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Centauri-Alpha prevents sleep

F

fatihayoglu

macrumors member
Original poster
Hello all,

My new MPB M5 Pro insists not to go to sleep; the log says
2026-05-10 16:44:25 +0100 DarkWake DarkWake from Deep Idle [CDNP] : due to smc.sysState.Wake(0x70070000) wifibt SMC.OutboxNotEmpty centauri-alpha E_TKO_TCP_DATA ARPT/ Using BATT (Charge:88%) 11 secs

There are hundreds of these however I cannot find an efficient way to find and delete whatever this is.

As a background, when I have bought this machine new, I have installed users from TimeMachine Backup.

BW,
Fatih
 
Put this command into the Terminal, and it'll tell you what processes are keeping your machine awake:

pmset -g assertions
 
Assertion status system-wide:
BackgroundTask 0
ApplePushServiceTask 0
UserIsActive 1
PreventUserIdleDisplaySleep 0
SoftwareUpdateTask 0
PreventSystemSleep 0
ExternalMedia 0
PreventUserIdleSystemSleep 1
NetworkClientActive 0
Listed by owning process:
pid 114(powerd): [0x00001166000190e8] 00:24:44 PreventUserIdleSystemSleep named: "Powerd - Prevent sleep while display is on"
pid 172(WindowServer): [0x00001166000990e5] 00:00:00 UserIsActive named: "com.apple.iohideventsystem.queue.tickle serviceID:100000fc3 service:AppleHIDKeyboardEventDriverV2 product:Apple Internal Keyboard / Trackpad eventType:3"
Timeout will fire in 120 secs Action=TimeoutActionRelease
pid 182(backupd-helper): [0x0000171b00019373] 00:00:23 PreventUserIdleSystemSleep named: "Mutexed Backup Block"
No kernel assertions.

Nothing unusual however when I put pmset -g log | grep -i "wake from"
There are hundreds of entries for Centauri-alpha as above
 
am not seeing this issue on my own new M5 pro MBP. does turning off bluetooth help?

someone here might have a fix, but consider calling apple... (just a thought)
 
So when I turn off WiFi and BT, the laptop actually sleeps pretty well. I’ll wait couple of more hours and enable them to see. I don’t remember if I’ve ever installed Sid Meier Alpha Centauri game in the past, thinking this might be a left over issue 🤷
 
fatihayoglu said:
So when I turn off WiFi and BT, the laptop actually sleeps pretty well. I’ll wait couple of more hours and enable them to see. I don’t remember if I’ve ever installed Sid Meier Alpha Centauri game in the past, thinking this might be a left over issue 🤷
Click to expand...
what about just turning off BT (just to see if that's where the issue is). perhaps check places like system settings>privacy & security>bluetooth, make sure no apps are accessing BT that shouldn't...
 
ok, so turning off the BT didn't help, but turning off the WiFi did.
Something tries to access the internet when the computer sleeps, need to find that now
 
Another update, Little Snitch cannot find any connection request yet the computer doesn’t sleep when the WiFi is on

I wish there was a way to be able to search centauri-alpha on my computer 😔
 
Do you have anything enabled in Sharing?

1778484352327.png
 
Nop, nothing is allowed to share. It would be good, if anybody who doesn't see the same log (M5 Pro or Max) can post their terminal pmset settings. Maybe there is something I don't see 🤷‍♂️
 
Well, the Apple Support was pretty basic, as
Checking few settings, testing in safe mode etc. finally they’ve advised to reinstall macOS 😱

I’ve expected more tbh, like few terminal codes etc
 
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fatihayoglu said:
Well, the Apple Support was pretty basic, as
Checking few settings, testing in safe mode etc. finally they’ve advised to reinstall macOS 😱

I’ve expected more tbh, like few terminal codes etc
Click to expand...
hmmm they should have advanced you to a real support person (i've asked for that in the past); might be worth trying again 🤷. good luck 👍
 
Well, she has spoken to a senior person, who has suggested me to check any strong magnet around the laptop as that might cause interference with sleep. I don’t know how strong the magnets need to be to cause that but I didn’t have any 🤣
 
fatihayoglu said:
Well, she has spoken to a senior person, who has suggested me to check any strong magnet around the laptop as that might cause interference with sleep. I don’t know how strong the magnets need to be to cause that but I didn’t have any 🤣
Click to expand...
That would be because it uses the magnets in the casing to detect when open and closed. Other strong magnets around could interfere with that so it's a question worth asking.

I work in IT support and I've had more than one call from someone saying that the webcam wasn't working on their laptop. I always ask if the slider is closed, you'd be surprised how many said "yes". 🤡

1778507786011.png
 
the "centauri-alpha" in that log is Apple's internal name for the wireless chip - it's not a user app, so searching your drive for it won't turn anything up. what's happening is something is keeping a TCP connection alive through WiFi and blocking deep sleep. worth checking System Settings → Battery → Options: make sure "Enable Power Nap" and "Wake for network access" are both off - if either is on, macOS will periodically wake to check mail/iCloud even when the lid is closed, which generates exactly this pattern. if it's still happening after disabling those, running `sudo pmset -g log | grep Wake` in Terminal will show you the specific wake reasons with timestamps.
 
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benholt said:
the "centauri-alpha" in that log is Apple's internal name for the wireless chip - it's not a user app, so searching your drive for it won't turn anything up. what's happening is something is keeping a TCP connection alive through WiFi and blocking deep sleep. worth checking System Settings → Battery → Options: make sure "Enable Power Nap" and "Wake for network access" are both off - if either is on, macOS will periodically wake to check mail/iCloud even when the lid is closed, which generates exactly this pattern. if it's still happening after disabling those, running `sudo pmset -g log | grep Wake` in Terminal will show you the specific wake reasons with timestamps.
Click to expand...
Yes I have found similar information however the issue is, it activates in every minute or two, so Mac doesn’t have a chance to go into sleep at all. I have left home when the computer was reinstalling macOS and will check the result when I am back… (The tech support has checked those settings and said the settings should not prevent the laptop to go to sleep but wake up time to time)
 
Paul1964 said:
That would be because it uses the magnets in the casing to detect when open and closed. Other strong magnets around could interfere with that so it's a question worth asking.

I work in IT support and I've had more than one call from someone saying that the webcam wasn't working on their laptop. I always ask if the slider is closed, you'd be surprised how many said "yes". 🤡

View attachment 2629129
Click to expand...
And I have checked toggle for prevent mac go to sleep when the screen is off under battery for almost 10 times 🙂
 
Hi friend. Not sure if you have already solved this sleep issue. Just FYI, I have encountered a similar issue recently. My M5 Mac also cannot sleep and gets severely overheated, and my problem is related to the Colima I installed. If you also have Colima running on your Mac, you can try changing the vm-type from default qemu to vz (you will need to do colima delete and colima start to make the change work), or delete the ~/.colima folder.
The Colima issue details are as follows: https://github.com/abiosoft/colima/issues/1543
 
Hi,
No I couldn't solve it, neither Apple Support. Finally they have recommended to reinstalling the macOS fresh by not using TM backups in case something carries from my intel iMac. Initially that has solved the issue, but then I started to get the same lines on terminal.
One weird thing, things are calming down because like lately night, it has waken up only 3 times in 9 hours for this issue. During the day, the issue is more common though 🤷🏻
 
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