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bvanlieu

macrumors member
Original poster
Dec 28, 2008
46
0
There are a few threads on discussions.apple that address issues regarding 10.5.6 across multiple host (mac pro, imac, MBP).

http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?messageID=8670807

I am at wits end here with this POS update that has caused my once rock stable Imac to be a crash puppy worthy of something from Redmond.

The only hint I see in the system.log is an odd message that can end up repeating hundreds of times a minute:

ex:

Dec 28 10:10:54 miata-2 kernel[0]: AppleFWOHCI_AsyncTransmit::waitForDMA - context not going inactive.
Dec 28 10:12:35 miata-2 kernel[0]: AppleFWOHCI_AsyncTransmit::waitForDMA - context not going inactive.
Dec 28 10:17:14 miata-2 kernel[0]: AppleFWOHCI_AsyncTransmit::waitForDMA - context not going inactive.

Some others are reporting this error with sleep issues, or erratic
behavior. If its FW related, then I have a single FW device which
is my Timemachine drive, connected at FW400 and I usually leave it powered off, and only backup on demand.

I have tried to fix permissions, re-installed the combo update, and also reset SMC per apples instructions. No success so far.

When I see this message being repeated in the logs, that seems to coincide with the system not being able to be wake from sleep, causing a hard reset.

Although its a journaling FS, but this is no way to use a computer: I have had to hard reset the imac over 10 times now. In the previous year, I reset it maybe twice.

Anyone else experiencing this? Is there an easy way to go back to 10.5.5 (I think that is a rhetorical no, but I have never had to backdate any OS update, so not much experience here).

cheers,

- b
 
Update. After a clean boot today, ran fine for 2 hours then the log started.

This is likely related to the FW issues some are reporting:

https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/618240/

When I go to system profiler, I cannot display FW info and my external FW drive will not mount.

Its not the drive: it worked fine yesterday and I did a TM backup. Seems there is some randomness on my machine as to when this happens, but leave the host on long enough and it happens. My FW drive is not powered on normally...so after a clean boot it just ran and boom, errors started to pile up in the system.log

Thanks apple. Not having any recourse or ability to backout of the patch, really is the sucketh. My gen imac has had no SMC updates, so there really is no patch I can even try. Good times.

- b
 
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