Random hard reboots
#1
Question 
Hello, I've got quite a big problem with OSXBMC so I'm creating this thread to check if anyone else has the same problem and if there is anything I can do to help fixing it.

Here is the deal. I've been running OSXBMC since the first version. I'm running it on my MacBook (black one and a half year old) and I'm running it in full screen on my second display (a 20" Dell WFP2007). Leopard is fully updated with all the updates from Software update and the machine is working perfectly except the random hard reboots with OSXBMC.

I'm running OSXBMC every day for watching series/movies and it's working like a charm most of the time. I'm starting and stopping it quite a few times per day.

I'm the kind of person who never reboots a computer and leave everything open so it's kind of a pain in the a** when the computer hard reboots.

The reboot seems to happen at random a few days between when I start OSXBMC. I start it, like I always do, and I can see that it blanks my screens and tries to start but then something fails and the computer just reboots. I don't get any warning, crash notice or anything like that. The computer just reboots after a second or two without a word. It never comes that far as showing me the GUI so something probably fails miserably in the startup of OSXBMC that makes the whole computer hard reboot.

I don't have any other problems at all with the computer and it works fine except with these random reboots in OSXBMC.

This problem has happened for me with all versions of OSXBMC and I'm running the latest one at the moment. I always clean my settings between installing a new version and I completely (appzapper) remove the old install.

Has this happened to anyone else and is there anything you can do about it?
Is this a known problem or should a ticket be created?
Is it possible to capture the debug output, even thou it reboots, from OSXBMC?

I'm thankful for all the help and information I can get and I hope this bug can be figured out.
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#2
CyberPig Wrote:Hello, I've got quite a big problem with OSXBMC so I'm creating this thread to check if anyone else has the same problem and if there is anything I can do to help fixing it.

Here is the deal. I've been running OSXBMC since the first version. I'm running it on my MacBook (black one and a half year old) and I'm running it in full screen on my second display (a 20" Dell WFP2007). Leopard is fully updated with all the updates from Software update and the machine is working perfectly except the random hard reboots with OSXBMC.

I'm running OSXBMC every day for watching series/movies and it's working like a charm most of the time. I'm starting and stopping it quite a few times per day.

I'm the kind of person who never reboots a computer and leave everything open so it's kind of a pain in the a** when the computer hard reboots.

The reboot seems to happen at random a few days between when I start OSXBMC. I start it, like I always do, and I can see that it blanks my screens and tries to start but then something fails and the computer just reboots. I don't get any warning, crash notice or anything like that. The computer just reboots after a second or two without a word. It never comes that far as showing me the GUI so something probably fails miserably in the startup of OSXBMC that makes the whole computer hard reboot.

I don't have any other problems at all with the computer and it works fine except with these random reboots in OSXBMC.

This problem has happened for me with all versions of OSXBMC and I'm running the latest one at the moment. I always clean my settings between installing a new version and I completely (appzapper) remove the old install.

Has this happened to anyone else and is there anything you can do about it?
Is this a known problem or should a ticket be created?
Is it possible to capture the debug output, even thou it reboots, from OSXBMC?

I'm thankful for all the help and information I can get and I hope this bug can be figured out.


Don't have this problem. Haven't had any hard reboots. Closest thing is the OSXBMC does a hard crash. The rest of the computer is fine.

Did you post a copy of your log?

What's you hardware & software set-up?

More info might be helpful.
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#3
When your computer hard reboots note the time and immeditly copy of:
/var/log/system.log
/var/tmp/xbmc.log
Paste the both to paste bin and link them here noting the time it happened.
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#4
It sounds to me like there's something pathological going on with your machine. A hard reboot can be caused by bad RAM, buggy (graphics) drivers, but should never be caused by an application. The fact that we haven't heard more reports of such a thing leads me to believe that it may not be an XBMC code issue.

-elan
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#5
I can second what CyberPig has described. I have had this happen to me three times since I started using XBMC at the beginning of February. One caveat thought is it has not happened since I installed 0.4.5. If it does happen again I will do what iordonez suggested and post my logs.

BTW, I am running a 2ghz core2duo mac mini with 1Gb of RAM.
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#6
Sounds like bad memory to me or something to do with the integrated graphics drivers but my guess would be memory. Can you run a memory test or use another app which would put a strain on the memory?
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#7
I could try to run a memory test, anything you would recommend?
Does memtest run on macbooks yet?

Of course it could be my hardware but I haven't had any problem at all for over one and a half year with my machine and the only times this happens is at some random startup of XBMC.

