Mojave restarting itself in the middle of the night

This may not be your case, but here was my solve:

I eventually determined it was nothing to do with any software or USB devices I had plugged in to the machine by loading a clean install of the OS, and not reloading my time machine backup with nothing plugged in. I took it in to the Apple store. The tech made the same call pretty much on the spot as it wouldn't start up with an SMC reset - hardware issue - specifically RAM or logic board. They replaced my logic board and now my iMac acts how it should. I waited about a week for it, but when it's a free warranty repair, that's a small price to pay.

If you are still under your warranty, I suggest having the Apple store take care of it (and not waiting 4 months like I did).

So from my research it looks at though it was VMware Fusion 11.x that was responsible. After upgrading to VMware Fusion 11.1.0 the system has not experienced these restarts. Previous version of OS X didn't have these problems with Fusion, which I thought I would mention. Sierra was rock-solid, though it booted much slower than Mojave does now.

Update. This may be a Bluetooth issue. I have the same issue with middle of the night solo restarts and multiple restarts after login as reported earlier. Today my Bluetooth keyboard was disconnected when my iMac mid-2011 automatically restarted itself. It would not let me log in as a result. I had to connect a wired Apple keyboard to continue. When I then attempted to connect my Apple Bluetooth keyboard it took multiple attempts until it finally connected. Battery power level on the Bluetooth keyboard was 100% when it finally connected, so it was not a Apple Bluetooth Keyboard battery issue. I read online at Apple about 2.4 GHz interference for Bluetooth devices. My cable company's fiber optic network router is close to my iMac, as is my Apple Time Capsule. I am trying moving the cable company's router further away from my iMac to see if this helps. If not, I will try moving the Apple Time Capsule further away. Since Bluetooth Preferences is set up to wake my iMac, it could be that my iMac is losing Bluetooth connectivity to the Apple Bluetooth Keyboard which is causing the middle of the night restarts as reported. This could be due to Bluetooth 2.4 GHz interference or it could be due to a bad Bluetooth interface in my iMac. More testing required.

I have the same 2013 MacBook Air and it would reset during the night while asleep when Safari was on. Since I started shutting down Safari before I put it to sleep, it has stopped.

Same problem here,

After upgrading to Mojave my MBPr 2013 restarts around 1-2am if not connected to the powerpoint, i.e. sleeping on battery power. My battery was replaced this year, so it's not an issue (and computer runs perfectly fine on same battery charge after I log in).

I double-checked to make sure no wonky software is running in the background and no extra kernel modules loaded.

I checked /var/log/system.log, and surmise that OSX wakes up during sleep, trying to check for updates or whatever, and it causes panic or smth. Needless to say that powernap is off, yet it's happening.

Same shutdown cause 3 in logs, which is nonsense.

If computer is connected to powerpoint, no reboots happen while in sleep.

Quick summary:

- restarts only when sleeping on battery power

- some activity in logs between 1 and 2am, followed by reboot (sometimes immediate, sometimes later in the morning)

- powernap and other power management features are disabled

- no USB devices connected and no extra daemons / kernel modules running.

- automatic updates are disabled, yet seems like at least Appstore is checking for updates while computer is in sleep.

Syslog:

Dec 2 01:30:08 BeachFront syslogd[70]: ASL Sender Statistics

Dec 2 01:30:08 BeachFront GoogleSoftwareUpdateAgent[77479]: 2018-12-02 01:30:08.709 GoogleSoftwareUpdateAgent[77479/0x700008672000] [lvl=3] -[KSEngineInvocation(KeystoneThread) updateProductWithProductID:usingEngine:error:] Caught exception while checking for updates name=NSPortTimeoutException, reason=connection timeout: did not receive reply, userinfo=(null)

Dec 2 01:30:08 BeachFront GoogleSoftwareUpdateDaemon[86707]: 2018-12-02 01:30:08.824 GoogleSoftwareUpdateDaemon[86707/0x10a6535c0] [lvl=2] +[KSKeystoneTicketRepair updateKeystoneTicketInTicketStore:version:bundlePath:error:] KSKeystoneTicketRepair does not need to update the Keystone ticket.

