I have had a problem for around 4 years and across several macs. This issue has occurred on a 2012 MacBook Pro and a 2015 iMac that was replaced twice by Apple when trying to sort out the same problem a couple of years ago.
Having recently got a MacBook pro 13” 2018, and the problem still occurring I’ve spent quite some time with Apple support trying to narrow down the cause. (The Mac was set up from scratch to try to avoid the problem being migrated if it was a user profile issue)
The problem is that around 50% of the time the machines would crash while sleeping. After some in depth investigation it seems unrelated to which apps are currently running.
On my previous iMac the solution I eventually came to was to set it to never go to sleep which avoided the problem occurring.
Having had apple support get their engineering team to investigate detailed logs, they have identified Rhino as a cause.
I have uninstalled rhino for the time being to try to confirm this is the case but after a couple of days I’ve had no crashes.
I am happy to share the logs I sent to Apple with you if that would help identify the problem? Please tell me how to transfer them to you privately.
Given the persistence of this problem I suspect others must be experiencing it as well.
I would very much appreciate a swift investigation and fix to this so that I can install and use rhino again. It is critical to our workflow.
The most important thing you can do to help get this resolved is to help us reproduce this on our machines. Without being able to reproduce it, we usually have a very difficult time investigating and fixing an issue. This topic outlines the best practices for reporting a bug.
If others are experiencing this bug (ie: it’s not machine or configuration-specific) and we can get detailed steps, we have a fighting chance.
The steps to recreate it are really very simple and therefore might not be that helpful in recreating it but I’ll summarise below:
Leave my Mac (any of the three models mentioned) to go to sleep
If the machines had only gone to sleep on their own for a couple of minutes then it would almost never crash
Approximately 50% of the time the Macs would then not wake from sleep. The screen would stay black. The only solution was to do a hard reboot.
Sometimes the crash would occur accompanied by the laptop getting very hot and the fan running very high. From what I understand from Apple, this heating is likely to be cause by Dropbox
With reference to the post about providing a good report, this is tricky because:
I have no screen shots because the machine has crashed and the screen is black
It has happened across three completely different models of Mac therefore I do not think it is model / hardware specific
I have uploaded all of the information sent to Apple to the link you’ve provided.
I have now uninstalled Rhino and Rhino WIP so I cannot provide the ‘more info’.
One further bit of info, no particular apps have to be running to cause it. I found this very surprising but Apple insisted that an app can still cause a crash when it is not open.
Thanks for this. It is a good start, along with the logs. We’ll take a look.
However, we need to be very, very literal (almost hilariously so). Let me give an example of the level-of-detail we typically need.
To Reproduce
Restart your 2018 MacBook Pro 13” running macOS to Mojave 10.14 (what version of macOS are you using?)
In System Preferences > Energy Saver > Power Adapter, set the following settings … (what are your settings? How long do I have to wait? What is put to sleep? HDD as well?)
Launch Rhino for Mac (what version are you running when this happens?)
Start a new modeling window (do you do this? are you opening specific models or does it crash no matter what?)
Don’t touch the computer for n minutes and watch it go to sleep.
Wait for n minutes (does it matter how long?)
Press space to wake the Mac (really, what key do you press? or do you use your mouse?)
Expected Behavior
My macOS wakes up with Rhino for Mac in the foreground and I can work as normal.
Actual Behavior
Rhino crashes. (Is that what happens? or does the entire machine lock up?)
…
Again, the more details you can provide the better.
Well, this is interesting. You’re running Dropbox. Does this crash still occur even if you completely quit Dropbox?
Had this issue with 2010-2015 mbp’s. It’s a problem with the graphics card switching causing a kernel panic. One of the main reasons I left macs. There was awhile ago an offer to get an upgrade for them for free but I don’t think it is offered anymore. The fix for me back then was to force it to only use integrated graphics (kind of sucks cuz the discrete is more powerful) you can see more info at the below link.
I’m afraid this isn’t it. As I noted above, it happened with the following macs:
15” MacBook Pro 2012
5K iMac 2015
13” MacBook Pro 2018
Therefore it isn’t only 2010-2015 MacBook Pros. It also isn’t to do with graphics card switching because the 13” only has integrated graphics and I believe the iMac only had discrete.
I’m afraid it has happened with virtually every version of software since 2014/2015 (I can’t recall when it started now).
Most recently I’ve been using the latest version of Mojave and Rhino. But before that I was using the version of High Sierra that the 13” MacBook Pro was released with (with supplemental update that was released shortly after).
As I noted above, it can happen with any combination of app running. It seems to not be linked to Rhino actually running. Therefore opening a new file / using a particular command etc is not relevant detail I can provide.
This has been going on for 3+ years. I’ve therefore tried every method under the sun to wake the macs from sleep.
I have also tried almost every energy saver setting.
I will give you a precise statement of what my settings are / were later, but I’m not convinced this is that relevant given it has occurred across three completely different macs over a 3+ year period of time.
I didn’t see your note about dropbox earlier (I was using my phone and missed it). I will be trying reinstalling Rhino and Dropbox separately to further narrow this down. I guess it is possible that the entire problem was caused by Dropbox but the crashes that Apple were seeing were related to the V6 WIP.
