5 ms·

> You know, the one where a new daemon decides to blow up every release and consume enormous amounts of CPU. What are you referring to, for specific example?

> You know, the one where a new daemon decides to blow up every release and consume enormous amounts of CPU. What are you referring to, for specific example? I haven’t had any of the symptoms you list.

JimDabell 3y ago
Not those exact symptoms, but Apple replaced mDNSResponder with discoveryd then gave up and went back to mDNSResponder because they couldn’t get discoveryd stable: https://mjtsai.com/blog/2015/05/27/mac-os-x-10-10-4-replaces-discoveryd-with-mdnsresponder/ https://mjtsai.com/blog/2015/05/27/mac-os-x-10-10-4-replaces...
mcculley 3y ago
contactsd was burning 100% of a core for years for me until a recent update.
- bborud 3y ago
  ....and as if on cue, contactsd started consuming lots of CPU on my machine. Goddamnit you jinxed me. :)
- jjtheblunt 3y ago
  It’s pretty wild, considering that I haven’t had any of those issues and I’m on Apple stuff continually all the way back to next step days. I guess I’ve just had good luck in comparison.
  - mcculley 3y ago
    I am certain that it is because I have a large address book and one or more cards exposed a bug. I expect that people with simpler address books (almost all users) never saw this. I reported it to Apple and never heard anything back, as expected. If you google, you will find others reporting the same misbehavior.
    - jjtheblunt 3y ago
      Have you tried turning off syncing of contacts with Gmail accounts/Outlook/Exchange servers, just as an experiment? Perhaps there's some protocol mismatch between contactsd and external ldap or whatever they use servers. I thought of this not because of a cpu core craziness, but a strange symptom i had for many months. On one of my macs i could see known people only as their phone numbers, and on another mac i saw their names: i had contact syncing settings toggled on/off differently between the two macs, wrt Gmail and Outlook servers (and i didn't realize i'd put any contacts on those servers...thought they were all in MacOS contacts).
      - mcculley 3y ago
        I was not synchronizing with anything but iCloud. Before the recent update that fixed it, I was in the habit of disabling WiFi when on battery so that my laptop would not drain my battery. contactsd definitely was doing something dumb around synchronization. At one point, I backed up my ~8,000 contacts and deleted them all. Everything was fine until I restored them.
bborud 3y ago
Three examples are powerd, bluetoothd, and more recently CalendarAgent. CalendarAgent spending 100% CPU syncing a calendar that has almost no entries is...astonishing. For powerd and bluetoothd I eventually wrote a program to keep an eye on them and terminate them if they use close to 100% CPU for more than a minute or so.
- jjtheblunt 3y ago
  Thanks for the examples. It’s very interesting that it happens to someone that others and I haven’t had that happen to me, but I believe you. It would be really interesting to know, once the issue is fixed, in some future release, what triggered it for some people and not others.

JimDabell 3y ago

Not those exact symptoms, but Apple replaced mDNSResponder with discoveryd then gave up and went back to mDNSResponder because they couldn’t get discoveryd stable: https://mjtsai.com/blog/2015/05/27/mac-os-x-10-10-4-replaces-discoveryd-with-mdnsresponder/ https://mjtsai.com/blog/2015/05/27/mac-os-x-10-10-4-replaces...

mcculley 3y ago

contactsd was burning 100% of a core for years for me until a recent update.

bborud 3y ago
....and as if on cue, contactsd started consuming lots of CPU on my machine. Goddamnit you jinxed me. :)
jjtheblunt 3y ago
It’s pretty wild, considering that I haven’t had any of those issues and I’m on Apple stuff continually all the way back to next step days. I guess I’ve just had good luck in comparison.
- mcculley 3y ago
  I am certain that it is because I have a large address book and one or more cards exposed a bug. I expect that people with simpler address books (almost all users) never saw this. I reported it to Apple and never heard anything back, as expected. If you google, you will find others reporting the same misbehavior.
  - jjtheblunt 3y ago
    Have you tried turning off syncing of contacts with Gmail accounts/Outlook/Exchange servers, just as an experiment? Perhaps there's some protocol mismatch between contactsd and external ldap or whatever they use servers. I thought of this not because of a cpu core craziness, but a strange symptom i had for many months. On one of my macs i could see known people only as their phone numbers, and on another mac i saw their names: i had contact syncing settings toggled on/off differently between the two macs, wrt Gmail and Outlook servers (and i didn't realize i'd put any contacts on those servers...thought they were all in MacOS contacts).
    - mcculley 3y ago
      I was not synchronizing with anything but iCloud. Before the recent update that fixed it, I was in the habit of disabling WiFi when on battery so that my laptop would not drain my battery. contactsd definitely was doing something dumb around synchronization. At one point, I backed up my ~8,000 contacts and deleted them all. Everything was fine until I restored them.

bborud 3y ago

Three examples are powerd, bluetoothd, and more recently CalendarAgent. CalendarAgent spending 100% CPU syncing a calendar that has almost no entries is...astonishing. For powerd and bluetoothd I eventually wrote a program to keep an eye on them and terminate them if they use close to 100% CPU for more than a minute or so.

jjtheblunt 3y ago
Thanks for the examples. It’s very interesting that it happens to someone that others and I haven’t had that happen to me, but I believe you. It would be really interesting to know, once the issue is fixed, in some future release, what triggered it for some people and not others.