Computer insomnia. If your Macs fail to go to sleep...

[FMiguelez]

This was driving me crazy. 2 of my computers refused to go into Sleep mode. They would turn off the screen, but I could hear and feel the spinners madly working, sometimes harder than when actually working the computer.

This is the solution I found that cured the problem for both computers>
- Go to System Preferences and click on Printers. Open the printing cue for each printer you see there and kill the undone printing processes you will most likely find.
That's it! Done!

Now, when I put them to sleep, they really rest in peace... no more fan or HD noise. Yeeee. I think my computers hadn't slept for months now!

Doing the other typical Energy/bluetooth/network preferences didn't seem to make any difference. It was that little thing all along.

I discovered this when nosing around Activity Monitor. You can add a tab to show the "Prevents sleeping" property which displays the processes that won't let it sleep. Sure enough, I discovered 2 such processes, one of them called "cupsd", which Google told me it was related to undone printing cues.

Just some info in case your computers behave like party animals late at night every day.

[bayswater]

Good sleuthing. The IT manuals say that printers don't work half the time, and the other half they're a PITA.

[Tritonemusic]

You may have just opened a can of worms for me, Fernando.

I decided to look at my "Active Processes" in Activity Monitor and under the Memory tab, I noticed com.spitfireaudio.LibraryManagerHelper running right after a fresh startup. I don't like that it's running when I haven't even opened DP yet. However, this may be completely normal. I really don't know. It just seems unnecessary to be running if I don't need it. What do you think?



P.S. If I "Quit Process", it comes back in about 2 seconds.

[FMiguelez]

You may have just opened a can of worms for me, Fernando.

I decided to look at my "Active Processes" in Activity Monitor and under the Memory tab, I noticed com.spitfireaudio.LibraryManagerHelper running right after a fresh startup. I don't like that it's running when I haven't even opened DP yet. However, this may be completely normal. I really don't know. It just seems unnecessary to be running if I don't need it. What do you think?



P.S. If I "Quit Process", it comes back in about 2 seconds.

Is anything related to Spitfire part of the Log In items in OS's preferences? If so, you could probably kill it there.
It looks like it's taking practically no CPU power at all. I would just let it be (you'd probably have to quit it upon each restart anyway).

I often see similar "helpers" for lots of apps, like Photos, Chrome renderer, etc, so it's probably normal to have them idling around 'til needed. But this knowledge is way out of my league.
One would have to Google each of those little terms/processes to make sure no necessary ops are killed, and it's probably not worth it.

The ones that some times I must kill because they really grab the old iMac are the Avast antivirus helpers that always seem to kick in when you least want them. Those can really slow the computer down to a crawl because they read/write to disk GBs worth of scheisse.

[cuttime]

You may have just opened a can of worms for me, Fernando.

I decided to look at my "Active Processes" in Activity Monitor and under the Memory tab, I noticed com.spitfireaudio.LibraryManagerHelper running right after a fresh startup. I don't like that it's running when I haven't even opened DP yet. However, this may be completely normal. I really don't know. It just seems unnecessary to be running if I don't need it. What do you think?



P.S. If I "Quit Process", it comes back in about 2 seconds.

Yep, I noticed this a long time ago and Spitfire denied knowing anything about it. I just delete it from the folder (requires a PW), but if you install or update a Spitfire library it comes right back. Native Instruments had a similar "helper" tool that I just deleted, too. Arturia has a helper tool that is only active on startup and then shuts down after about 30 seconds. Pulse Downloader, ditto. I really don't know what these gremlins actually do. You'll find the Spitfire one at Mac HD>Library>LaunchDaemons...PrivilegedHelperTools.

[cuttime]

I *suspect* that these helper tools are scripts that make sure the host application correctly locates the media library.

[Tritonemusic]

Is anything related to Spitfire part of the Log In items in OS's preferences?

Finally got home so I just checked. Nothing there. I think you're right. I'll just leave it be. I just happened to notice it because of your post. Sorry to hijack your thread, FM.

Thanks a lot for everyone's responses.