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Aperture constantly hangs during long sessions

I am using the latest version of Aperture. I tend to do editing work for stretches of about 4-5 hours at a time in full-screen mode. At least once a day, Aperture hangs in the middle of a session. I suspect it's when I'm brushing in a change, but I've also seen it even during cropping (often I'm going back and forth making minor adjustments). Usually I wait a few minutes to make sure it isn't coming back, then I force-quit Aperture and then re-launch it immediately and it works again for a while, but eventually it comes up with a dialog saying the database is inconsistent. I have rebuilt the database from scratch several times, but Aperture still hangs. I just upgraded to the new version a week or two ago and it's still unstable for me.


Has anyone else been having this problem? Is there something I'm doing wrong? I'm using a 27" mid-2011 iMac with 24 GB of RAM running the latest version of OS X and I'm not having any problems with other applications.


Thanks for any help or suggestions.

iMac, OS X Mountain Lion (10.8.4), Aperture 3.4.5

Posted on Jun 13, 2013 7:58 AM

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Question marked as Best reply

Posted on Jun 13, 2013 8:48 AM

Bill8888 wrote:


Thanks for any help or suggestions.

My experience mirrors yours. Suggestions:

- Keep at least 50 GB (and even 100 GB) of free space on your system drive. (Search ASC-Aperture for "page outs" for posts on checking your memory requirements. Yes, w. 24 GB RAM this will still happen.)

- Close and re-open Aperture at least every two hours (more frequently if you still see hangs). You can cancel out of "Preparing Images for Shared Programs" (←not the actual wording).

- Never force-quit Aperture. I have yet to see Aperture hang indefinitely. IME, it either eventually finishes whatever is holding it up and returns full control to the user, or it actually crashes. The problem here is that "eventually" can be a few hours. Closing and re-opening Aperture helps keep Aperture from hanging.

- If it appears to be hung, run Activity Monitor (OS X utility). If Aperture shows more than 10% CPU use, always let it run. If 2-3%, _maybe_ force-quit. If "Not responding", check again in five minutes. Do not rely on "Not responding" in the Force-quit dialog (IME, "Not responding" does not equal "Hung").

- Every time you force quit, run "Repair Database" immediately.

- Repair your database 1x/wk as part of general maintenance.

- Look for hardware problems: do a low-level check of your RAM and your system drive.

- Voodoo: leave Aperture running overnight once a week. It seems to do some of its own maintenance when it is running and not active.

- Semi-Voodoo: clean as much cruft from your system as you can -- menubar applets, monitors, background tasks, etc.


HTH.


--Kirby.

3 replies
Question marked as Best reply

Jun 13, 2013 8:48 AM in response to Bill8888

Bill8888 wrote:


Thanks for any help or suggestions.

My experience mirrors yours. Suggestions:

- Keep at least 50 GB (and even 100 GB) of free space on your system drive. (Search ASC-Aperture for "page outs" for posts on checking your memory requirements. Yes, w. 24 GB RAM this will still happen.)

- Close and re-open Aperture at least every two hours (more frequently if you still see hangs). You can cancel out of "Preparing Images for Shared Programs" (←not the actual wording).

- Never force-quit Aperture. I have yet to see Aperture hang indefinitely. IME, it either eventually finishes whatever is holding it up and returns full control to the user, or it actually crashes. The problem here is that "eventually" can be a few hours. Closing and re-opening Aperture helps keep Aperture from hanging.

- If it appears to be hung, run Activity Monitor (OS X utility). If Aperture shows more than 10% CPU use, always let it run. If 2-3%, _maybe_ force-quit. If "Not responding", check again in five minutes. Do not rely on "Not responding" in the Force-quit dialog (IME, "Not responding" does not equal "Hung").

- Every time you force quit, run "Repair Database" immediately.

- Repair your database 1x/wk as part of general maintenance.

- Look for hardware problems: do a low-level check of your RAM and your system drive.

- Voodoo: leave Aperture running overnight once a week. It seems to do some of its own maintenance when it is running and not active.

- Semi-Voodoo: clean as much cruft from your system as you can -- menubar applets, monitors, background tasks, etc.


HTH.


--Kirby.

Jul 10, 2013 11:49 AM in response to Bill8888

Now that I've experimented a bit with Kirby's suggestions, I just wanted to provide an update:


I don't think this is any kind of hardware issue.

- I still have 453 GB free on my hard drive

- Apple's hardware check gave my 27" iMac and its 20 GB of RAM a clean bill of health

- Apple's Disk Utility verified that my hard drive has no issues.


Even following Kirby's recommendations, Aperture still hangs occasionally.

- I find that I have to close and reopen Aperture every hour, and even then it still hangs occasionally

- When Aperture hangs, the Activity Monitor always shows it using between 1% and 2% of CPU time

- Waiting over night after Aperture hangs generally doesn't do anything--it's still hung the next day

- I now repair the database evey time I restart Aperture after a force quit to avoid more problems


I suspect the constant hanging stems from a set of memory leaks that soon catch up with the user during intensive editing sessions. Software utilities that could help identify the source of these leaks do exist; I hope someone at Apple with access to the source code has the time to try to track this down. It's pretty annoying.

Aperture constantly hangs during long sessions

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