Dock using 100% CPU and lot of VM after El Capitan update

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ubittibu Author

Level 1

15 points

Dock using 100% CPU and lot of VM after El Capitan update

MBP early 2011, upgraded to 10.11 El Capitan from Yosemite.

Since the update Dock is using 100% CPU and great amount of Virtual Memory, can reach 40gb in 1 hour and growing.

These steps tried so far:

1) deleted ~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.Dock.plist

2) deleted ALL the files in ~/Library/Preferences

3) removed ALL the files in ~/Library/LaunchAgents

5) deleted files in /library/Application Support/Dock

6) removed parallels, vmware, virtualbox

7) reinstalled 10.11

8) created new user with admin privileges: no problem for this user

9) disabled time machine

10) disabled spotlight

Restarted many times between these steps.

Force quitting the Dock stops the CPU and Memory usage for a minute, then it go increasing again.

Using the command

sudo opensnoop -n Dock

I get a list of files processed by dock, always the same files (mostly apps in the /applications folder) and it stops at /System/Library/Fonts/SFNSDisplay-Medium.otf

Don't know what to do next.. I would really like to keep my user account..

MacBook Pro, OS X El Capitan (10.11), MBP 2011

Posted on Oct 2, 2015 7:28 AM

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Answer 1

Best reply

Eric Root

Level 10

684,045 points

Oct 2, 2015 1:27 PM in response to ubittibu

Try doing a Dock restart using the following Terminal command:

killall Dock

Log out/in and test. If that doesn’t work, you need to look in your user Library/Applications Support/Dock for the .db. Use the Finder “Go To Folder” command. Enter ~/Library/Applications Support/Dock. Move the .db to your desktop.

Then try a dock reset.

Applications/Utilities/Terminal enter the command

killall Dock

Log out/in test. If it works okay, delete the .db from the desktop.

If the Dock is the same, return the .db to where you got them from, overwriting the newer ones.

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Answer 2

ubittibu Author

Level 1

15 points

Oct 2, 2015 2:02 PM in response to Eric Root

Did 'killall Dock' in terminal many times and deleted the only file in ~/Library/Applications Support/Dock

which was desktoppicture.db

verified permissions also

-rw-r--r--

owner is me

no success...

It's crazy.. nothing ever happened so complicated to solve in osx.

Since two days dock is using 100% CPU and Virtual memory usage is growing with no limits.. can reach 80GB if I leave it untouched.

I must force quit dock again and again to use the system.

Apparently is a user related problem because I created another user and it doesn't have this issue.

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Answer 3

ubittibu Author

Level 1

15 points

Oct 2, 2015 3:18 PM in response to ubittibu

One thing I noticed running the command

sudo opensnoop -n Dock

is that at every quit and restart, the Dock tries to access a list of files and many of them are missing, some are old downloads.

As if it would try to find files in an outdated index.

I already rebuilt the spotlight index with sudo mdutil -i on /

I don't know where Docks takes this files list from..

😕

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Answer 4

forappie

Level 1

36 points

Oct 5, 2015 1:23 AM in response to ubittibu

I think I have the same but unfortunately I have not been able to find a solution. The problem is that Dock doesn't respond anymore, I can't use command-tab anymore to switch applications and I can't use my trackpad to move from 1 space to another.

This is what I have analyzed so far:

I have 3 accounts and only 1 account (without admit rights) shows this Dock behaviour (eating CPU and memory until it grows to over 70GB virtual memory and then crashes ... starting all over again)
I can login with 2 accounts concurrently and see 2 different Dock processes in Activity Monitor: one offending and one running perfectly normal (one 100% CPU with lots of VM and one showing 68 MB VM and <1% CPU)
I have removed all my login items and the deamons and agents particular to the offending account (using Lingon). Same result.
I have also used 'Safe Boot' and that didn't make a difference (I was surprised by this!), This means the problem is with Apple software as I haven't started any of my own software yet?
I also deleted my Dock prefs, killed Dock many times (via Activity Monitor). I also had numerous restarts with no improvement ...

All my applications are up-to-date (checked with Macupdate Desktop).

This is what EtreCheck shows:

...

