HT204448: About the OS X Mavericks v10.9.2 Update

Learn about About the OS X Mavericks v10.9.2 Update
the_jawa_eater
Level 1 (0 points)

Q: Reboot loop after 10.9.2 upgrade

My 2009 (dual-quad) Mac Pro 4,1 is now stuck in a reboot loop after upgrading from 10.9.1 to 10.9.2.

 

//edit: I realized there wasn't a question: What is wrong with my computer and how do I fix it?

 

So far I have tried:

 

* Repairing the disk

 

* Repairing permissions

 

* Zapping the NVRAM/PRAM

 

* Resetting SMC

 

* Copying BootCache.playlist from a backup to /var/db

 

Other things to note about my setup:

 

In addition to the original hard drive, I installed a 4tb drive from which I have been working with since June. It is the 4tb drive that has 10.9.2 installed. The original 650gb still has 10.8.4 installed and all my original data pre-June.

 

Also installed is a VisionTek Radeon 7870 video card which powers my numerous monitors. I do not recall having to install anything extra, or modify any settings to get it to work. The only downside is you can't really see anything when booting.

 

In addition to the VisionTek card I also have one of the factory Geforce 120 cards installed. Using another monitor attached to that card I've been able to monitor the boot process using the command-v verbose output.

 

Of notable interest I get the dreaded "BootCache: unable to open /var/db/BootCache.playlist : 2" error, along with a few SMC errors. If these are important I can attach pictures taken of the boot process.

 

I am able to zap the NVRAM and boot the old 10.8.4 650gb drive. It loads fine. 10.9.2 will not boot into safe mode, but will boot into recovery mode.

 

As a final attempt to fix the BootCache error I copied it from a Time Machine backup into /var/db/ ensuring the correct permissions were set. After rebooting the file is deleted again.

 

I would greatly appreciate any help on this issue as this is my work computer. I do have full backups via Time Machine so I can reinstall, but I'm hoping there's another solution.

Mac Pro (Early 2009), OS X Mavericks (10.9.2)

Posted on Feb 26, 2014 11:25 AM

by the_jawa_eater,Solvedanswer
the_jawa_eater the_jawa_eater
Level 1 (0 points)
A:

My computer is working again, but only because I reverted to 10.9.1. That was a waste of three days. Thanks apple.

Posted on Feb 27, 2014 12:54 PM

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the_jawa_eater

Q: Reboot loop after 10.9.2 upgrade

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  • Helpful answers

  • by the_jawa_eater,

    the_jawa_eater the_jawa_eater Feb 27, 2014 1:43 AM in response to the_jawa_eater
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Feb 27, 2014 1:43 AM in response to the_jawa_eater

    As an update, unplugging all monitors from the Radeon 7870 card allows it to boot. Plugging a monitor again causes an almost instaneous reboot and gets stuck in the loop again.

     

    Reinstalling Mavericks over the top of it again did not help.

     

    Currently in the process of reinstalling on a formatted drive.

     

    On a side note, apparently you must have an internet connection to install mavericks 10.9.2 even if you already downloaded it to a thumb drive, the installer redownloads everything again, adding an additional hour to the process.

     

    Thanks apple.

  • by the_jawa_eater,

    the_jawa_eater the_jawa_eater Feb 27, 2014 2:32 AM in response to the_jawa_eater
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Feb 27, 2014 2:32 AM in response to the_jawa_eater

    Awesome. I just reinstalled 10.9.2 from scratch and it still crashes.

  • by David J. Hunt,

    David J. Hunt David J. Hunt Feb 27, 2014 3:03 AM in response to the_jawa_eater
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Feb 27, 2014 3:03 AM in response to the_jawa_eater

    I have the same issue MacPro 4.1 with an ASUS HD 7950 Direct CU II, continual reboots.

    I have reinstalled my old GTX120 and that shows the crash message - reboots fine with that card installed.

     

    They have borked the 3rd party video cards working!

  • by ThomasTaylor,

    ThomasTaylor ThomasTaylor Feb 27, 2014 4:26 AM in response to David J. Hunt
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Feb 27, 2014 4:26 AM in response to David J. Hunt

    Dear David! I don't know how to thank you enough. This worked! Thank you!

  • by the_jawa_eater,Solvedanswer

    the_jawa_eater the_jawa_eater Feb 27, 2014 12:54 PM in response to ThomasTaylor
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Feb 27, 2014 12:54 PM in response to ThomasTaylor

    My computer is working again, but only because I reverted to 10.9.1. That was a waste of three days. Thanks apple.

  • by David Strait,

    David Strait David Strait Feb 28, 2014 9:55 AM in response to the_jawa_eater
    Level 2 (218 points)
    Mac OS X
    Feb 28, 2014 9:55 AM in response to the_jawa_eater

    I just started a discussiion related to this topic in "Mac Pro."

     

    https://discussions.apple.com/message/25019730#25019730

     

    " I have a 2009 dual quad core Mac Pro (4.1) with an upgraded Radeon 7950 GPU. I use a 30" Apple Cinema display (DVI) and  a 27" LED Cinema Display (Display Port). After updating to 10.9.2, the Mac would not boot, but went on a continuous re-boot cycle every 5-10 minutes without a flicker of life in either display. I unplugged both displays and the Mac booted. I could log in remotely from my laptop. I then attached the 30" Cinema Display into the DVI port and the Mac booted normally."

