10.3.3 Impressions a few days in

[Makosuke]

Well, I've had 10.3.3 running for a few days now, and I'm starting to get a feel for what's fixed and what isn't.

It's obvious that Windows networking has had a pretty major overhaul, and is a big improvement on the network at my job. But I was more interested in some of the annoying little things on my G5 2x2 at home.

Good:

-"Slow" startup fixed; now at the login screen in something like 20 seconds. Nice.
-UPS detector seems to see my APC XS1000 and report battery status. Haven't checked whether it'll actually shut down the computer yet, but I expect so.
-Feels a little more responsive all around.
-My extremely flaky Belkin USB2.0 hub (it has a tendency to loose connected devices after the computer is restarted or put to sleep, requiring the hub to be power cycled to see them again) seems to be somewhat less prone to forgetting stuff is connected. Stupid Belkin hub--my old $20 RadioShack el-generic hub never had these issues.

Bad:

-There seems to be a conflict with APC's Powerchute auto-shutdown software; while I had it installed, the computer crashed (fans all on full, no other response) twice when trying to sleep in as many days. Since uninstalling it, no problems in three days, so that seems to have been the issue. Not surprising, I suppose.
-The glitchy icon issue still isn't fixed; I now have all url links showing as Quicktime streams, and all quicktime streams showing as the address book, for example. Might actually be worse than before the upgrade, but considering how common and annoying this is, seems like there would've been a fix in there.
-My netstat process still freaks out after about two days of uptime for no apparent reason. This one has existed since I upgraded the G5 to 10.3, and I've seen reports from about three other people, all with 2X2 G5s with upgrade installs of 10.2-->10.3, and all with over 2GB of RAM. Can't say I'm surprised this didn't get fixed, but hope springs eternal.

And yes, I'm aware that my last problem can probably be cleared up by a reinstall, but with the number of custom Perl modules I use, I'm loathe to do that unless desperate. Oh well.

At least nothing new is broken!

How about other people? After using 10.3.3 for a week, have you noticed other things that do or don't work?

[evil]

i have noticed no change at all. on either my1 ghz emac or my 867 pb

[FightTheFuture]

yeah, haven't noticed anything either. icon thing is getting on my nerves.

[Makosuke]

Ooh, I forgot a big one: Activity Monitor is finally stable! It would crash when opening the detailed view about 2 out of 3 times before. Finally.

icon thing is getting on my nerves.
Say, can anybody confirm if a clean install gets rid of the icon problem? That is, if it's something to do with an aging install, I wish Apple'd slip a fix in, but I can understand if they don't. But if it's happening even with clean installs, what team is asleep at the wheel for that kind of a stupid issue to slip through? Be nice to know if I could cure it if I really wanted, too...

[groovebuster]

On my QS sometimes the screen remains black now after waking from deep-sleep. Didn't have that problem before.

Very positive is that they fixed the problem of locking up the system after deep-sleep when using IP connections behind a router. That was driving me nuts!

groovebuster

[7on]

Ooh, I forgot a big one: Activity Monitor is finally stable! It would crash when opening the detailed view about 2 out of 3 times before. Finally.


Say, can anybody confirm if a clean install gets rid of the icon problem? That is, if it's something to do with an aging install, I wish Apple'd slip a fix in, but I can understand if they don't. But if it's happening even with clean installs, what team is asleep at the wheel for that kind of a stupid issue to slip through? Be nice to know if I could cure it if I really wanted, too...

My clean install has the icon problem. A quick relaunch of Finder always temporarily fixes it though. I do get nonsense icons occasionally.

[Zaty]

My experiences are only positive. The best thing is faster OS and apps start up.

[MaccyMarky]

I upgraded to 10.3.3 a couple of days a go. All seemed ok until I noticed my Bluetooth icon in the menu bar, was showing "unavailable".
The Bluetooth pref pane in Sys Prefs has gone, and the Sys Profiler shows no Bluetooth module present!
No idea what to do apart from checking all permissions etc, to no avail.

