Mac Pro wakes up during the night

You have "wake on Lan" enabled in Energy preference?

Just give it a teaspoon of Benedryll to help it sleep through the night...

comatory said:

I am used to putting computer to sleep, not to shut it down (but even if I shut it down the computer power ups).

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Do I understand you correctly, you are saying that even if you completely shut down the machine, it boots up?

I would simply reinstall OS X, if that doesen't help try creating a new user.

Or simply shut down the machine, and then unplug the power cable. If it still powers up at night, I would call ghostbusters then

I had this problem myself with my 5,1 waking from Sleep during the night (it did it during the day too but there were fewer distractions at night so I noticed it more).

The culprit is almost certainly the Wake on LAN setting being ticked.

There is, however, a good reason for the setting being left on. It is an integral part of the Find My Mac tool.

There is something called the Bonjour Sleep Proxy (is that roughly correct, folks?) which part-wakes the machine at regular intervals to check if there are any instructions or messages for it. In the case of a Laptop, you would barely notice but with a Mac Pro, the power supply clicks on, the fans spin up and the hard drives too. The monitor, however, stays off. About ten seconds later (longer depending on how long it takes for your router to grant a net connection), the machine clicks off again and goes back to sleep.

Till the next time.

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Hmm... having read your post again you say you have Wake On LAN turned off. That is odd.

In my case it was clearly related to the Wake On LAN and the Bonjour server. The RTS Clock alarm message was the same too.

See my thread here : https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/1416544/

Mine does the same too on BootCamp, but I got WOL disabled. Any ideas ?

Well I would assume Wake on LAN would be only obeyed on the OS X side so in Bootcamp there will be some other setting to do with Bonjour.

Spacedust said:

Mine does the same too on BootCamp, but I got WOL disabled. Any ideas ?

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Maybe your cat jumped on the desk, disturbing the keyboard or mouse?

If it powers on when shut down. Do you have "Startup after power failure" checked? I don't know if that would do it but that's a thought.

DanielCoffey said:

There is something called the Bonjour Sleep Proxy (is that roughly correct, folks?) which part-wakes the machine at regular intervals to check if there are any instructions or messages for it. In the case of a Laptop, you would barely notice but with a Mac Pro, the power supply clicks on, the fans spin up and the hard drives too. The monitor, however, stays off. About ten seconds later (longer depending on how long it takes for your router to grant a net connection), the machine clicks off again and goes back to sleep.

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Thank you! This exact thing has been happening to my 4,1 on the rare occasions that I leave it turned on overnight. It's never bothered me but I've always been curious as to what it's doing.

Do you have any USB peripherals plugged in?
I had this problem with a UPS monitor plugged in to USB.

If you get a power issue in the night and the UPS goes to battery, then yes the machine will wake fully because the UPS is reporting the power loss. That is the same as plugging in or unplugging a UPS device on a sleeping Mac.

Comatory is having the Bonjour Sleep Proxy wake up issue. At least he knows what the cause is now and can make an informed decision whether to turn off the Wake on LAN setting or not.

I usually shut the Mac down completely when I go to sleep because I have my bed in the same room as the Mac, but yesterday I came home wasted and totally forgt that the MP is still running. I was half-sleeping when I suddendly heard the clicking noise of the PSU folled by the fans, and then my Cinema Display lightened up the whole room. 5 secs afterwards, the whole thing went to sleep again. I got up and checked what the machine did, apparently nothing, had some apps like Firefox and console open, and also no Time Machine, so I checked the console what it reported. It said Wake Reason: Alarm (a screenshot of the console is attached).

What was that? I have this Bonjour proxy enabled, but form what I read this shouldn't activate my display when the machine wakes up. I don't have anything in my calendar, and no alarm set...

^^^It's Bonjour sleep proxy. Wake reason RTC is the key. Why it's waking up your display then? My guess will be your graphics card which is, gently speaking, non standard one. Test it with other card you have, or turn off this feature if it bothers you.

Since you have a non-Apple card, it will be waking up with the machine. My Apple 5870 stays dark when Bonjour wakes the machine up.

If you do not need the functionality made available by the Bonjour service (such as Find My Mac and Wake on LAN), then simply turn off the Wake on Network and you are done.

DanielCoffey said:

Since you have a non-Apple card, it will be waking up with the machine. My Apple 5870 stays dark when Bonjour wakes the machine up.

If you do not need the functionality made available by the Bonjour service (such as Find My Mac and Wake on LAN), then simply turn off the Wake on Network and you are done.

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That's not it, for mine anyway. Before I upgraded my 4.1 to 5.1 and added a 3690, I had the stock 4870 and wake on LAN disabled. Nevertheless, about once an hour, the thing would wake, run for ten seconds or so, and shut down. I have multiple USB devices plugged in, but most are off and others are passive. And no, it wasn't a cat walking across the trackpad or chasing the mouse either. However, since upgrading to a GTX 670, I haven't seen the wake again and don't recall changing any other settings, unplugging any other devices, etc. I have swapped a few HD's for SSD's though. Also, these sporadic wakes were on 10.6.8. I'm now on 10.8.2. Never did install 10.7.

DanielCoffey said:

Since you have a non-Apple card, it will be waking up with the machine. My Apple 5870 stays dark when Bonjour wakes the machine up.

If you do not need the functionality made available by the Bonjour service (such as Find My Mac and Wake on LAN), then simply turn off the Wake on Network and you are done.

Click to expand...

666sheep said:

^^^It's Bonjour sleep proxy. Wake reason RTC is the key. Why it's waking up your display then? My guess will be your graphics card which is, gently speaking, non standard one. Test it with other card you have, or turn off this feature if it bothers you.

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You guys could be actually right, because I have this issue that when only the monitor goes to sleep, it either goes blank white or keeps the desktop, but it refuses to simply turn black. That may be it.
I really didn't thought of that.. maybe because it was 4 am in the morning...