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Bug Desktops (Apple)

Some Users Experiencing System Crashes on macOS 10.15.4, Especially During Large File Transfers (macrumors.com) 58

Posted by msmash from the PSA dept.
A sizeable number of Mac users are experiencing occasional system crashes after updating to macOS Catalina version 10.15.4, released a few weeks ago. From a report: The crashing issue appears to be most prominent when users attempt to make large file transfers. In a forum post, SoftRAID described the issue as a bug and said that it is working with Apple engineers on a fix for macOS 10.15.5, or a workaround. "SoftRAID said the issue extends to Apple-formatted disks: There is a serious issue with 10.15.4. It shows up in different scenarios, even on Apple disks but is more likely when there are lots of IO threads. We think it is a threading issue. So while SoftRAID volumes are hit the hardest (it's now hard to copy more than 30GB of data at a time), all systems are impacted by this. In our bug report to Apple, we used a method to reproduce the problem with ONLY Apple formatted disks. Takes longer to reproduce, but that is more likely to get a faster fix to the user base."
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Some Users Experiencing System Crashes on macOS 10.15.4, Especially During Large File Transfers More

Some Users Experiencing System Crashes on macOS 10.15.4, Especially During Large File Transfers

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  • Serious question (Score:4, Funny)

    by phantomfive ( 622387 ) on Monday April 06, 2020 @01:36PM (#59914080) Journal
    I don't want to start a holy war here, but what is the deal with you Mac fanatics? I've been sitting here at my freelance gig in front of a Mac (a 28 core MacPro w/64 Megs of RAM) for about 20 minutes now while it attempts to copy a 17 Meg file from one folder on the hard drive to another folder. 20 minutes. At home, on my Pentium Pro 200 running Win11, which by all standards should be a lot slower than this Mac, the same operation would take about 2 minutes. If that.

    In addition, during this file transfer, Lynx will not work. And everything else has ground to a halt. Even ED Lite is straining to keep up as I type this.

    I won't bore you with the laundry list of other problems that I've encountered while working on various Macs, but suffice it to say there have been many, not the least of which is I've never seen a Mac that has run faster than its Wintel counterpart, despite the Macs' faster chip architecture. My 486/66 with 8 megs of ram runs faster than this 30 ghz machine at times. From a productivity standpoint, I don't get how people can claim that the Macintosh is a superior machine.

    Mac addicts, flame me if you'd like, but I'd rather hear some intelligent reasons why anyone would choose to use a Mac over other faster, cheaper, more stable systems.

    • Mac addicts, flame me if you'd like, but I'd rather hear some intelligent reasons why anyone would choose to use a Mac over other faster, cheaper, more stable systems.

      Jeez dude, if you would just build your Macs from the Gentoo source like the rest of us you won't have all these problems.

      • With a question like that, I doubt you would even consider even the most well-researched, well-supported answer.

        Try again, hater troll.

      • Jeez dude, if you would just build your Macs from the Gentoo source like the rest of us you won't have all these problems.

        Except the Linux kernel doesn't have the driver support for Apple hardware. I switched to geNToo on mine and haven't looked back!

    • You're copying it wrong!

      Also, you should probably get more memory. 64 megs is really not a lot these days.

    • Serious answer - because it's UNIX (Score:4, Insightful)

      by SuperKendall ( 25149 ) on Monday April 06, 2020 @02:02PM (#59914144)

      Macs are simply put, a solid UNIX system that someone else maintains and updates.

      The file transfer issue is one that indeed has vexed OSX for soem time, basically network file transfers between systems are unreasonably slow. I really wish they could fix that...

      That said, I've never seen slowdown to other aspects of the system while doing a file transfer, and sometime it actually does speeds up to unreasonable levels.

      Most other aspects of the system work pretty well... if you have another system that works better for you that is great, but again as I said the Mac is a UNIX system for people who don't want to be part time UNIX admins.

      I find it pretty dubious though that you are claiming Windows Is better in any regard except for probably file copying... I follow too many people on Twitter who use Windows to believe that. Just today, a post about how a Windows update had nuked all customizations he set up for Task Manager, such that Task Manager would not even show an application with an open window causing issues... Macs don't have nearly as many issues, with updates, or updates screwing with you like that.

      • A solid unix system that craps out when transferring large files

        FIFY

        • A solid unix system that craps out when transferring large files

          Occasionally, on one system, for one point release of the OS...

          Have you seriously never run into other bugs in an OS.

      • Re: (Score:1)

        by dfghjk ( 711126 )

        "That said, I've never seen slowdown to other aspects of the system while doing a file transfer, and sometime it actually does speeds up to unreasonable levels."

        Of course, no one should believe you, because:
        1) you are clearly a child who can't possibly have used OS X when it used global locks notorious for these very issues, most notably when the G5 Mac was a thing.
        2) you are an Apple tribalist who will say anything, and
        3) you are a known pathological liar.

        Also,

        • you are a known pathological liar.

          All of the points you made are amazing great, and you defiantly have your full mental capacity on display here.

      • Macs were simply put, a solid UNIX system that someone else maintains and updates.

        ftfy. Apple either doesn't care about software anymore, or doesn't know how to manage/keep/motivate their good programmers. Apple changed, and not for the better.