I know some bluetooth problems have occurred following OS upgrades before, but can't find any solutions. Any ideas anyone? Total Panther reinstall would be a real pain.
Also my Classic apps are now crashing at least once an hour.

Boy do I wish I hadn't been tempted by the updater. Feeling like sucker guinea pig...

15" PBG4/1.25GHz/1GB

[Felix_the_Mac]

On my QS sometimes the screen remains black now after waking from deep-sleep. Didn't have that problem before.

Yeah, that happened to me yesterday. I have never experienced it before.
Any suggestions as to how to recover? I had to do a power-off.

[wrldwzrd89]

My clean install has the icon problem. A quick relaunch of Finder always temporarily fixes it though. I do get nonsense icons occasionally.
I have the same issue; I'm also running Mac OS X 10.3.3 "Panther". I've never tried relaunching the Finder, restarting, or logging out then back in like others have suggested. The fix I use (which also works) is to rebuild the Classic desktop file (which can be done regardless of whether the Classic environment is present), then log out and back in for the change to take effect. I find it equally annoying - I've even had icons disappear completely (the name's still there, it just has no icon).

[matthew24]

Solid as a Rock :)

[encro]

My PPP Connection Menu Extra went all funny. A reboot fixed it though.

Looks like some kind of basic debug test or something...

[ExoticFish]

i've noticed that the networking is better but i'm still having the problem that was fixed with Jaguar and now broken again in Panther which is that i can't have the Desktop snap to grid function on and put icons on the left edge of the screen, i have to turn it off and place then there manually... quite annoying.

[blue&whiteman]

10.3.3 is fine for me. seems a bit more stable and a bit faster. nothing great to say about it but nothing bad either..

[AppleMatt]

My PPP Connection Menu Extra went all funny. A reboot fixed it though.

Looks like some kind of basic debug test or something...

I've had that before, and also numbers appearing there instead of text. Happens a lot when disconnecting.

With 10.3.3 I've noticed a big improvement in Ghost Recon fluidness, Application startup is excellent (Safari and iTunes previously 3 bounces, now 1) and I've made use of the fact the "F" keys can now serve their proper function on PowerBooks. All-in-all, a good update :)

AppleMatt

[DaveTheGrey]

10.3.3 Network ? Even with an IQ below 50 !
Finally

Dave.

[DreaminDirector]

On my QS sometimes the screen remains black now after waking from deep-sleep. Didn't have that problem before.


I've had a few of those in the past week. My DP 1.25Ghz has seems to be buggier since the update. Minor things really, more annoyances that problems.

I did have one scare which I have no idea what caused it; I was doing some photoshop work, when I heard my fans blast on to full. I checked my temp (konfab widget) and it had going from 137 F to 67 F. I quickly saved my file and restarted. Booted up fine, ran all the usual checks and found no problems. What's up with that?

[stcanard]

Okay, this one might be my imagination:

I swear that under my normal home usage (alright, that does happen to be running iTunes, X11 Gimp, iPhoto, mail, safari, remote desktop, and a couple of terminal windows) my system has started swapping way more, I'm seeing lots of disk activity during context switches.

1.25G PB w/ 512M RAM

Watching the process memory usage, nothing seems out of whack, but I swear the disk didn't grind that much on 10.3.2

Has anybody else noticed this? Has 10.3.3 changed it's memory management?

[wrldwzrd89]

Okay, this one might be my imagination:

I swear that under my normal home usage (alright, that does happen to be running iTunes, X11 Gimp, iPhoto, mail, safari, remote desktop, and a couple of terminal windows) my system has started swapping way more, I'm seeing lots of disk activity during context switches.

1.25G PB w/ 512M RAM

Watching the process memory usage, nothing seems out of whack, but I swear the disk didn't grind that much on 10.3.2

Has anybody else noticed this? Has 10.3.3 changed it's memory management?
If anything, 10.3.3 should have improved the caching system Mac OS X uses to reduce accesses to the hard disk. Remember that Mail and Safari were updated in 10.3.3; other components that you use, like the Terminal, were probably also updated. This may have made a difference; again, I would expect these updates to improve the situation you're experiencing.

