Reporting the Mac 1.7.x recurring crash issue

Anyone unfamilar with the new Macintosh client's frequent-crash problem should review the discussions here and here. Since this bug also kills the crash reporter, Linden Labs may not be aware of its widespread occurance. As Laukosargas Svarog noted in an earlier discussion, we will need to manually bring this issue to LL's attention to ensure that it is properly addressed.

If you experience frequent recurring crashes similar to those outlined in the above-linked discussions, please file a bug report using the option available under the in-game 'help' menu. If we are all diligent in filing the same sort of bug report, we can help Linden Labs recognise the scope of this issue.

My own report is appended below as a reference model, but feel free to modify it to reflect your own experiences as you see fit:


Subject: SL1.7.x Mac client 'memory leak' issue

Steps to reproduce the bug:
Log onto the 1.7.x Mac client, do most anything until the cache approximately fills up.

Observed results:
Audio dies but I can still operate in-world until taking any action which opens a new UI element, at which point SL crashes to the sound of much disk thrashing. The Crash Reporter is also dead with a blank window, and must be termintated with a force quit from within the finder itself (cmd-opt-esc has no effect).

The next SL log-in after said crash hangs upon attempting to contact SL's server, but a manual SL quit and restart allows the client to log in normally the second time.

This issue is predictable, repeatable, and widespread amongst SL1.7.x Mac users. We can't file normal crash reports, though, because the Crash Reporter also locks up!

Expected results:
To keep the client running for longer than short fixed intervals.

ah so it is a bug! Yes same happens to me.

A similar crash happens when I drag folders to myself for clothes changing.

...yep, i think the trigger event can be anything which is more complex than a basic in-world interaction - opening a dialog, viewing a profile, dragging an outfit; it's difficult for me to describe in words the class of events which kick in the crash, but i know them intuitively...

...i'm sure many other users struggling through the same mac client instabilites know them intuitively, too...

I know LL is actively working on the Mac OS / SL client issues. Just keep sending those detailed bug reports. Don't know if the borked Crash Reporter has been fixed.... since I have not crashed since the 1.7.1(3) rolling patch today.

Let's hope significant progress has been made.

The crash reporter bug has not been fixed for me, although after my fifth SL crash of the evening it at least showed the text and buttons.
Out of probably at least 50 crashes since the upgrade, the crash reporter has work exactly once.

I have them all including the non working crash reporter.... and the command Z work sometimes and works NOT sometimes.

But yes I crash regulary.. since 1.7...

But WHEN it works its great... my screen are sharper.. all better- all are faster..

The 2 steps forward 3 back are no fun.. (like syrup) but its not like that at every sim or every day...

I cross my fingers (yes they are al blue).. and beg.. pls pls pls..


/Tina owner of the [ EXAKT ] stores

Just to reinforce Myrrh's suggestion: most of what he? she? describes is happening to me. Reporting it via Live Help, Bug Report, or even e-mailing [email]bugs@secondlife.com[/email] gets a response, and assurance that they're working on it: so DO please start making reports yourself. 'The squeaky wheel gets the grease', remember, and because we Mac people are a rather small proportion of all SL participants, we have to squeak louder!

One other thing. I tried clearing the cache as someone suggested but it didn't seem to make much difference to the slowing down etc.

Kind regards
Devi
iMac G5 1.6GHz processor, 768 MB, OS 10.3.8, Geforce 5200 graphics card, 64 MB VRAM

A lindin assured me that it is being worked on, as far the slow texture loading and other issues, I have no idea, but they seem to be aware of the crash issue and are working on it.

Yes, I am filing bug reports everytime the client crashes. Thanks for the sample bug report. That is very helpful, and I plan to use it in my reports.

Keep those reports going in. Stay in touch with the Linden "Mac User" Liaison. Can't mention his name, but we all know and love him. He is great guy.

I still see many problems related to the Windoze version, too - including frequent crashes and inability to even login.

Anima is correct.... "'The squeaky wheel gets the grease', remember, and because we Mac people are a rather small proportion of all SL participants, we have to squeak louder!"

Keep squeaking....

...okay, you guys have touched on an issue which i believe merits further discussion - should we be sending a bug report *every* time we get the standard 1.7 mac crash, or just once per user and consider it appropriately addressed?..

...i ask because i'm concerned that if each one of us sends a half-dozen or more repetitive bug reports per day, we might be construed as effectively spamming linden lab's bug system and shrugged off as a minor issue involving a just a few disgruntled users; girl-who-cried-wolf and all that...

...what do you guys think?..it would be nice to get some feedback from linden labs on what they consider to be an appropriate level of bug reporting, at least while the crash reporter's down...

What specific hardware and OS combos are experiencing this? Can we pin it down to certain video cards? Certain OS versions? A combination of the above?

I'm on a Mac Mini, with the standard video card in it (an ATI Radeon 9200 with 32MB DDR video memory), running Mac OS 10.3.9 and SL 1.7.1(2).

I have crashed a few times, but never as you describe.

For me, the lack of texture caching and texture loading problems, plus an apallingly slow frame rate of around 2.5 fps, are more of an issue than crashes. Textures clearly are not remaining in cache, and are constantly dropping and reloading.

...well, if we want to formally collect datapoints within this thread, i'm running OSX 10.4.2 on a 2004 dual 2.0 GHz G5 with a 64-meg nvidia fx5200 - i assume everyone uses SL 1.7.1(2) at this point...