Dec 2 01:30:08 BeachFront com.apple.xpc.launchd[1] (com.google.keystone.daemon[86707]): Endpoint has been activated through legacy launch(3) APIs. Please switch to XPC or bootstrap_check_in(): com.google.Keystone.Daemon.Administration

Dec 2 01:30:08 BeachFront com.apple.xpc.launchd[1] (com.google.keystone.daemon[86707]): Endpoint has been activated through legacy launch(3) APIs. Please switch to XPC or bootstrap_check_in(): com.google.Keystone.Daemon.UpdateEngine

Dec 2 01:30:09 BeachFront com.apple.xpc.launchd[1] (com.apple.postfix.master[86704]): Service exited with abnormal code: 1

Dec 2 01:30:09 BeachFront com.apple.xpc.launchd[1] (com.apple.postfix.master): Service only ran for 1 seconds. Pushing respawn out by 9 seconds.

Dec 2 01:30:10 BeachFront Dropbox[63809]: [1202/013010.594640:WARNING:dns_config_service_posix.cc(154)] dns_config has unhandled options!

Dec 2 01:30:17 BeachFront xpcproxy[86713]: libcoreservices: _dirhelper_userdir: 529: bootstrap_look_up returned (ipc/send) invalid destination port

Dec 2 01:30:17 BeachFront Dropbox[63809]: [1202/013017.533514:WARNING:dns_config_service_posix.cc(154)] dns_config has unhandled options!

Dec 2 08:15:04 BeachFront com.apple.xpc.launchd[1] (com.apple.sandboxd[80460]): Service exited due to SIGALRM | sent by kernel_task[0]

Dec 2 08:15:04 BeachFront syslogd[70]: ASL Sender Statistics

Dec 2 08:15:10 localhost bootlog[0]: BOOT_TIME 1543713310 0

Dec 2 08:15:27 localhost syslogd[49]: Configuration Notice:

ASL Module "com.apple.cdscheduler" claims selected messages.

Those messages may not appear in standard system log files or in the ASL database.

Dec 2 08:15:27 localhost syslogd[49]: Configuration Notice:

I have experienced similar issues. Upgraded to Mojave and I’ve been leaving the machine on to update software and upload files overnight ever since. When trying to wake the Mac up in the morning the login screen doesn't work then it restarts itself. It appears to have crashed during the night not doing the software updates and also failing to upload the large file I have now attempted to do twice. This has only happened after the system software upgrade. It was fine before. I have an external backup drive connected but that's it. It must be something to do with Mojave. Very annoying with the file upload being disrupted. Please tell me if there is something being done to fix this problem.

I have the same problem with Mac Pro (early 2015). Can't believe this haven't been solved yet.

Calling "log show --predicate 'eventMessage contains "Previous shutdown cause"' --last 24h" shows over 12 restarts in 24 hours, all while the laptop should be in sleep mode... All with a shutdown cause 3 which indicates that the laptop thinks I am hard-pressing the power button.

Same things appeared on my MacBook Pro (Retina 13 pouces, début 2015), Mojave Version 10.14.2 (18C54).

Logs:

Jan  8 00:00:19 goro com.apple.xpc.launchd[1] (com.apple.sandboxd[13989]): Service exited due to SIGALRM | sent by kernel_task[0]
Jan  8 00:02:52 goro syslogd[62]: ASL Sender Statistics
Jan  8 00:02:52 goro com.apple.xpc.launchd[1] (com.apple.sandboxd[14000]): Service exited due to SIGALRM | sent by kernel_task[0]
Jan  8 00:02:57 goro systemstats[75]: assertion failed: 18C54: systemstats + 676235 [8A8B1B8E-EB40-3F31-AD6C-DA8FD4C06507]: 0x7fef1c60cd90
Jan  8 00:04:45 goro com.apple.xpc.launchd[1] (com.apple.sandboxd[14014]): Service exited due to SIGALRM | sent by kernel_task[0]
Jan  8 00:04:48 goro systemstats[75]: assertion failed: 18C54: systemstats + 676235 [8A8B1B8E-EB40-3F31-AD6C-DA8FD4C06507]: 0x7fef1c60cd90
Jan  8 08:47:49 localhost bootlog[0]: BOOT_TIME 1546933669 0

# log show --predicate 'eventMessage contains "Previous shutdown cause"' --last 24h
Filtering the log data using "composedMessage CONTAINS "Previous shutdown cause""
Skipping info and debug messages, pass --info and/or --debug to include.