[wdlove]

I haven't really noticed any real performance change in my dual 450 G4.
Although I think that I've had my first Kernel Panic. None of the icons in the Dock would open. I booted up with the SystemWorks CD and ran Norton Disk Doctor, it found multiple Major errors. Even on the second run it found Major errors. On the third no errors found. I also booted up with Tech Tool Pro 4, no problems.

[Makosuke]

I haven't really noticed any real performance change in my dual 450 G4.
Although I think that I've had my first Kernel Panic. None of the icons in the Dock would open.Something wrong, definitely, but not a Kernel Panic--a Panic has only happened when your screen goes darker and a multilingual "You must restart" box appears in the middle. Anything else is a higher-level crash/freeze of some sort.

[Pandakin]

OK folks pls help cos i really need to fix this - i do alot of 3d rendering stuff in cinema 4d and Maya 5 on my eMac - yep my eMac and it is pretty snappy- and i need the activity monitor to work so i can see the amount of resources each app is taking - since i updated to 10.3.3 it just desn't launch anymore :( - does anybodyknow i can fix this - can i reinstall the applwithout reinstalling the whole system?

[wrldwzrd89]

OK folks pls help cos i really need to fix this - i do alot of 3d rendering stuff in cinema 4d and Maya 5 on my eMac - yep my eMac and it is pretty snappy- and i need the activity monitor to work so i can see the amount of resources each app is taking - since i updated to 10.3.3 it just desn't launch anymore :( - does anybodyknow i can fix this - can i reinstall the applwithout reinstalling the whole system?
I suspect corrupt preferences are to blame for this. Go into your Library in your user folder. There should be a folder called Preferences inside - open this folder. Look for a file with Activity Monitor in the name (might be all one word, like "ActivityMonitor" or "activitymonitor") and move or delete it so Activity Monitor can't find it. Relaunch Activity Monitor. If all is well, you can delete the preferences file (if you moved it) because that was the cause of the problem.

[Mal]

I've had several crashes since I installed 10.3.3. Actually, they could've started before then, I don't remember for sure, but I've been noticing them more since then. They're not kernel panics, it just simply freezes up completely. The mouse moves and that's about it. I've tried to SSH in from another computer on our network and it just sits there waiting, no errors, just no information loading either. Any thoughts on this?

JW

[wrldwzrd89]

I've had several crashes since I installed 10.3.3. Actually, they could've started before then, I don't remember for sure, but I've been noticing them more since then. They're not kernel panics, it just simply freezes up completely. The mouse moves and that's about it. I've tried to SSH in from another computer on our network and it just sits there waiting, no errors, just no information loading either. Any thoughts on this?

JW
Sounds to me like some process on your crashing computer is encountering errors and hogging CPU time and memory, preventing any SSH connections or most other activity. If I were you, I'd open the Console utility and look at the logs to see if you can find any hints as to what's causing the problem.

[Mal]

The console log didn't reveal anything from that exact time because I don't know what time it happened exactly, although I will check immediately after the next time it crashes. What I did see was this line, repeated several hundred times a day with nothing in between instances:

Looking for devices matching vendor ID=1193 and product ID=8717

This was in my user log file. Any clue what that means or if it's a problem?

JW

[wrldwzrd89]

The console log didn't reveal anything from that exact time because I don't know what time it happened exactly, although I will check immediately after the next time it crashes. What I did see was this line, repeated several hundred times a day with nothing in between instances:



This was in my user log file. Any clue what that means or if it's a problem?

JW
Don't just check console.log; look in the other log files too - you might find an application that was generating errors that were being logged. That's a good indicator of which application/background process is causing the problem. Make sure you check system.log - this is where errors are usually recorded. As for that log line, my gut feeling is that your system is scanning the hardware for a particular device which it cannot find. This is another clue as to why the system is freezing. Maybe try a PRAM reset (http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=2238)?