     

     

    Dave

  • by David Strait,

    David Strait David Strait Mar 1, 2014 6:08 AM in response to the_jawa_eater
    Level 2 (218 points)
    Mac OS X
    Mar 1, 2014 6:08 AM in response to the_jawa_eater

    I suggest everyone with this problem give feedback to Apple:

     

    http://www.apple.com/feedback/mac-pro.html

     

    Don't know if it will help, but it can't hurt.

     

    Dave

  • by David Strait,

    David Strait David Strait Mar 1, 2014 10:18 AM in response to David Strait
    Level 2 (218 points)
    Mac OS X
    Mar 1, 2014 10:18 AM in response to David Strait

    I contacted Apple Support and was able to discuss the issue with a senior level support technician. He agreed it was probably a problem with the 10.9.2 update and he emailed me an app which collected system data to send to the OS X software engineers to evaluate.

     

     

    He thanked me for bring this to Apple's attention and did recommend reverting to 10.9.1.

     

     

    Fingers crossed.

     

     

    Dave

  • by David Strait,

    David Strait David Strait Mar 1, 2014 9:49 PM in response to the_jawa_eater
    Level 2 (218 points)
    Mac OS X
    Mar 1, 2014 9:49 PM in response to the_jawa_eater

    Hey!

     

    DPArt solved the issue for me in another thread.... easily!  Hopefuly it will work for you:

     

    https://discussions.apple.com/message/25035104?ac_cid=op123456#25035104

     

    Dave

  • by Jason Lockhart,

    Jason Lockhart Jason Lockhart Mar 11, 2014 8:28 AM in response to the_jawa_eater
    Level 1 (15 points)
    Mar 11, 2014 8:28 AM in response to the_jawa_eater

    My MBP 5,2 (Mid-2010) is exhibiting the same behavior since the 10.9.2 update. I am also getting some (but not a flood of) SMC Read Key errors. I did two fresh installs and the problem persists, even on a clean install of 10.9.2 with no other devices or software installed. Tried resetting the SMC several times, scanned the HD, the whole nine yards. Still seems to have really annoying wait states, will get hot for absolutely no reason and takes forever to boot. Something is not right and it's NOT something I did. Will be sending a bug report after the next clean install currently proceeding. ***?!?!

  • by David Strait,

    David Strait David Strait Mar 11, 2014 9:36 AM in response to Jason Lockhart
    Level 2 (218 points)
    Mac OS X
    Mar 11, 2014 9:36 AM in response to Jason Lockhart

    Jason,

    Have you tried downgrading to 10.9.1 to confirm it is the OS update that did this? I know I (and several others) had this problem due to using a non-Apple GPU upgrade in a Mac Pro. It appears to be due to a changes in the drivers that made the third party GPU incompatible.

     

    In my case (and several others on separate threads), I had a Mac edition card (Sapphire Radeon 7950) with the switch set in the "PC" mode, so it was an easy fix. Others had the same card, but (for some reason) the Mac and PC switch positions were reversed. They corrected their problem by putting the switch in PC mode. I suspect that jawa is using a Radeon PC card that became incompatible for similar reasons as mine with the OS ipdate, but his GPU doesn't have a PC/Mac switch to correct the problem.

     

    Bottom line... I suspect the root cause of your problem is somewhat different since you have a Apple supported GPU. Has anyone else reported a similar problem in the MacBook Pro forum?

     

    Dave

  • by Jason Lockhart,

    Jason Lockhart Jason Lockhart Mar 11, 2014 11:00 AM in response to David Strait
    Level 1 (15 points)
    Mar 11, 2014 11:00 AM in response to David Strait

    David,

     

    I am now trying a 10.9.x (not sure if it's 10.9.1 or 10.9.0) installer to verify. I can verify that it was NOT behaving like this before 10.9.2 and the recovery partition behaves like this, not just the boot OS. Everything seems perky until it gets past the boot volume picker then as soon as a version of 10.9.2 starts to boot it starts to crawl!

     

    More to come....

  • by David Strait,

    David Strait David Strait Mar 11, 2014 12:37 PM in response to Jason Lockhart
    Level 2 (218 points)
    Mac OS X
    Mar 11, 2014 12:37 PM in response to Jason Lockhart

    Jason,

    It sounds like you may not have a Time Machine backup since you are using an OS installer to downgrade. It's pretty easy to revert to an earlier version with a Time Machine backup, but much more of a hassle to start over with a new OS install.

     

    Make sure you aren't using the current OS 10.9 installer, since that will be 10.9.2. I assume you saved an earlier version of the installer that you are using (?). If it's less than 10.9.1, you can then download the 10.9.1 installer from the Apple support pages. You then may then want to consider making a Time Machine backup to avoid this kind of issue in the future.

     

    Sorry for the unsolicited advice if all this is already obvious to you.

     

    Dave

  • by Jason Lockhart,

    Jason Lockhart Jason Lockhart Mar 11, 2014 4:58 PM in response to David Strait
    Level 1 (15 points)
    Mar 11, 2014 4:58 PM in response to David Strait

    Dave,

     

    You're not helping, you don't seem to be reading what I'm saying. The OS, with nothing other than the OS as 10.9.2 exhibits the behavior. I obviously have an earlier installer as I said I was installing 10.9.0 or 10.9.1. Not helping, just seem to be posting random crap. Please stop. I am more instersted in knowing if there are more people seeing the same problem and how they may fixed it. Random "advice" from people not experiencing the problem is useless. I am quite an established Mac OS X admin. You may have heard of a supercomputer I helped build about a decade ago. As a matter of fact, nevermind, this is going to go back in the bug report that I filed as part of the developer testing anyway. Same **** problem! Nice to see nothing got fixed before release.