Fault CR2

[Phillips]

I have a Mac Pro (late 2013) 3.5 Ghz 6-core Intel Xeon E5
Running mac OS 10.13.6.
A week ago it suddenly started getting kernal panic and it would restart. Sometimes it would restart up to three times.

In another post I stated that I knew that my back-up hard drive was failing. It was plugged in but not powered-up.
I took a bootable 10.15 installer and ran the disk utility and it said I had problems in the Apple SSD (PCI Internal Disk) Nothing wrong in the container or the Macintosh HD. I really didn't want to run recovery so I took a different spare HD that I used on another computer and used SuperDuper to make a new back-up copy.
I then booted up with it and ran (disk utility) through the Apple SSD PCI INternal Disk and it said everything was fine along with the container and the HD.

Computer ran fine so I thought it was the dieing back-up that was causing the problem.

Nope I was wrong. Just did two restart to get going.
No new software installed. No new programs. Nothing different than before this all starte

I thought it might be the SSD.

As I said nothing has changed on it, maybe a upgrade on firefox (does it automaticly)

 

[Phillips]

Update
I ran the diagnostic test and nothing was found wrong.

I thought for sure it would show a ram problem.

 

[chscag]

I looked over the panic report and really could not spot anything that stands out. And if you ran diagnostics and that didn't find anything, that makes it harder to pin down.

However, kernal panics are almost always caused by hardware faults: Power Supply, bad memory, flaky hard drive, bad graphics card, etc. Your Mac Pro is a fairly recent model (late 2013) but that doesn't mean one of those components couldn't be bad or intermittent.

On the chance that it could be a software glitch, try booting to safe mode and run that way for a while to see if it panics. Let us know. We have several of our members who are very familiar with the Mac Pro and maybe they can spot something.

 

[MarkAllread]

That would have been my guess too. Or maybe power supply. Maybe too much load on the PS.
Have you done the usual reset of SMC (on Mac Pro just disconnect power cable, leave for a minute or so, (I always press and hold power button for few seconds too) and then power up again).
If it was my Mac Pro, before going deeper, I'd probably run EtreCheck, then pull all the RAM except 1 stick just to be sure.

 

[Phillips]

I will reset the SMC to make sure. The thing that makes this hard to try to pin down is it just happens randomly. Never know when it will happen. That's why I was thinking RAM. I have 4-4GB installed.
Was thinking of going to 2-8GB new ones.
Question, what is EtreCheck?

 

[MarkAllread]

Etrecheck is basically a debugging tool. I still use an old version but there are updates. It has helped me in the past. It is free for the basic version.
You can find it here https://etrecheck.com/etrecheck
Another simple old tool you might try is Rember. It is a very basic free old memory checker. There are others, but this one has also helped me.
You can find it here https://www.kelleycomputing.net/rember/
I'm running 10.12, so I can't comment on these apps' usefulness in 10.13

 

[Phillips]

I went to the Apple store and got the Ztrecheck and it said "No Major Problems"
I just reset the SMC so will see if that took care of the problem.

Just got done running Rember and "All tests passed"

Thanks everybody for helping me

 

[chscag]

I doubt Etrecheck could spot an intermittent problem. But it's good you ran it anyway.

As I stated above, random kernel panics are almost always caused by hardware. So keep your eye on that; specifically the PS, memory modules, and graphics card.

Just got done running Rember and "All tests passed"

That's one of the best memory checkers. But keep in mind that your Mac Pro uses ECC memory modules and they don't always check the same.

 

[Phillips]

So far everything has been okay today. Kind of an odd thing now. In my first post I stated
"The DU said I had problems in the Apple SSD (PCI Internal Disk) Nothing wrong in the container or the Macintosh HD. I didn't write it down but I believe it said there were hardware problems. But when I ran the DU from the installer it showed nothing wrong. It still did a restart on me after all this.

That is when I posted on this forum.


So just now I ran DU and it said everything was fine in all parts.. The only thing I did was do a SMC reset.

Weird. Maybe that fixed it or still glitchy not just now.

We'll see what the future brings.

Thanks

 

[MarkAllread]

Gremlins Phillips, gremlins
Fingers crossed.

 

[Phillips]

So yesterday it worked just fine. Early this morning it worked fine.

Was just checking my online mail and boom---restart.

I ran DU everything fine. I then ran Apple diagnostic test everything.

I then ran EtreCheck,MAJOR ISSUES.

RUNAWAY CPU.

I then ran it again and everything was fine.
Here are the two screens from the EtreCheck.

What is causing this?

 

[MarkAllread]

I have not seen that before. Bear in mind that free Etrecheck just takes readings while it is running and if you ran it again it would likely be ok. Also from what I understand a high cpu use can be quite common if there’s a lot of stuff going on in the background.

