occamsrazor Posted January 2, 2008 Share Posted January 2, 2008 Hey, I've got OS X running on my AMD Machine, and I purchased an ralink usb to get the network running. My NVIDIA card works great, using the installer for AMD in the usual places. However, once installed, I'm locking up quite frequently. I have a feeling it is network driver related, as it seems to happen more often than not while browsing, and happens very reliably and consistently when using Transmission, but this is really just instinct, which gets to my question What is the manner of troubleshooting these freezes? I'm new to OSX, coming from a windows and linux world, and I'm not sure which logs I should be perusing to see what is going on and look for help. When the lockup occurs, I have to reboot, but I don't know at that point what to do next to try to see what caused it. Any help would be appreciated. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ongeloof Posted January 2, 2008 Share Posted January 2, 2008 Maybe this is totally unrelated, but i have an MSI K9 mobo, a AMD 5600+CPU, AND NO GPU, but everything works great, sound internet , but {censored} resolution. Maybe you should try a different installation method. there is a flat IMG, on a bay somewere.... Think Mark Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Snowski Posted January 2, 2008 Share Posted January 2, 2008 You might experience the net bug so try using a seperate PCI card, read the Zephyroth thread (check sig) or use the bootflag cpus=1 My system is running smooth with the Zephyroth release. I even see a lot of probs with intel systems I don't have. Everything almost worked out of the box, only some small tweaking here and there. Good luck though lad! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
occamsrazor Posted January 2, 2008 Author Share Posted January 2, 2008 Can you give me a clue as to which page in that thread the "net bug" is discussed? I was able to run much longer last night when using Safari as my browser instead of Firefox, so I ran Transmission overnight to see if I would lock up, and I did freeze again. Everything works fantastically, to be honest. I just freeze a lot. Probably to be expected given how we're forcing it onto the hardware, but I wish I knew where to begin troubleshooting, I don't even see anything in the system log. edit: I am using an external USB Stick for networking, do I need to disable the motherboard networking (forcedeth is supposedly the issue?) Either way I guess I'll just try the cpus=1 thing and see if that fixes it. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
rsk Posted January 3, 2008 Share Posted January 3, 2008 Can you give me a clue as to which page in that thread the "net bug" is discussed? I was able to run much longer last night when using Safari as my browser instead of Firefox, so I ran Transmission overnight to see if I would lock up, and I did freeze again. Everything works fantastically, to be honest. I just freeze a lot. Probably to be expected given how we're forcing it onto the hardware, but I wish I knew where to begin troubleshooting, I don't even see anything in the system log. edit: I am using an external USB Stick for networking, do I need to disable the motherboard networking (forcedeth is supposedly the issue?) Either way I guess I'll just try the cpus=1 thing and see if that fixes it. If I leave Quartz Extreme enabled it freezes my machine. Maybe try disabling it? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
occamsrazor Posted January 3, 2008 Author Share Posted January 3, 2008 Just wanted to update this with info in case anyone finds it by search I was experiencing the known issue of the forcedeth bug, even though I was using an external USB adapter. I did not try removing forcedeth yet, but setting cpus=1 as a boot flag did rectify this problem Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Snowski Posted January 3, 2008 Share Posted January 3, 2008 There ya go lad Now look for a cheap Realtek RTL8139 pci network card and go back to using both cores. I still had one of these very cheap network cards laying around. Enjoy the OS bud. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
cgsheen Posted January 3, 2008 Share Posted January 3, 2008 Or a RTL8169 based card like this or this ... I bought the Airlink101 card cheap ($5 on sale) - and it works really well. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
pookeye Posted January 5, 2008 Share Posted January 5, 2008 occamsrazor first is this 10.5.1? or just 10.5? I had a problem where my machine would lock up everytime i went to the internet. so anyways, i read the torrent descriptions and found that all you have to do is manually set up your DHCP, instead of having it automatically, and it will fix that problem... then u wont get freezing when you are surfing the web, or downloading. (Although i still get freezing when running other software like ilife... garageband iphoto.. that sort of thing) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
cgsheen Posted January 7, 2008 Share Posted January 7, 2008 Did you use Marvin's Utility? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
gotuX Posted February 16, 2008 Share Posted February 16, 2008 I have the same problem on 10.4.11. I don't know why, but Transmission freeze the machine after some minutes.. Without Transmission the system is perfect... Bye. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