      • Agreed. Plug the ***t in and it works. sed awk grep sort uniq etc- all there. Btw: Drag-Drop file transfers are slow. cp from terminal - full speed.
      • I'm a word processor mostly, so light duty, but.... Apple has been a bargain as far as the fact that I don't have to spend a lot of time keeping it going. I have three people and four computers that if they break, it's my problem to fix. One of them just came back from four years of college...and I did zero tech support, thank you ! Also, the mac is not immune from malware, but it is less of a target rich environment. The time I get back covers any extra costs for Apple equipment. Every time I go near

    • Considering you claim that the system in question is a 2019 Mac Pro, presumably running the exact version of macOS with the threading issue that affects, what, the very operation you claim is taking forever, Iâ(TM)d say the real problem is the readily-apparent fact that you have zero analysis or troubleshooting skills.

    • Okay, so everybody who's replying something serious to the parent's post, look at it more closely. It's an old troll post that has been updated with modern specifications.

    • Re: (Score:2, Interesting)

      by ZombieCatInABox ( 5665338 )

      I don't know why someone modded you "funny", but that's the slashdot moderation system for you.

      But to answer your question:

      1) Not all mac users are "fanatics".

      2) There used to be a time when many industry standard pieces of software were available only on mac. And other were available only on mac or windows. And I think you'll agree that in those days, the choice between osx and windows was pretty much a no-brainer.

      3) I know it sounds "cliché", but things really started going to shit when Steve Jobs di

    • I won't even use my macbook physically any more. The keyboard is turning to crap after getting it replaced a year ago for same reason, and the metal feels like an ice cube on my lap. I set it up to run permanently on the network and I VNC to it from my Thinkpad T430 with Arch.

    • The Macintosh might be a superior machine but macos is a sad ghost of NeXTStep, which was peppy on a 25MHz '040.

      No one is really sure how Apple made it so slow.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by dfghjk ( 711126 )

        Every machine is "peppy" when it is new, NeXT machines were not special. Frankly, I found them awful, that mouse was an abomination and lack of color at that time was inexcusable.

        Apple is not unique in making software that wastes all the improvements in hardware performance over time. I wish Apple would fix the apparent permanent shit they took on memory management. Hasn't worked properly now in many years.

        • The turbo slab was color.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by tsa ( 15680 )

          Steve has never been able to come up with a good mouse. Every time I buy a new iMac (which doesn’t happen often ‘cause the things last forever) I chuck the mouse immediately.

    • Hey, I'll trade you my my Pentium laptop for your 28 core MacPro w/64 Megs of RAM if you like. Way faster than your 486/66 wit 8MB RAM and more RAM too. Speaking of RAM, I didn't know that 64MB RAM was even an option. What is that, like a single RAM chip?

      By the way, how did you get the 30GHz MacPro so soon? It isn't planned for release for, um, several decades.

      If that's just a cute troll post it's quite subtle, dude.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by geggam ( 777689 )

      Not a mac fan but perhpaps you should learn some CLI commands since you have one and leverage the reason people like it

      split / join and scp are your friends as a workaround.

      If this was windows you wouldnt have a CLI workaround ;)

    • Obvious troll! The Mac Pro with 28 cores doesn't come in a 64 Meg option--nor a 64 Gig for that matter.

    • Well done, sir *tips hat*

    • quote === Mac addicts, flame me if you'd like, but I'd rather hear some intelligent reasons why anyone would choose to use a Mac over other faster, cheaper, more stable systems. unquote ====== Indeed , the problem would highly likely NOT exist with any Linux system . BTW ,frustrated Mac users could always erase the Apple software and install a Linux system on their machine ........I would do just that. Frank in County Wicklow -Ireland.

  • Oh boy that's gonna smart (Score:4, Interesting)

    by AndyKron ( 937105 ) on Monday April 06, 2020 @01:37PM (#59914084)
    I just works, except when it doesn't

    • It is based on BSD Kernal.
      That is kinda how BSD works. When things work they work wonderfully, when they don't they don't work at all.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by dfghjk ( 711126 )

        Decades ago, sure. It was originally based on a Mach kernel which was based on an old BSD kernel long before, but how is that remotely relevant now? Most of today's users weren't born then.

    • I just works

      You clearly have a bug.

    • It just worked

      ftfy. Apple either doesn't care about software anymore, or doesn't know how to manage/keep/motivate their good programmers. Apple changed, and not for the better.

  • It seems they're all related to SoftRAID (Score:5, Interesting)

    by guruevi ( 827432 ) on Monday April 06, 2020 @02:03PM (#59914152)

    Or at least similar software in the KEXT trace. The few traces that people have posted all point to weird configurations. SoftRAID primarily but also people booting using APFS volumes from an external disk which is explicitly not supported and requires some hackery to get it working in the first place, but can't guarantee a secured boot environment.

    A lot of recent crashes in Catalina can be traced back to developers that use memory injection to get their stuff working. A ton of Outlook plugins are doing this (basically they are trying to read your e-mails without explicit consent) and I'm presuming this is going to be a similar situation, where your drivers are doing some weird memory management stuff to get it to work which the beefed up security protocols in Catalina block.

    Windows 10 has similar problems, every major release update, they are taking out insecure channels that some apps abuse which causes the apps or OS to crash. Most recently I've been dealing with the new iterations of Dropbox and Windows 10 BSOD'ing.

  • Obvious user error. You're supposed to transfer file in smaller pieces.
    • Ayup, with only 64 MB RAM, you better use tar with multi volume files and compression, to copy any file over 1024 bytes.
  • Interesting. I got my first kernel panic last week after upgrading.

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