...being that your patience with current performance is running short, could your own lack of experiencing these symptoms simply be an artifact of not doing enough in any single session for the cache/memory leak to fill up and bring everything crashing down?..we should establish definitively whether this bug affects all mac users or merely a subset thereof...

I have a Dual 2.6 GHz G5 with 2 GB memory and an ATI Radeon X850 XT with 256 VRAM. Yet the 1.7 update brings my entire system to a griding hault.

Unfortunatly, as you all know, we Mac users are a minority, and in tern, will be the last to be dealt with. In the mean time, while Linden cleans up the mess, everyone head over to Burotu and we'll have drinks and sit in the sun.

Way to go Linden! You're as Mickey Mouse as I thought you were.

Powerbook G4 15", 1GB memory, 64mb ATI.

Worked perfectly with 1.6, very rarely crashed.


Since 1.7 I've not been able to stay online more than 25 minutes.

Cache fills, sound goes, next UI widget opening causes a crash.

Large memory leaks.

Crash reporter freezes, probably due to lack of memory and network as it launches.

!!!!

yep I've experienced wide spread stability issues with the client and the crash reporter.

The crash reported it self never seems to complete, and locks up on the instances it starts to run. The window dosen't even draw all the way

I've noticed that the more dialogs I open, the more the client slows down.

on-top of the client crashes, I've had issues with buttons in gui windows not functioning properly. (clicking on tabs, and tabs not responding) Some times I have to click several times, or switch windows, or move windows around, before tabs or buttons will work.

...well folks, i've received two direct messages from lindens tonight that they're aware of the problem, it's a known mac bug, and they're working on it... ^_^


...let's all be civil about this and avoid obnoxious bugreport bombing; i'm sure once per user is plenty...

Woot! me too, at last a positive response from LL, thank you Dan.

I was on for an extended period last night. Several hours of shopping and using scripted animations to play with friends. I tend to max out my cache, so perhaps it never quite filled. Texture refresh sucked, and I was losing textures that should have remained cached. Several vendor textures I wanted to look at would not rez at all. My personal frame rate was only 3.5 or so at best, unless I zoomed in on some featureless spot, although the sim frame rate was often reporting as 45 fps, with no time dilation factor...

I gave a nice no-copy (but transfer OK) dress to a friend as a gift. When she put it on, she had some strange texture artifact stuck to her leg, below the hemline. The dress appears to be ruined now.

Later we got several 'performance warnings' from the Lindens. Didn't see any change, but performance was already poor.

At the end of the night, it *DID* crash on me, quite abruptly, when I attempted to change clothes just before my session was to end. And just as I got back on-line, we were getting warnings from the Lindens not to move things in or out of inventory...

...ceera, a crash as you were attempting to change clothes sounds precisely symptomatic of this common bug - did the crash reporter automatically launch and close normally for you after the crash?..if you experienced a crash reporter malfunction, i speculate that you finally did enough within a single session to trigger the 'memory leak' condition...a key symptom to look for is whether environmental sounds are still playing immediately before the crash (discounting wind, which seems to always be audible)...

...as for your texture cycling, i believe the texture issue is common to both the mac and windows 1.7.x clients, especially noticable in areas with lots and lots of textures like stores...it's supposedly being addressed but is at times frustrating to live with nonetheless...

...regarding your really low framerates, i do know that ATI cards aren't supposed to be the best SL performers due to poorer openGL drivers...i've lived with similar framerates on my own 64 meg nvidia fx5200 all along, unless i'm in a fairly empty sim, but just last night i noticed that if i run in a smaller window my framerate improves considerably, so try reducing your resolution (i'm sure my fullscreen resolution of 1920x1200 doesn't help matters)...also try dropping your draw distance down to 64 meters if you haven't already, but other than that and turning down all your grahics options, i don't know that there's much that can be done to improve the situation short of reducing resolution...personally, i tend to keep everything turned down unless i'm hanging around a reasonably empty area...

its sooo great to see a thread on this! i've been worried it was just me with the problem. i'm on an imac 2 ghz powerpc g5, 17 inch with wireless mouse and keyboard, 512 mb ddr sdram. i have all the same symptoms described here. i'm glad to hear that at least lindens know about it and are working on it. i look forward to the patch

Rylee, snap! I have an identical setup to yours, and similar problems to thsoe descriebd by everyone above.
Funnily enough, I used to have thes ame problem with version 1.6 as with 1.7 when changing skin, clothes etc, viz., having to take off and put on items one by one... If I simply moved a complete 'kit' in its fodler onto my avatar, it would take _ages_ to sort istelf out.

when I have trouble with my clothing; I change groups. I know it sounds silly, but it seems to work.

...that sounds just like the invisible-avatar fix, kurt - i'll have to try it sometime when my outfit's taking forever to update to see if it helps in that situation, too...

I just crashed while attempting to upload a texture - I was able to select the file, but SL crashed before showing me the preview image.

I read this thread, cleared out the cache which was exactly 1 Gb in size, and restarted SL. Didn't do a single thing except try to upload the texture again.

Crashed immediately after choosing the file. The only difference between the first crash with full cache, and second crash with empty cache was that the second crash didn't require a Force Quit.

12" powerbook, 1 GHz G4, 512 MB RAM, GeForce FX Go5200 32MB

I have not been able to upload any textures since v1.7 arrived. However, I can safely and enjoyably do almost anything else (opening Profile windows is iffy, though)

i have this same EXACT problem... 5-6 times a day.
I have logged one crash report... I'll prolly do one every other day or so.