Q: BUG in process suhelperd: over-released legacy external boost assertions (1 total, 1 external, 0 legacy-external)

Hi all,

I've only recently encountered this issue on a MacBookPro8,3, running 10.10.1.  I first discovered that the laptop had seemingly failed to go to sleep while I was using it unplugged for a short period (and had plugged it back in to top off the charge).  The machine refused to wake from sleep, and I could feel that there was a lot of heat being vented by the (very active) fans.

After a forced power cycle, I had enough stability to notice the console messages, before I got the dreaded beeps of doom (and corresponding flash of the sleep light) and a frozen machine (kernel panic without the grey screen) and a subsequent forced reboot.  The laptop had happily powered, passed POST, and was at the desktop (actually having restarted all my apps), so I was fairly sure it wasn't a memory issue, but wasn't about to rule out memory or logic board issues.

I then got stuck in a reboot cycle, where the machine kept rebooting, getting to the desktop, re-establishing connections, and reloading apps, before beeping, freezing, and force-rebooting.

Getting worried that the machine was headed for an early demise, I'd managed to load this discussion thread in Safari prior to one of the intermediate forced shut-downs, and wondered what might have been different to cause the issue.

In my case (may not be the same for everyone), the different thing that had happened to the machine over the last few days was connection to a weak Wi-Fi network (not one I control).  Two iPads (different generations) sat next to the laptop showed one bar of strength, at best, or no connection whatsoever, but the laptop kept showing a full-strength connection.  Normal internet and other network-related tasks seemed to work fine (most of the time), if slow at times.  I had my doubts about the actual reliability of the internet connection, but didn't think it would influence the machine so badly (which had been rock-solid up to that point).

On the next reboot, I turned off the Wi-Fi as soon as I could, and the machine happily continued to start up, and I had every indication that my stability was back.  I switched to an alternate internet connection (3G USB dongle) and have had zero issues since.

Of note, I have had the System Update process hung for a number of days (I sleep my system rather than shut it down), including moving the system across multiple Wi-Fi, fixed, and 3G dongle network connections.  It has only been on the flaky Wi-Fi network that I had any system stability issues (and resultant crashes).

Where is this story headed?

- Firstly, it seems that there's a potential kernel issue with the networking or Wi-Fi stacks (leaning towards Wi-Fi), particularly with flaky connections (perhaps an issue at one of the lower layer connections) and the software update side of the system.

- While my experience may not be the same as yours, consider removing ALL network connections from your machine next time it forces a reboot, including physical links.  Once the system is back up and stable (if possible), reintroduce network connections one at a time until the failures happen again.  That will show up the connection that is failing or having the strange issues.

- Sit back and wait for Apple to patch.

Of course, you experiences may vary, but years of operating Apple products have taught me that sometimes there are many different and complex symptoms for the same relatively simple underlying issue. 

I've been searching & reading a lot to identify the culprit of boot ups that freeze/hang, which I've been dealing with for days. Although I have seen boots take more than 30 mins to unfreeze or not at all, I recently increased the RAM on my late-2009 Macbook. This provided a good boost to my old machine, and has made trouble shooting analysis go by much more quickly, however the extra memory did not solve my boot up problem.

I've explored Safe boots, PRam reset, Disk Utility Verifications/Repairs, turning off automatic software updates, etc...just about everything shy of a reinstall of OS--which now is not an option since a post here indicated that that didn't solve anything and was a big time waster.

Note: I do have functionality:

After the boot hangs, I can hit COMMAND-OPTION-SHIFT-ESC to finish (or perhaps abort) the hung boot process, and I get taken to my login screen. Although graphics look strange for a while--thick gray bands scroll upwards before my desktop settles down, and folders on my dock open up in a staccato fashion--it normalizes within apps and overall, and functionality is near normal, sans freezes.

This is how my system now hangs before I need to enter COMMAND-OPTION-SHIFT-ESC to continue to login:

Wifi Off, restart, Command-V:

created vertif xxxxxxxx p2p0

Wifi On, restart, Command-V:

BUG in process suhelperd[185]: over-released legacy external boost assertions (1 total, 1 external, 0 legacy-external).

I would love to have normal booting return, as the stalled boot needing my keystrokes has me worried about my mac's stability.   And perhaps my tip above could give much needed (although perhaps risky) access to those here who are frozen out of their computer.

Based off the information given by actorbarry, the virtif p2p0 interface is the AirDrop interface (wonder why it is still being created even though the WiFi is supposedly off...).

How does the system perform for subsequent reboots with the WiFi off (where virtif p2p0 should not be being created - or at least be DOWN)?

It looks more like the suhelperd process issue is tied to the WiFi interface.  If people are continuing to have significant issues (and WiFi is the primary network connection in use), perhaps the following may help:

WARNING - Fiddling in the System Directory can lead to major system problems if things go wrong

Your HD Name Here ▸ System ▸ Library ▸ Extensions, and move the IO80211Family.kext Extension to another folder (e.g. Desktop > Extension Locker).  Since the default action is to copy the extension (same as an option-drag), you'll need to force the move (apple-drag / command-drag) and may need an administrator's password, depending on your particular account and system settings.

Reboot, and watch what happens.

What does this step do?

This step moves the 802.11 (WiFi) system extension out of the System folder and effectively disables WiFi at the System level (i.e. no driver for it).  If WiFi is the underlying cause for the suhelperd crashes on your system, then this step should get your system back online after a reboot, but you'll have no WiFi, and you'll have to use another network connection to get to the internet.

If the step doesn't work, move the extension back into the Extensions folder so you can get your WiFi back.

