Re: Old Mac Mini - what system to upgrade to?

E Z Peaces wrote:
David Empson wrote:

What do you actually see on the computer during this 30 second delay?

It varies. The display comes up in a second or so. There may be no cursor. If there is a cursor, clicking something has no effect.

I have my clock showing seconds on the menu bar. It may freeze 38 seconds. It may freeze for part of the period or not at all.

Menu meters shows my CPU usage on the menu bar. Once in a while it will show a continued 100% during the delay. Otherwise it may show little CPU activity.

The read light on the external drive will be on.

The diversity of symptoms suggests there are various pieces of information that may be lacking for 38 seconds at wake-up.

What but my external drive could take a consistent 38 seconds to supply various pieces of info? Maybe mine takes longer than Hitachi says because the enclosure doesn't supply a surge with a full 12 volts at a full 1.9 amps. Maybe 3.5" disks required less spin-up current when the enclosure was designed, or maybe the enclosure engineers found that limiting spin-up current would extend the life of a disk.


I get what might be the same problem on my MacBook Pro - sometimes it
makes me wait something in the order of 10 to 50 seconds after wakeup
before the screen comes to life. Prior to that point it has no active
network connections either.

I have found that with Safari running, I may have only a sliver of free memory. I quit Safari before the next time my computer slept. When it woke an hour later, the process took only three seconds according to the log.

If that's not coincidence, maybe the problem is that on wake up, the computer may need bits if information that have been paged out, and with a disk that spins up slowly, that may take a long time to get.


I put it to sleep after quitting Safari, so there was plenty of free memory. It woke at 8:27:15. For the first several seconds I had a cursor and there was no read light on the external drive. Then the read light came on and I got a beach ball. That may have lasted 20 seconds. According to the log, the whole process lasted 39 seconds:

Jun 29 08:27:16 -mac-mini launchd: Server 0 in bootstrap 1103 uid 0: "/usr/sbin/lookupd"[464]: exited abnormally: Hangup

Jun 29 08:27:16 -mac-mini configd[41]: posting notification com.apple.system.config.network_change

Jun 29 08:27:18 -mac-mini kernel[0]: USB caused wake event (EHCI)

Jun 29 08:27:20 -mac-mini kernel[0]: UniNEnet::monitorLinkStatus - Link is up at 100 Mbps - Full Duplex

Jun 29 08:27:34 -mac-mini DirectoryService[49]: CNodeRegister:RegisterLocalNetInfoHierarchy::Call to netinfo_domainname for local domain name lasted 10 seconds.

Jun 29 08:27:34 -mac-mini DirectoryService[49]: CNodeRegister:RegisterLocalNetInfoHierarchy::Call to netinfo_domainname returned domain name: /.

Jun 29 08:27:53 -mac-mini lookupd[479]: lookupd (version 369.5) starting - Sun Jun 29 08:27:53 2008

Jun 29 08:27:53 -mac-mini configd[41]: posting notification com.apple.system.config.network_change

Jun 29 08:27:54 -mac-mini lookupd[480]: lookupd (version 369.5) starting - Sun Jun 29 08:27:54 2008

The entry at 8:27:34 says it had been waiting 10 seconds for "Call to netinfo_domainname for local domain name." I don't usually call for local domain name on wake up. The beach ball probably started at 8:27:24, when the call went out.

So I think if there is memory available, the usual wake-up information will be in memory. If it's not in memory or I need other information, I have to wait for the disk to spin up.
.

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