Odd Mac Behavior

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Shooshie
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Odd Mac Behavior

Post by Shooshie »

I just experienced a moment in which none of my files would open, all bringing up a dialog saying I didn't have permission, and I should open the Info panel and change the permissions if I wanted to open them. By "none of my files," I mean all files. Any file. Any disk.

I knew better than to start the s**tstorm that happens when you begin changing permissions yourself, so I just restarted the machine. Everything worked normally after that.

But what the heck? I've never seen that happen before. Is that a sign of something I should be worried about?
|l| OS X 10.12.6 |l| DP 10.0 |l| 2.4 GHz 12-Core MacPro Mid-2012 |l| 40GB RAM |l| Mach5.3 |l| Waves 9.x |l| Altiverb |l| Ivory 2 New York Steinway |l| Wallander WIVI 2.30 Winds, Brass, Saxes |l| Garritan Aria |l| VSL 5.3.1 and VSL Pro 2.3.1 |l| Yamaha WX-5 MIDI Wind Controller |l| Roland FC-300 |l|
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mikehalloran
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Re: Odd Mac Behavior

Post by mikehalloran »

Something went haywire. Rebooting fixed whatever was corrupted.

The normal culprit is a memory leak—you'd be surprised how many apps and plugs have them including those supplied by Apple. Purging RAM helps (sudo purge in Terminal) but is not as effective as a reboot.

I experienced RAM freezes often if I left DP 8 or 9 up too long. Is the culprit DP or a plug? I don't know. Anyway, I got into the habit of rebooting every day and haven't experienced it again. After upgrading from 20G–32G, I no longer experienced slowdowns due to memory issues (there are ways to diagnose). I still reboot every day.

One thing I would do afterwards is a Safe Boot holding the Shift key. This takes forever especially with an HHD but it resets caches to default and corrects many paths that can become corrupted. Before OS X, we used to Rebuild Desktop the same way. The only difference is that, in OS X, you need to shut down and reboot afterwards.

Among the paths that get rebuilt during a Safe Boot are those that alias icons use. I remember this being an issue for you in the past. I thought about it recently when alias icons on the Macs around here went blank after the Sierra 10.12.1 update. Doing a Safe Boot on each fixed that.
DP 11.31; 828mkII FW, micro lite, M4, MTP/AV USB Firmware 2.0.1
2023 Mac Studio M2 8TB, 192GB RAM, OS Sonoma 14.4, USB4 8TB external, M-Audio AIR 192|14, Mackie ProFxv3 6/10/12; 2012 MBPs Catalina, Mojave
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buzzsmith
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Re: Odd Mac Behavior

Post by buzzsmith »

This doesn't help Shoosh, but my modus operandi is to completely shut down every day with a fresh morning start. And sometimes if I feel like I may have been overtaxing the CPU with a loaded down session, I'll shut down and let things "settle" for a few minutes and then restart to begin the next project for the day.

I can't say that it improves the Mac but I feel better!

Buzzy


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cuttime
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Re: Odd Mac Behavior

Post by cuttime »

Sounds like your User Profile was not loaded. Did you get the usual desktop, etc.?
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MIDI Life Crisis
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Re: Odd Mac Behavior

Post by MIDI Life Crisis »

Damn unpredictable things. Can't live with 'em; can't live without 'em.
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MIDI LIFE CRISIS
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James Steele
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Re: Odd Mac Behavior

Post by James Steele »

MIDI Life Crisis wrote:Damn unpredictable things. Can't live with 'em; can't live without 'em.
We're talking computers, right? ;)
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HCMarkus
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Re: Odd Mac Behavior

Post by HCMarkus »

With SSD boot drives allowing reboots in seconds, why not start fresh daily?
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mikehalloran
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Re: Odd Mac Behavior

Post by mikehalloran »

HCMarkus wrote:With SSD boot drives allowing reboots in seconds, why not start fresh daily?
Exactly.
DP 11.31; 828mkII FW, micro lite, M4, MTP/AV USB Firmware 2.0.1
2023 Mac Studio M2 8TB, 192GB RAM, OS Sonoma 14.4, USB4 8TB external, M-Audio AIR 192|14, Mackie ProFxv3 6/10/12; 2012 MBPs Catalina, Mojave
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Shooshie
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Re: Odd Mac Behavior

Post by Shooshie »

I've been forced to do that (restart daily), anyway. There's a curious bug in the Finder/Quicklook where if I select several movies and play them back to back in Quicklook, and if I skip between them — especially backward — it'll crash the Finder, then when it comes back up, my folder aliases (which have nothing to do with the movies) will have lost their custom icons. It doesn't always happen, but it did a few hours after rebooting for the permissions problem I wrote about above. Unfortunately, safe-booting does not repair the custom icon problem. Sometimes those same aliases lose their paths, too. I've got a routine now for replacing them. The movie problem in Quicklook, however, disturbs me. The Finder just does a full-blown crash and disappears. Takes a while to get it back, too. I can go for months without this happening, then a slew of problems just goes through like a tsunami.

MLC, you nailed it: totally unpredictable and capricious.
James, yeah, you'd think we were talking about someone soft and pretty, not a damned computer!

Shooshie
|l| OS X 10.12.6 |l| DP 10.0 |l| 2.4 GHz 12-Core MacPro Mid-2012 |l| 40GB RAM |l| Mach5.3 |l| Waves 9.x |l| Altiverb |l| Ivory 2 New York Steinway |l| Wallander WIVI 2.30 Winds, Brass, Saxes |l| Garritan Aria |l| VSL 5.3.1 and VSL Pro 2.3.1 |l| Yamaha WX-5 MIDI Wind Controller |l| Roland FC-300 |l|
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mikehalloran
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Re: Odd Mac Behavior

Post by mikehalloran »

Any chance you are running Spotify?

http://www.hypebot.com/hypebot/2016/11/ ... mised.html

This has been reported quite a bit in the last two days.
DP 11.31; 828mkII FW, micro lite, M4, MTP/AV USB Firmware 2.0.1
2023 Mac Studio M2 8TB, 192GB RAM, OS Sonoma 14.4, USB4 8TB external, M-Audio AIR 192|14, Mackie ProFxv3 6/10/12; 2012 MBPs Catalina, Mojave
IK-NI-Izotope-PSP-Garritan-Antares, LogicPro X, Finale 27.4, Dorico 5.2, Notion 6, Overture 5, TwistedWave, DSP-Q 5, SmartScore64 Pro, Toast 20 Pro
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Shooshie
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Re: Odd Mac Behavior

Post by Shooshie »

Spotify?

Thankfully, no!

Shoosh
|l| OS X 10.12.6 |l| DP 10.0 |l| 2.4 GHz 12-Core MacPro Mid-2012 |l| 40GB RAM |l| Mach5.3 |l| Waves 9.x |l| Altiverb |l| Ivory 2 New York Steinway |l| Wallander WIVI 2.30 Winds, Brass, Saxes |l| Garritan Aria |l| VSL 5.3.1 and VSL Pro 2.3.1 |l| Yamaha WX-5 MIDI Wind Controller |l| Roland FC-300 |l|
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