MAMA's Techno-Geek Thread

[bethandlouis]

I shut the lid and it went to sleep. I haven't done it in the apple menu. I seem to only have the problem when performing a shut down.

[GadgetGav]

Ah, I thought this was all sleeps - it's all shut downs..? That's still not normal. If there's a process running that prevents it shutting down it should post a warning and cancel the shutdown (ie keep running normally). That's what mine did last night when I updated iTunes and it was rebuilding the library. I assume you've run Software Update recently, or at least that the genius bar did...

[snid]

If you're feeling investigative, go to Applications/Utilities/Console and look at console.log and system.log (there's items in the file menu for those, or click on the "Logs" button in the toolbar). Things are in there with timestamps, so you might be able to narrow it down on around the time you shutdown...

It's normal for there to be a lot of error-looking things in those logs, but there's also a good chance that there's a really big clue burried in there somewhere.

Another option might be booting up in verbose mode, which I think also does a verbose mode shutdown (screen goes funky, and winds up looking like an old-school PC during bootup and shutdown). Umm... what's the magic key combo for that again? Hold down command-v during bootup until you see something different happen.

Feeling really frisky? Fire up a terminal window and issue the shutdown command from there... I'll try a few things in a minute and post again with some more ideas.

[snid]

Alright, a little rebooting to make sure I've got things right...

My first choice would be to get the computer turned off, then start it up again. As soon as it show signs of life, hold down command-v until the screen goes black and text starts appearing on it. Chances are there will be nothing of interest on the startup. But, when you then shutdown, the screen will again (hopefully) go black with text on it. Perhaps something interesting will show up then. Mine shuts down pretty quickly. The last thing that show up on the screen is something like "CPU Halted" which sits there for a couple of seconds, then the computer turns off.

Second choice, look at stuff in the logs. Use Applications/Utilities/Console and look at most likely console.log and system.log - but there are a lot of other logs available from that application too.

Last choice, which most likely won't do anything useful, is to fire up a Terminal window (Applications/Utilities/Terminal) and type, without the quotes, "shutdown -h now" - the response will probably be something along the lines of "you can't do that". If that happens, type "sudo shutdown -h now" and enter the root (administrator) password when asked for a password... if this is getting too geeky, just ignore this last choice. If you do get the shutdown command to work, some stuff will appear in the Terminal window before it dissapears as part of the shutdown process. Use this shutdown method in tandem with the verbose startup / shutdown (command-v during startup) to see prettty much everything that can be seen during shutdown.

I'll forgoe the geek trifecta.

[cyclotouriste]

Quote: Originally Posted by snid (original)

It's normal for there to be a lot of error-looking things in those logs, but there's also a good chance that there's a really big clue burried in there somewhere.

Burried? Do you mean Juan Valdez is in her PC?

[GadgetGav]

Hey Jason, since you're doing so well as an Apple Genius, I've got a question...
When I had the MacBook Pro with my last job, I bought an external SATA enclosure to dump the video from my new HD camcorder onto. I bought two 250Gb drives to put in it and set them up as a RAID array in the Disk Utility. Now that I've changed jobs and the new place got me a Dell desktop instead of an Apple laptop ( ), I've bought a PCI card from OWC that can do internal or external SATA. It says it has a certain kind of interface chip that can handle disks bigger than 132Gb and it says it works in everything from a G3 blue & white up. When I put the card in my old G3 blue & white, the card works OK but when I connect the external disks, it says 'you've inserted a disk with no information that mac os can understand. ignore, eject or initialize?' I choose ignore and the disk(s) don't show up on the desktop, but they are there if I go into Disk Utility and they report the right capacity. On the laptop they'd show up on the desktop and one 250Gb disk... Any ideas..? Are RAID arrays tied to a CPU..?

[snid]

Sorry Gav, I have no idea about disk related stuff.

[GadgetGav]

Josh? Do you deal with RAID issues..?
I think I'll try hooking it up to a friend's MBP and see if it works there... at least that will narrow down where the problem is.

[m2smith]

I'm no help with Gav's RAID problem - BUT the new iTunes 7 has GAPLESS PLAYBACK! Abbey Road and a whole bunch of Techno I have finally sounds right on my iPod

[GBMINI]

Surely the RAID array format will be dependant on the software implementation - the Apple software is very unlikely to do things the same as the Dell ...

[jwardell]

I just tried shutting down my macbook and closed the lid. Nothing out of the ordinary. I heard the hard drive spin down at the same time as well.
Beth if you can duplicate it enough, try booting from the install CD and shutting down from there and see if the same thing happens. Slight chance the system or soemthing is corrupted or not fully shutting down...if so you can do an archive & install of the system SW.

Gav RAID arrays are usually tied to their host. Weather that is an external dual-bay drive that ties them together in its hardware, a big rack unit, or just disk utility tying two external drives together in software. Once you move it out of its host, I would expect to need to format it. So not tied to the computer, but tied to the raid controller type.

[Oldpaint]

Quote: Originally Posted by m2smith (original)

I'm no help with Gav's RAID problem - BUT the new iTunes 7 has GAPLESS PLAYBACK! Abbey Road and a whole bunch of Techno I have finally sounds right on my iPod

I'm spending hours now cleaning up my collection of music so the album view looks good. Abbey Road Rules!

[GadgetGav]

Ian, I'm not moving the RAID to the Dell, I'm putting it on another Mac at home.

It seems that it's tied to the interface card, not the hardware controller in the enclosure. The RAID was software RAID (I think) via Disk Utility, and I'm using the same enclosure, but a different interface card. Looks like I'll have to copy it all off, reformat with the new card and move it all back.

[Aqualung]

Quote: Originally Posted by m2smith (original)

I'm no help with Gav's RAID problem - BUT the new iTunes 7 has GAPLESS PLAYBACK! Abbey Road and a whole bunch of Techno I have finally sounds right on my iPod

I DL'd and upgraded last night and had major probs, so I went back to the July version...and I'm not the only one having probs, click here

[Aqualung]

The Diebold voting machine issue that just won't die here