Oct 3, 2015, 11:47:05 PM /Library/Logs/DiagnosticReports/Dock_2015-10-03-234705_[redacted].cpu_resource. diag [Click for details]

and then the details show:

Date/Time: 2015-10-03 23:45:11 +0200

OS Version: Mac OS X 10.11 (Build 15A284)

Architecture: x86_64

Report Version: 19

Command: Dock

Path: /System/Library/CoreServices/Dock.app/Contents/MacOS/Dock

Version: 1.8 (1617)

Build Version: 19

Project Name: Dock

Source Version: 1617000000000000

Parent: launchd [1]

PID: 396

Event: cpu usage (microstackshots only)

Thread: 0xd57 (81% cpu over 112 seconds)

Duration: 112.00s

Steps: 110

Hardware model: MacPro6,1

Active cpus: 8

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Answer 5

ubittibu Author

Level 1

15 points

Oct 4, 2015 10:59 AM in response to forappie

I didn't know EtreCheck, so I gave it a try, just for telling you my system info, but it made a good scan and look what sorted out:

System Launch Agents: (What does this mean?)

[running] com.apple.Dock.plist - Invalid signature!

Good.. maybe a step closer to solution.. Or just EtreCheck is not trustable for El Capitan yet?

Now, somebody knows how to get Apple signature for dock .plist??

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Answer 6

nohumans

Level 1

0 points

Oct 5, 2015 9:35 AM in response to ubittibu

I have the same issue (Dock uses 100% in Activity Monitor, Split Screen/Mission control freezes, and Command+Tab not working). I have found however that if I wait for 5-10 minutes after a reboot, the dock calms down, Mission Control works, and Command+Tab starts working again. It is lame that I can't start using El Cap right away but at least it works after a while.

MacBook Pro Mid 2012

2.3 GHz Intel Core i7

16 GB 1600 MHz DDR3

NVIDIA GeForce GT 650M 1024 MB

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Answer 7

forappie

Level 1

36 points

Oct 5, 2015 11:45 AM in response to nohumans

Lucky you. Perhaps no surprise if you are 'nohumans' 🙂

However, this is not the case for me/us. The problems repeats itself time after time.

Any further advice is much appreciated.

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Answer 8

ubittibu Author

Level 1

15 points

Oct 6, 2015 10:41 AM in response to forappie

Do you have or had Parallels installed? Just to know..

I still haven't solved the problem, watching for any solution..

I have parallels, but uninstall/reinstall didn't help.. And other user is not affected.

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Answer 9

ubittibu Author

Level 1

15 points

Oct 6, 2015 12:36 PM in response to ubittibu

I did it!

one of these files was broken:

/private/var/folders/gh/... /0/com.apple.dock.launchpad/db/db-wal

/private/var/folders/gh/.../0/com.apple.dock.launchpad/db/db

/private/var/folders/gh/..../0/com.apple.dock.launchpad/db/db-shm

(I omitted the part after ../gh/.. because it's a series of numbers different from user to user. These are cache files, so the folder could be some different in your mac)

before I was trying these terminal commands with no success:

sudo opensnoop -n Dock

sudo fs_usage | grep "Dock"

The good one is this:

sudo lsof -c '/Dock$/'

This shows you the files used, and cache's files were very suspect.. when i opened the folder they were unmodified since 2014 .. so deleted those and bingo..

Credit to this guy for the terminal command, he used to solve a similar issue:

http://www.tequilafish.com/2014/11/13/spotlight-hung-on-os-x-yosemite-with-100-c pu-usage/

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Answer 10

MD3AG

Level 1

0 points

Oct 6, 2015 3:43 PM in response to ubittibu

Guys i have the same problem but not the Dock , its the Finder and the indexing process of the spotlight (mdworker)

I did all the steps you did but without any hope.

I think this OS X is the worst OS ever,

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Answer 11

ubittibu Author

Level 1

15 points

Oct 7, 2015 2:36 AM in response to MD3AG

The troubled process is the finder or the mdworker? What you get?

Yes I think apple should avoid the insurgence of these problems, I spent a week to get to a solution..

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Answer 12

Oct 7, 2015 10:02 PM in response to ubittibu

THANK YOU!!! This worked for me as well, just deleted the db files, ran the sudo killall Dock command, and voila no more hanging!

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Answer 13

forappie

Level 1

36 points

Oct 7, 2015 10:57 PM in response to ubittibu

Great work ubittibu. The deletion of the db files worked for me as well.

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Answer 14

Oct 29, 2015 7:21 AM in response to ubittibu

Thanks! This worked for me after I trying so many other suggestions. Found and deleted those db files and all is working well now. Much appreciated.

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Answer 15

MD3AG

Level 1

0 points

Oct 29, 2015 1:30 PM in response to ubittibu

My trouble is for both of them, but i stopped the process of indexing my HD, Finder is most of the time is %99, and whenever i open the spotlight it took %99.

any suggestions ?

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