would affect the way Power Nap functioned. Apps opened? Closed? Lid open? Closed? Sleep via the menu?

Mad-Hias wrote:

I used Migration Assistant, too. Had a late 2009 iMac before. Do you think that has anything to do with our Power Nap issue?

I think it's working on my rMBP quite good now. And I can confirm that Mail has to be running...

I'm not sure if Migration Assistant would cause any problems or not. Mostly I was thinking that I've got a fair number of 3rd party things running...some of them might be outdated since I've used Migration Assistant the last three times when I've gone to a new MBP...way back to a Titanium G4.

I can confirm Power Nap checked my mail while the Mail app was open during sleep. I agree, Apple likes to make things sound simple whereas in reality there's more to it. Unfortunately I'm not as technologically savy as I thought with OS X, having just switched to using a Mac (and will probably never switch back at this point), so I didn't realize Mail had to be open for it to be checked (of course that makes more sense now that I'm doing it right)!

I don't have an external drive, but I plan on getting it soon, so this way I'm backed up and hopefully during sleep mode. It looks like I'm in the clear from here, but if Power Nap begins to fail, I'll be back!

Thanks!

Congrats on becoming a new Mac user. 🙂

Time Machine is great and one of the many benifits of OS X. It's an archival type backup program...great for file retreval and complete restorations, but it isn't bootable.

As a secondary backup I use an additional external drive and create a bootalble clone drive using SuperDuper. If something catastrphic goes wrong with the Mac's drive I can boot from the cloned external and be back in business in minutes rather than hours, or days. Since it's a clone, that external just needs to be as big as your machines internal drive.

For Time Machine you want a big drive. Once the drive fills TM will automatically delete the oldest files. The bigger the drive the further your archived backups can go.

Time Machine will run about once an hour and just backup what's changed since the last backup. The nightime backups are nice, but, in my opinion, not critical since the machine is asleep and there's not much changing which needs to be saved.

Really?! Now I'm jealous! I've done the SMC reset at least 3 times with no difference in wake-up times! But I suppose that's another matter for another forum...

You can't use powernap on the MacBook Pro Retina because there isn't a real download for the MacBook Pro Retina out yet. Wait until iOS 6 comes out. But until then here's another way you can do it, downlaod this: http://www.macupdate.com/app/mac/44298/macbook-pro-retina-smc-update

I got the partial update working (TM only) with the SMC reset that Karl suggested on Page 2 of this thread.

Having read the entire thread, I wasn't sure if there was a confirmed method to get the Mail updating or not? Does the Mountain Lion reinstall fix it?

Thanks,

/Brian