If you are interested in finding more about that, you can run Activity Monitor. (Aplications-Utilities folder.) But be aware that it can raise more questions than it answers if you don’t know what you are looking at.

I was not aware of the “issue” that chscag pointed out about ECC RAM. But if it finds a problem that usually means there is one rather than not finding one. Still I think you might want to run it (or some other RAM check) that stresses your RAM a bit, perhaps chscag can suggest something.

Run several passes and if your reset happens when the machine has been warmed up a bit, then do the RAM check in the same condition.

My Mac Pro is the cheese Grater model and I’m not familiar with the trash can, nevertheless here are other things I would be inclined to do.
-Start up in safe mode, this does some small maintenance jobs
-Disconnect all peripherals such as other drives.
-Pull the RAM and leave one stick. Run the computer hard for a couple of days. If it still resets, change it for another.
-If it was my Mac, I’d pull my video card and re-seat it and also the video card power cables and any other pci cards I have.

Sometimes I find the best way to find an intermittent problem is to find a way to reproduce it or make the problem permanent..at least it is easier to find what to replace ;-)

One last thing…did you run Apple Diagnostics or just Disk Utility???
I think your machine qualifies to run it…
https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT202731

 

[harryb2448]

What is Cycling.74 driver? It appears as the first item on the Console report and may be the problem.

 

[Phillips]

I have not seen that before. Bear in mind that free Etrecheck just takes readings while it is running and if you ran it again it would likely be ok. Also from what I understand a high cpu use can be quite common if there’s a lot of stuff going on in the background.

If you are interested in finding more about that, you can run Activity Monitor. (Aplications-Utilities folder.) But be aware that it can raise more questions than it answers if you don’t know what you are looking at.

I was not aware of the “issue” that chscag pointed out about ECC RAM. But if it finds a problem that usually means there is one rather than not finding one. Still I think you might want to run it (or some other RAM check) that stresses your RAM a bit, perhaps chscag can suggest something.

Run several passes and if your reset happens when the machine has been warmed up a bit, then do the RAM check in the same condition.

My Mac Pro is the cheese Grater model and I’m not familiar with the trash can, nevertheless here are other things I would be inclined to do.
-Start up in safe mode, this does some small maintenance jobs
-Disconnect all peripherals such as other drives.
-Pull the RAM and leave one stick. Run the computer hard for a couple of days. If it still resets, change it for another.
-If it was my Mac, I’d pull my video card and re-seat it and also the video card power cables and any other pci cards I have.

Sometimes I find the best way to find an intermittent problem is to find a way to reproduce it or make the problem permanent..at least it is easier to find what to replace ;-)

One last thing…did you run Apple Diagnostics or just Disk Utility???
I think your machine qualifies to run it…
https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT202731

I did run Apple diagnostics and disk utility both were fine.
Shortly after I posted it did another shut down.
Digging into activity monitor I saw under "energy impact" had two large spikes. My guess that was the restarts.
So digging deeper into activity, I think it was in the logs. The only thing that my untrained eye noticed that when it did the restarts there was a "Mac OS error" 67050.
This showed up both times when it restarted.
The energy impact showed the spotlight at 70.
It also shows safari bookmarks sync updater.
I don't use safari.

 

[harryb2448]

Try disabling Cycling'74 and see what happens.

 

[Phillips]

Try disabling Cycling'74 and see what happens.

No idea what that is.

 

[Phillips]

I hope what I'm reporting is helping and not being a big pain for everybody trying to help.

It just did another restart.

I went immediately into Activity Monitor to see what was going on.

Under the CPU-%CPU mds showed up to 115% bounced around for a little (110% or there abouts) then went down rather quickly to .1% When the mds went down the mds stores went to 110%. Then both went down.

Seems like it does it more after it warms up in the afternoon. Just was on firefox nothing else.

 

[MarkAllread]

I did say that Activity Monitor can raise more questions!!

I also see that things are now being suggested that were suggested before, such as safe mode and removing RAM so we are going in circles.
I suggest you go back to some basics and as previously mentioned, h/w is a very likely cause. Focus on that for a while instead of digging too far into Activity Monitor. I suggested that mainly for your interest.

BTW, the only Cycling '74 I can Google-find is a website with Mac audio software

 

[chscag]

I agree. Forget the Activity Monitor and focus on finding what hardware is causing the reboots. I hate to suggest parts swapping but sometimes it becomes necessary.

I'm not familiar with the "Trash Can" Mac Pro machines but I do understand that they're not as easy as the traditional Mac Pro chassis machines to get into.

You might want to go to the ifixit web site (www.ifixit.com) and review the take apart and breakdown instructions for your model Mac Pro. Very informative site. They also have a forum where you can get help for repairs and other questions.

I strongly suggest you take advantage of that if you wish to resolve your current problem.

 

[MacInWin]

mds is the indexing function for Spotlight. It runs to index your drive for searching. That's probably not the issue.