[Mal]

I do have a piece of hardware on here that is not working correctly, but it is not contributing to the crashes, because they started before I had the device. That is almost definitely causing those messages, thanks for reminding me. I checked the other logs, but as I said, I don't have the exact time marked, so I can't check this time. I will check on the system log and others next time I have a problem.

Thanks,
JW

[wrldwzrd89]

Sounds to me like some process on your crashing computer is encountering errors and hogging CPU time and memory, preventing any SSH connections or most other activity. If I were you, I'd open the Console utility and look at the logs to see if you can find any hints as to what's causing the problem.
Here's another suggestion: try generating some logs with the top command-line utility. I know that top has a logging mode and can be run in the background. The logs will tell you what application/background process, if any, is hogging the CPU and causing the freezes.

[Makosuke]

skywalker--every time I've seen a freeze problem with mouse movement like that, it's been as a result of a "stuck" disk of some sort--either a problem with a connected network volume, or a flaky Firewire hard drive that's gone to sleep and refuses to wake (or something like that).

Do you have any disks connected when this happens? If you've got a firewire drive attached, try just yanking the firewire cord out of it--in my case, I'd suddenly get a "disk has been unmounted improperly" error, but the system would spring back to life. Very, VERY annoying.

Network errors along the same lines have no easy fix other than a restart, unfortunately.

I haven't personally seen any of these freezes under 10.3, though--seems to have helped a lot.

Looking for devices matching vendor ID=1193 and product ID=8717
Sounds like skywalker figured out what this was from, but for reference, that's the error that the Canon CanoScan scanner driver throws up when it can't find a scanner (actually, in my experience, it sometimes seems to say that even when it can, and in the logs you can see it frequently "re acquiring" the scanner for no apparent reason.

These can be alieviated by either plugging in a scanner, or removing the button manager part of the driver. As skywalker said, though, they don't cause anything but a bloated log file--I've never heard of a crash related to Canon's driver.

When it's not cluttering up your logfile, I've got to admit they work pretty well--the scanner buttons function perfectly even under 10.3, including pass-through-to-printer copying.

[groovebuster]

Yeah, that happened to me yesterday. I have never experienced it before.
Any suggestions as to how to recover? I had to do a power-off.

No... didn't find a fix for that so far. Power-Off and Restart is the only thing that works so far... :(

Very annoying...

groovebuster

[chriswaco]

I too was getting the annoying "Looking for devices matching vendor" messages in my log. I fixed it using HexEdit.

Download HexEdit from:
http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=9366

Edit the following file:
/Users/Shared/N067U/N067U_Driver.bundle/Contents/MacOS/N067U_Driver

Do a search for "Looking for devices" within the file and replace the beginning of the string - the L - with a hex zero.

The whole process is a bit more complicated because the file is open by default, so you have to make a copy, edit that, and replace the original file. Plus the file is inside the bundle so you have to choose "Show Package Contents" to actually get there.

If I have some time off, I can write a small app or shell script to do this, but that's not likely anytime in the immediate future.

Good luck.

[DDi John]

In your finder search for "_ButtonManager"
You will come up with some files (probably 3 files) like "NO67U_ButtonManager" delete these files. NOTE: my cannon scanner still works, but I use it through Photoshop.

[mkrishnan]

In your finder search for "_ButtonManager"
You will come up with some files (probably 3 files) like "NO67U_ButtonManager" delete these files. NOTE: my cannon scanner still works, but I use it through Photoshop.

What the huh? :confused:

[wwooden]

I'm at a loss for words. As if the date didn't give it away enough that this thread is done, it's talking about 10.3.3.

[mkrishnan]

I'm at a loss for words. As if the date didn't give it away enough that this thread is done, it's talking about 10.3.3.

Maybe we can turn it into a speculation thread about when 10.4.3 will drop! :D