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MagnusVonMagnum

macrumors 603
Original poster
Jun 18, 2007
5,197
1,452
Since 'upgrading' my 2012 Mac Mini to Mojave (2TB SSD), I now have a serious network problem when using it with KODI on my NVidia Shield in my home theater. Every 19 minutes like clockwork it FREEZES (like it's stopped getting data from the Mac) while playing a movie. I thought maybe it was a SMB issue since some have reported problems with 10.14.5 with SMB, but I spent a lot of time rescanning my library last night and converted over to NFS instead and it ALSO FREEZES every 19 minutes so whatever it is, it's in common with both networking protocols. I just verified that it's definitely something with Mojave as I booted off my El Capitan external CCC backup drive and played a movie and NO freezes with it (all the movies are on external USB 3 rotational drives, nothing has been playing directly off the SSD with either one).

The question is what could be causing it to do that? If it's in common with both network protocols, that means it could even be something with the USB 3 external drive interface in Mojave or something causing a system wide stutter with devices (I didn't notice any interruptions playing Borderlands 2, though or doing other activities, but then they weren't using any external drives).

Whatever it is, it's a serious problem since I use my Mini as a server for the whole house audio/video system and having it freeze up every 19 minutes in a movie is simply unacceptable. It looks like I may have to copy El Capitan back to the main drive and forget about Mojave (possibly forever with this computer) as there is simply no way to tell if/when Apple will EVER fix the bug since it seems like no one else on Earth uses their Mini as a server for other devices.

I could find NO mention of this problem by other people anywhere on the Internet. I suspect most people running a server for house wide video playback are using Windows or maybe even Linux. Mac users seem to only do simple things with their Macs like Facebook or else I'd think they'd notice these MASSIVE BUGS that make Mojave unusable and they just don't seem to. I mentioned the problem in three other related threads and ZERO replies after 24 hours. I'm not expecting much here either.

I suppose I'll just copy back El Capitan when I get some time and call this the last version of macOS I ever use (between upgrading to Mojave and switching to NFS to try and get KODI working, I must have wasted 6 hours of work for nothing). How Apple can sell computers that lock up video over the network is beyond me, but then like I said, no one seems to have noticed so perhaps their customers just don't use any real network functions beyond Facebook and email. Most don't even use 3rd party email, just Apple's god-awful Mail program (worst mail program I've ever used with bugs that lasted years Apple refused to fix).

I'm really disappointed in the Mac lately. The Mini is ridiculously expensive for the new one with a 2TB drive in it (this one cost $243; they want $1400 extra for a 2TB drive and $200 for 16GB of ram where I paid $60. It's outrageous how much they overcharge these days. I bought this 2012 Mini as a 2TB dual RAID0 quad i7 in 2012 for $1100. The same setup (well with a 6-core i7 since the 4-core is only an i3) NOW with the new Mini would cost $2500 and $2700 with 16GB ram). Ridiculous. Even with inflation it shouldn't be anywhere near that. No options to upgrade internally save the RAM either.
 
I believe I've isolated the problem to the "Put Hard Drives To Sleep" option in Power Saver (which did NOT cause the problem in El Capitan). It apparently tries to put the external drive it's playing the movie off of to sleep after about 20 minutes and this causes it to freeze, of course). I know the macOS never recognized NFS as a "sleep token" to prevent sleep (it's why I moved from NFS to SMB with KODI years ago as writing Apple about the problem did no good as Apple couldn't have cared less), but SMB always prevented sleep. I didn't test regular sleep here, but it seems SMB access isn't stopping macOS from trying to put the hard drives to sleep.... I can turn it off, but that will just let some brand hard drives keep spinning in idle indefinitely. Still, it might be better than having to reinstall El Capitan.
 
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