Apple hasn’t provided me with we any more detail than I have passed on here. I guess it is possible that it is dropbox that caused it all but that is not what they told me.
The other thought I had since earlier is that when working on rhino files they are almost always saved on a Synology NAS accessed by AFP. This is perhaps specific detail of my set up. The crashes occur regardless of location though, so even when not connected to the NAS.
In terms of how long I have to wait for the crash to occur, it is normally around 10-15mins before the Macs got into full sleep mode (at least I assume that’s what was happening). It could happen much quicker if I actually selected ‘sleep’ from the apple menu.
Below are a couple of screen grabs showing the Apps I have installed (after uninstalling Dropbox and Rhino) and my current energy saver settings.
Ok, I think this is a critical part of the story I was missing before. In my previous understanding, I had thought you had said that running Rhino for Mac was the cause of this crash. Are saying that you get the crash if Rhino is present on your Mac (regardless of whether it is running or not? Is that correct? (Sorry if I’m a little thick sometimes)
Hi @dan yes that is the crux of the current hypothesis and why it has taken so long to get to this point. It is not obvious or straightforward.
I have reinstalled Dropbox today to rule out it being in any way responsible given I uninstalled both Rhino and Dropbox at the same time.
Since Saturday when I uninstalled them both, I haven’t had a crash which is a significant improvement over several crashes a day that I had been experiencing.
I do not recall ever hearing of this happening. @marlin have you heard of the mere presence of an application - not it running, mind you - crashing a Mac when it reawakens from sleep?
Thanks. I think this is a wise step. If you don’t see crashes, then you reinstall Rhino, then you expect it to crash (if I’m following your hypothesis). If that is the case, it might be wise to run the inverse test: uninstall Dropbox, but just install Rhino (I can’t tell from the above if you’ve already tried that or not; perhaps you have).
@dan one other thing with your previous post, I don’t know whether the crashing occurs during waking from sleep or during the process of going to sleep.
The system logs I have looked at would suggest it is the latter, in that often there is a significant time gap between activity and the boot process starting following a hard restart. I’m no expert in this though.
As for the presence of an app causing a crash, could it be something to do with spotlight indexing or quicklook or some other such system process that might be affected by the presence of an app?
One of the things I have noticed is that often after a crash there is a huge amount of mdworker activity which I believe is the spotlight indexing process. Generally this seems to have reduced massively since uninstalling rhino, but then I haven’t had a crash since either so it’s hard to know if it is a result of the crashing or something that hints at a cause.
I’m now trying to reinstall V6 WIP to see if this causes the problem or not before I try reinstalling V5.
I have a problem though. When I uninstalled rhino I just trashed it and the various application support folders. Now I cannot use the licence key because it was never returned before deleting the app.
I have tried logging in online to remove it but it doesn’t appear on the licence settings.
Having uninstalled the app, how do I release the licence so that it can be used again?
Also, many of the licence pop ups do not display properly. It makes figuring things out almost impossible:
edit: having deleted the app, following the above, I then had a crash immediately after. I have now removed all of the application support files and preferences as I did at the weekend.
Hopefully, if the crashes do not occur again, then it would suggest the problem is lurking somewhere in the application support files or preference file.
So I’ve now had a chance to install Rhino V6 WIP on its own (as in without Dropbox also being installed) and immediately the first time the machine went to sleep it crashed.
I have now removed it and will try the current version of V5.
This crashing appears to be definitely Rhino related. Each step of testing seems to confirm it.
I’m sorry to say that we still can’t reproduce this issue. I want to reiterate, I believe you when you are saying this is happening, but we’re at a loss to be able to do anything because we simply can’t reproduce this.
I would hope that if this is widespread, we’d be hearing a lot more reports of this. It is very odd you can reproduce this on multiple machines.
While uninstalling rhino improved things, and subsequently installing either V5 or WIP V6 definitely appears to increase the frequency of the crashing, the crashes came back. I have been following up with Apple in the hope of getting something more concrete about what is happening but it seems to be proving rather challenging.
In short, I suspect that the actual cause may not be Rhino but there is something that is going on that when Rhino is installed it triggers the problem more frequently. I’m kind of guessing but it is based on the observation of the crashing occurring much less frequently without Rhino installed.
I’m sorry that Apple will not provide more detail. I imagine it is as frustrating for me as it is for you.
Thank you for looking into this and I will report back as and when I have more information.
Thanks for the update and your patience and dedication to figuring this out.
In short, I suspect that the actual cause may not be Rhino but there is something that is going on that when Rhino is installed it triggers the problem more frequently.
This seems plausible. If we presume this is the case, it is worth noting that it doesn’t seem to be something we changed in V6 (just thinking out-loud here). Given that, it would probably be best to restrict your testing to V5-only and remove any traces of V6. The steps here have not been updated for V6, but they should be enough breadcrumbs to get to a state where you don’t have anything from V6 laying around.
it seems unrelated to which apps are currently running.
This is the thing I keep having to remind myself about. Since you seem to have access to multiple machines, I wonder if you could isolate one that you don’t need that often, delete all remnants of Rhino, then just install Rhino 5 for Mac, but never run it. You shouldn’t have anything except the app bundle. I would be interested to hear if it crashes if Rhino has never been run. This would be a clue.