If it has worked, and you can't live without WiFi, consider using a kext utility (there's a few to choose from, but use at own risk) to reinstall the kext.

My mid-2011 27" iMac is running 10.10.1 (installed over 10.9), and since a few days, is refusing to boot at all (stuck in a reboot loop). The suhelperd-message shows itself during startup in verbose mode, though with all numbers between brackets at 0. (BUG in process suhelperd[182]: over-released legacy external boost assertions (0 total, 0 external, 0 legacy-external). Nothing seems to work (booting in safe mode, resetting NVRAM, booting from external USB). I ran Apple Hardware Test and did find something wrong with one of my four 4-Gig memory modules, which I removed, but the problem still remains.

It seems as if most of the people in this thread do still get to a desktop, anybody else with the type of problem I'm experiencing? Any suggestions would be helpful, since at the moment, my iMac is nothing more than a very large paperweight...

Thanks for responding, AUMacUser. 

Wifi On/Off: When I wrote Wifi was off, I simply meant I turned it off using System Preferences/Network/Turn Wifi Off.  My Airport Express is still plugged in.*  I will run a test next with it removed and see how that effects things before moving around the .kext file you mentioned.

Additionally, I've also seen the boot hang in this way--

Wifi On, Restart from Login Screen, Command-V:

Airport: RSN handshake complete on en1.

[* I use the Airport Express only for transmitting music to its connected speakers; otherwise the default Wifi connection for my MacBook is with the 5G router from my cable company.]

Re: daan1981's paperweight.

Here's how I get past my troublesome boots. The Verbose startup lets me clearly see when boot processing has stopped.  At that point I enter COMMAND-OPTION-SHIFT-ESC together for a few seconds, the screen darkens briefly, I let go of the keys, and I get taken to my login screen.  I don't really know the meaning or dangers of such an action, but my guess is that I'm simply aborting some of the startup safeguards at the tail end of my login, which are hanging up the boot process.

I have also entered these keystrokes in a regular startup that gets hung (with the progress bar stuck about 1/3 of the way across). 

Mac Mini 2014 has same issue and won't boot anymore.  It was also crashing every night before it finally decided to not boot anymore.  Guess I'll bring it into the Apple store.  Tried the Command-Option-Shift-Escape and it did not bring me to the login screen.

Thanks for the tip - I'm afraid that it didn't work. When the boot process stops (after setting up the network interfaces), the screen goes to white for a few moments, and then the machine just reboots. When booting in safe mode, there is no reboot, the screen just stays white. No amount of Cmd-Opt-Shift-Esc does the trick.

What worked for me was to:

"Use the built-in recovery disk to reinstall OS X while keeping your files and user settings intact. Important: You must be connected to the Internet to reinstall OS X. Choose Apple menu > Restart. Once your Mac restarts (and the gray screen appears), hold down the Command (⌘) and R keys."

I also installed Memory Clean and my MacBook is fast again.

I do not which of the two solved the issue.

HI,

I get the same suhelperd message as you and everyone else and have the same iMac as you in the same configuration but unlike most of those here I do not get any crashes or system hangs.

I am running with a very good wi-fi signal and 152mb broadband so not sure if makes the difference.

Also worth mentioning that I only get multiple messages when no updates are available. If the update process finds any updates to download then I don't get the messages.

Best Regards

Rich.

Likewise here . . . Yosemite seems to have stabilized, and I no longer get crashes, nor do I see anymore the long, slow boot with the grey screen... but these "over-released legacy" errors continue to appear in the log.   Point being that the errors are not necessarily fatal, and people who are trying to solve crashes may be chasing after a red herring here.

Again thanks for the tip. I'm afraid that recovery also didn't manage to boot, my Mac still freezes somewhere halfway through, :-(.

hi,

i've posted a couple of times on this thread and i too, along with jpdemers, have decided that the suhelperd problem is probably, by itself, benign, and believe this problem perhaps to be at best only a contributing factor on certain machines.

in my case, the crash was almost always predictable (upon opening Mail or Safari or some other non-Apple apps), resulting in the same graphic disintegration on screen and a crash of the WindowServer, which then took down the whole machine and all users logged in. 

and in most ... but not all ... of the console transcripts, the suhelperd messages were present just about the time of the crash.  it's natural to pick on suhelperd as the likely suspect because of the word BUG in the message.

nevertheless, i do have some new information to submit since i've now been crash-free for about 10 days ... because i've replaced my machine with a new 27" 5K iMac!  i wasn't necessarily driven to a new machine because of the problems we've been discussing, but when i found a good trade-in value for the old iMac and since i was planning on upgrading soon anyway, i just pulled the trigger earlier.

with the new machine, i've discovered the following:

• when the machine came out of the box with 10.10.0, suhelperd was not present anywhere in the startup messages in the console.  however, after opening System Preferences --> App Store, every click on the "Automatically check for updates" box still produced a single suhelperd message in the console.
• after 3 days -- about 7 days ago -- i updated to 10.10.1 and, lo and behold, the console now again shows 100+ suhelperd messages at startup!  still, i've been running without a crash ever since.

let's hope 10.10.2 fixes whatever needs to be fixed.

DMG (J)

iMac (Retina, 27-inch, Late 2014)

3.5 GHz Intel Core i5

8 GB memory, 1 TB Fusion drive

AMD Radeon M290X

OSX 10.10.1

I found a fix!

1. Head to system preferences

2. Network preferences

3. Remove all of the services from the list and re-add them

4. Hit apply

5. Reboot

This is usually caused by transferring network settings to a new OS.

Close but no cigar for me.  When I check the APP Store for updates I still get the message.  WiFi seems faster which is an improvement.