I'll check the logs and paste them to the pastebin next time this happen, could be a couple of days thou.
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#8
CyberPig Wrote:I could try to run a memory test, anything you would recommend?
Does memtest run on macbooks yet?

Of course it could be my hardware but I haven't had any problem at all for over one and a half year with my machine and the only times this happens is at some random startup of XBMC.

I'll check the logs and paste them to the pastebin next time this happen, could be a couple of days thou.

My mini did exactly this when I first got it and left it in frontrow. Replaced the ram and it hasn't happened in 2 years.
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#9
Hello again, I've now done some testing of my hardware and I'm pretty sure that my hardware is working fine and that there is no problem with my memory/ram.

I've run:
* memtest for 3 hours and done two whole passes without a single error
* Apple Hardware test (from install DVD1) both basic and extended test without any errors at all.

On top of that, as I mentioned earlier, I haven't had a single problem with the machine before, except for this random hard reboot with XBMC.

I first tried to run the standard memtest86+ (http://www.memtest.org/) but I wasn't sure if that worked okay on an Intel Mac. As it turns out it doesn't seem to work very well. I got a lot of errors and just to be sure I asked my friend, who has the exact same macbook modell as me, to run the same test and he got the exact same memory errors on the exact same addresses.
I then found another modified version of memtest (http://matt.ucc.asn.au/memtest/) for Intel Macs and that is the test I ran for 3 hours without any errors at all.

I'm attaching the test results here to show you that everything seems to be fine with the hardware:
Image
Image
Image


I'll make sure to save and post the log output next time the reboot happens, hopefully that will give an hint about the problem.
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#10
Hmm, really sorry for the huge pictures but I'm not allowed to edit my post to fix it. I thought the forum would shrink them, sorry :/
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#11
I have had the same sort of issue with my brand new 2GHz, 2 GB RAM Mac Mini. It is hard to reproduce, but it seems to happen if you restart XBMC a few times. When this happens the Mac crashes completely and reboots.
I must say though that this has not happened to me in a while, probably since I installed 0.4.5.

I´ll try to keep an eye for this and see if it happens again.
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#12
Just got another hard reboot, first since I started this thread.

The MacBook had been up for about 15 h since the last reboot. I had started and stoped XBMC a couple of times (3-4) during that period. I checked the logs the first thing after the computer had booted up again.

/var/tmp/xbmc.log has the correct timestamp of the crash but was completely empty. The .old file only contained logs for the previous session, a few hours earlier.

I also checked the system log and found only two lines related to OSXBMC at the time of the reboot:
Apr 21 13:44:46 mb /Applications/XBMC.app/Contents/MacOS/XBMC[3686]: CPSGetCurrentProcess(): This call is deprecated and should not be called anymore.
Apr 21 13:44:46 mb /Applications/XBMC.app/Contents/MacOS/XBMC[3686]: CPSSetForegroundOperationState(): This call is deprecated and should not be called anymore.
Apr 21 13:45:07 localhost kernel[0]: npvhash=4095
Apr 21 13:44:59 localhost com.apple.launchctl.System[2]: fsck_hfs: Volume is journaled. No checking performed.
Apr 21 13:44:59 localhost com.apple.launchctl.System[2]: fsck_hfs: Use the -f option to force checking.

That's all I could find in the logs. Any idea if that could be related to the reboots?
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#13
CyberPig Wrote:Just got another hard reboot, first since I started this thread.

I also checked the system log and found only two lines related to OSXBMC at the time of the reboot:
Apr 21 13:44:46 mb /Applications/XBMC.app/Contents/MacOS/XBMC[3686]: CPSGetCurrentProcess(): This call is deprecated and should not be called anymore.
Apr 21 13:44:46 mb /Applications/XBMC.app/Contents/MacOS/XBMC[3686]: CPSSetForegroundOperationState(): This call is deprecated and should not be called anymore.
Apr 21 13:45:07 localhost kernel[0]: npvhash=4095
Apr 21 13:44:59 localhost com.apple.launchctl.System[2]: fsck_hfs: Volume is journaled. No checking performed.
Apr 21 13:44:59 localhost com.apple.launchctl.System[2]: fsck_hfs: Use the -f option to force checking.

That's all I could find in the logs. Any idea if that could be related to the reboots?

Those logs are totally normal (CPSS happens every time I start XBMC)... I'd hate to sound like a broken drum but the problem is hardware related when hard crashes like this happen. I've been a sysadmin for years managing over a thousand clients and I would be replacing memory for starters at this point. Also check /var/log/crashreporter.log I wouldn't be surprised if there are multiple instances of crashes in there.
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