Timestamp                       Thread     Type        Activity             PID    TTL
2019-01-08 00:02:51.002364+0100 0x9657a    Default     0x0                  0      0    kernel: (AppleSMC) Previous shutdown cause: 5
2019-01-08 08:47:49.890282+0100 0xa3       Default     0x0                  0      0    kernel: (AppleSMC) Previous shutdown cause: 5
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Log      - Default:          2, Info:                0, Debug:             0, Error:          0, Fault:          0
Activity - Create:           0, Transition:          0, Actions:           0

Nothing special since Mojave was install ... No new device, no new software ... ?

No sleep, No manual action.

Similar here. MBP 2012. If I sleep my computer (lid closed) it seems to be fine, but if I leave it up and running anything -- long download, long Time Machine backup, render, etc -- there's a chance it will shutdown in the middle of the night. When I start it back up, there's no crash warning, it's as if I've safely shutdown, but the task hasn't necessarily completed. Previous Shutdown Cause is always 5, which supposedly means deliberately triggered, normal, safely executed shutdown. If I boot off an external drive to Mavericks or Mountain Lion no problems like this occur, brand new behavior since Mojave.

For other strange problems I was having (.DS_Store files not updating mainly) I already reinstalled the OS, steamrolling my old Mojave with the users in place with the latest update. Same shutdown behavior before and after.

I'm getting the same thing on mojave 10.14.4, even after a logic board replacement. Happened after migration from my old machine's backup:

Apr 29 11:52:24 E20Nola loginwindow[980] <Notice>: DEPRECATED USE in libdispatch client: dispatch source activated with no event handler set; set a breakpoint on _dispatch_bug_deprecated to debug

Apr 29 11:52:24 E20Nola com.apple.xpc.launchd[1] (com.apple.xpc.launchd.domain.user.501) <Error>: Service "com.apple.xpc.launchd.unmanaged.loginwindow.980" tried to register for endpoint "com.apple.tsm.uiserver" already registered by owner: com.apple.SystemUIServer.agent

--- last message repeated 1 time ---

Apr 29 11:52:44 E20Nola kcm[1885] <Notice>: DEPRECATED USE in libdispatch client: Setting timer interval to 0 requests a 1ns timer, did you mean FOREVER (a one-shot timer)?; set a breakpoint on _dispatch_bug_deprecated to debug

Apr 29 11:52:52 E20Nola com.apple.xpc.launchd[1] (com.apple.imfoundation.IMRemoteURLConnectionAgent) <Warning>: Unknown key for integer: _DirtyJetsamMemoryLimit

--- last message repeated 1 time ---

Apr 29 12:04:55 E20Nola syslogd[47] <Notice>: ASL Sender Statistics

I've had 4 freeze/restarts today - worst it has ever been. Didn't come back on it's own the last time.

I've tried unplugging anything that connects via USB (except the Mac Keyboard that came with my machine). This includes, two external HDs, an mbox 2, a CD drive, an Anker USB hub, my mouse and a Logitech pair of headphones.

I'm currently trying the software for the Logitech G303 mouse I'm using. It came with a firmware update.

I've also tried using a different power strip.

I don't know whether I should hope for this to be an OS issue or not.

I have a Mac Pro (Late 2013) and I have the same issue. I used the Disk Manager to wipe the local disk and install Mojave fresh. I have a G-Technology external 4T drive. I am doing to disconnect that drive and see if this problem resolves itself.

I have been having the same issue on multiple computers since upgrading to Mojave. It's happened on a brand new MacMini and on a 2015 MacPro on multiple occasions. Usually there is a drive plugged in to the computer. The MacMini did it when nothing but Finder and the web browser were open.

Mine did it for the first time in a while, but I suspect it might be because I told the update to install and reboot.

But then, I also had Safari running which is my #1 suspect.