Comments on: Mac OS X 10.4: 23 days of uptime, and counting

By: Pierre Igot

Pierre Igot — Wed, 04 Jul 2007 13:04:10 +0000

Doesn’t tell me much at present, but maybe it’s because I only have 1 swap file since rebooting :). Thanks for the tip.

By: Arden

Arden — Wed, 04 Jul 2007 02:09:24 +0000

I have 10 swap files, whatever that means.

Enter ls -lh /var/vm into Terminal for an idea.

By: Paul Ingraham

Paul Ingraham — Sun, 01 Jul 2007 02:01:21 +0000

I have little doubt that Mac OS X is a reasonably stable operating system, and I’m happy to hear about your uptime, Pierre — although good news isn’t why I’m a regular reader here, it’s nice to see it occasionally!

Yet, freakishly, my recent experience of OS X computing is not so good. Although I had excellent system stability with every version fo OS X, and every Mac previously, I have had nothing but trouble with both my new 24″ iMac and my MacBook. Although impressive when running, sadly both machines have a nasty hanging problem: at least once per week, each machine hard hangs in a characteristic way. They have a proven capacity to do so with only stock software running on them … and, even stranger yet, I have continued to experience the problem on my iMac after Apple generously replaced it twice (sort of: once the entire machine, once the motherboard and RAM and hard drive).

The persistence of the problem on what effectively amounts to four Intel Macs has been one of the most disappointing computing problems of my long history with Apple. And yet I can only acknowledge that the problem is strange, the complaint is not common, and OS X performs wonderfully for me when it’s running, and has always been extremely stable for me … except on these four machines! Very puzzling!

SSP: I have had some similar experiences with Spotlight. It’s been a long time since I’ve noticed a problem, and I have nothing technical to add to the conversation, but I definitely recall system instability issues associated with Spotlight from the early days of 10.4. In fact, I refuse to use things like saved searches to this day, because I no I got burned so badly the last time I tried to mess around with them.

By: ssp

ssp — Fri, 29 Jun 2007 01:52:09 +0000

@danridley: Trust me I did that (which is somewhat insufficient even to control the importing as importers can be pretty much everywhere) and more. The problem isn’t the indexing, it’s more that the mds process starts choking when it’s supposed to read out some data. I have yet to see log messages by Spotlight which are actually helpful in a non-trivial way, btw.

By: danridley

danridley — Thu, 28 Jun 2007 23:44:22 +0000

ssp: Look in /Library/Spotlight and ~/Library/Spotlight, and try removing all the plugins you find there (making a Spotlight.Disabled folder and moving them there is a convenient way to do this).

Then delete the Spotlight data (the .Spotlight-V100 directory), let it re-index, and see if the problems recur. If an add-on indexer is causing the problem, this should let you narrow it down (you can add back the plugins one by one until problems start up again).

Also, Spotlight often logs errors in the system log; you might be able to get some clues by running Console while Spotlight reindexes and keeping an eye on the logs. One of my customers had a folder full of malformed JPEG files from an old computer, and Spotlight would choke on that folder; once I knew that the problem was localized, I added that folder to the Privacy tab in Spotlight’s preference pane, and Spotlight stopped misbehaving.

By: Pierre Igot

Pierre Igot — Thu, 28 Jun 2007 11:33:22 +0000

cug: I don’t pretend that I am trying to break any records :-). My main reason for this post was to highlight the improvement since the classic Mac OS days.

ssp: This definitely does not sound normal. Even in my 2+ years of testing early builds of Mac OS X for AppleSeed, I have never encountered such awful problems. I really wonder what could be causing them. Did you have any such problems before upgrading from your previous computer to the MacBook?

By: ssp

ssp — Thu, 28 Jun 2007 08:45:42 +0000

I’m seeing real bugs – like applications stalling for half a minute when they use some spotlight features (like displaying the last used date) and the mds process needing to be killed every now and again. Other side effects are of course a broken search in Mail or stalls when searching the Address Book. This is really scary because it shows how deeply ingrained Spotlight is in the system and how helpless you become when it failts. Obviously I have reindexed countless times in the past months, but Spotlight always degrades back to this state within a few hours.

By: cug

cug — Thu, 28 Jun 2007 02:53:05 +0000

Hmmm, 23 days … okay. One of the machine in our office that is still regularly used, because it’s a testing machine for regression tests:

5:11AM up 394 days, 14:52, 2 users, load averages: 0.33, 0.31, 0.34

Yes, Mac OS X is a very stable system.

By: Pierre Igot

Pierre Igot — Wed, 27 Jun 2007 17:43:19 +0000

Jean-François: You need to realize that I work in a home office environment, with only a satellite (i.e. not very fast) connection to the Internet. My Mac is behind a router, and its firewall is most definitely on. The likelihood of encountering a security problem is pretty small.

I am not ignoring the update. But I don’t think that waiting another week or two is going to change anything. On the contrary, I like to make sure that the latest updates don’t create any problems first, by monitor Mac news sites.

And I am also not using the uptime record as an excuse not to install the update. My main reason for enjoying the uptime is that it is what it is, i.e. uptime. Installing the security update won’t just take “a minute or two.” First I have to download it, which will take a few minutes in itself. Then I need to restart the machine, which will take a few more minutes. Then I have to reopen all the things that I have open right now, which will take several minutes, especially considering that I’d have to reload about 20 different web pages, open a number of different applications, etc.

OK, it’s not going to take half an hour, but still, it’s a disruption, and right now I feel that the disruption can wait a bit.

ssp: What kind of Spotlight problems are you having (apart from the horrible UI, that is)?

By: Jean-François Roy

Jean-François Roy — Wed, 27 Jun 2007 17:26:10 +0000

It’s a terribly bad idea to ignore security updates. Keeping your uptime number is one of the most ridiculous excuse for not applying them. Although it is true that Mac OS X has a relatively good security track record, that doesn’t mean we should stuff our collective head in the sand, so to speak.

So go ahead, click that install button :) It’ll only take a minute or two.

By: ssp

ssp — Wed, 27 Jun 2007 16:20:27 +0000

Sounds great.

If it weren’t for the terrible Spotlight problems I have, my situation might be the same.

And I could do with those extra 3G of RAM ;) But I guess there’s not much to do about that in MacBook.