inhibitor Posted November 23, 2008 Share Posted November 23, 2008 Hi all, I'm having same problems like last post. If transmission is empty it works ok, but I got unfinished downloads, when I add them after few mins it freezes pc. Same hapening when I try to patch Mac combo update 10.5.5 with AMD Patcher 0.3. So I suspect it's not down to network, otherwise PC runs flawlessly. Using Lawless PPC 10.5.4 on AMD Phenom 9850, Gigabyte 790FX, SB400, ATI 3870, Network is Realtek 8169 I'm noob on Mac, but have intermidiate exp on Linux My question is after so much time does anyone find culprints of these freezes. Thanks in advance. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Lanceomni Posted November 24, 2008 Share Posted November 24, 2008 Hi Inhibitor, I had similar issues with transmission and others which caused my AMD rig to freeze. In my particular case It was caused by having 4GB of memory installed. If you have 4GB installed read below if not skip to bottom. "Unfortunately I could not find a fix that would allow me to take advantage of all 4 gigs. I was able to limit the amount of memory osx uses by adding maxmem=3456 to my com.apple.Boot.plist. This gives me 3.38gb. I tried transmission, photoshop and starting all of the apps in the dock and could not crash the system. I assume that this issue might have a fix when Snow Leopard comes out." My Blog Try the maxmem flag on boot and if it works add it to com.apple.Boot.plist (located in /Library/Preferences/SystemConfiguration/ ) The syntax goes something like this: <key>Kernel Flags</key> <string>maxmem=****</string> Replacing **** with the amount of memory to use. Many people have reported 3456 (3.38gb) works well. I have pushed mine to 3584 (3.5gb) and have not been able to make it freeze. Each time I increased the speed I would open up Activity Monitor and click the System Memory tab. I would then open Photoshop and and do something that would tax the system. On my computer when I went over the threshold it would freeze and I could read how much memory had been used. (Other people have mentioned that their computer would reset instead of freeze.) I ran that computer 24/7 and used Photoshop heavily and never had a memory related problem at 3.5GB. If you dont have 4gb of memory I would be interested in knowing which Kernel you are using and the version of your System.kext. -lanceomni2 MOBO: Asus M2N SLI Deluxe CPU: AMD Athlon 64 5000 X2 RAM: 4GB Corsair XMS2 DDR-800 1gb x4 GRAPHICS: PNY 7600GT 256mb (VCG7600GXPB) DRIVES: 1x WD 74gb Raptor SATA 1.5, 3x WD Caviar 80gb SATA 3, NEC DVD Burner (ND3550A), ASUS DVD ROM (E-616A2) Hi all, I'm having same problems like last post. If transmission is empty it works ok, but I got unfinished downloads, when I add them after few mins it freezes pc. Same hapening when I try to patch Mac combo update 10.5.5 with AMD Patcher 0.3. So I suspect it's not down to network, otherwise PC runs flawlessly. Using Lawless PPC 10.5.4 on AMD Phenom 9850, Gigabyte 790FX, SB400, ATI 3870, Network is Realtek 8169 I'm noob on Mac, but have intermidiate exp on Linux My question is after so much time does anyone find culprints of these freezes. Thanks in advance. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
inhibitor Posted November 24, 2008 Share Posted November 24, 2008 Thanks for your reply, Yes i have 4GB, unfortunately this workaround doesn't work. I'm beginning to suspect HDD surroundings (chipset), or I've heard that partitioning hdd in GUID style brings stability, currently it's in MBR type. As for versions: Darwin Kernel Version 9.4.0: Mon Jun 9 19:30:53 PDT 2008; root:xnu-1228.5.20~1/RELEASE_I386 System.kext=9.4.0 P.S. Is there a 64bit releases ? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Lanceomni Posted November 25, 2008 Share Posted November 25, 2008 That is interesting. I am using Voodoo 9.5.0 kernel and vanilla System.kext 9.5.0 and updated from 10.5.2 to 10.5.5 using Zeph's 0.3 ASU. Are you dual booting? Personally I saw no difference in stability between GUID and MBR. If you have Activity Monitor open at the time of the freeze is there anything in particular running with high CPU or memory usage? Is the machine trying to go into Sleep Mode at the time of the freeze? The only other thing I have read about was problems with video drivers. One person mentioned that when he uninstalled NVinject the freezing stopped. As for 64bit version i am no expert but I believe the next version that comes out, 10.6 Snow Leopard, should provide more support. To see real performance increases you need 64bit drivers (kexts) I have used windows xp 64bit before but did not see i great improvement in performance and was discuraged due to the lack of drivers. From what I have read 10.6 will have 64bit Kexts. As for breaking the 4GB barrier for memory I am on a G5 Tower with 8GB of memory running 10.4.11. I think that apple uses a method called PAE (Physical Address Extension) to allow you to use more that 4GB of memory. I would assume that the PAE capability is produced by the operating system and not the hardware so you should be able to take advantage of this and use more than 4GB. There was a post about someone who fixed their 4GB problem by rewriting some drivers to address 64bit extensions. Link to Post. Obviously if you used maxmem and limited to say 2048 and you still have problems this shouldnt have anything to do with your problem. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
inhibitor Posted November 25, 2008 Share Posted November 25, 2008 Ahh I was to quick to judge. Yes indeed maxmem fixed my problem (just tried lower settings today, currently 3072). I asked about 64bits just to know if there are ready made distros, this mem cap is no problem i can live with that, until Snow Leopard :-P It feels very snappy anyway, much much better than 64bit Ubuntu Linux. With Ubuntu I went from my old Athlon XP 2.1Ghz with 1GB ram to this current 64bit system, and to my amazement it didn't feel much diffrent. Thanks again for your help. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
taypen Posted March 22, 2009 Share Posted March 22, 2009 I've also noticed that if you put only 1 download at time it doesn't freeze. maybe it would work with 2 too, but I'm stable with 1. P.S. The memory solution didn't worked for me. i have 2gb memory. in boot.plist I've set to 2048 and it was freezing until i limited active downloads. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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