Resolved ReportCrash Loop

[r0k]

Since the 10.8.3 update, my late 2011 hires antiglare 15" Macbook Pro fans have been running constantly. Now I've gotten somewhat used to this since Apple started this Java war with 10.8.1 disabling Java. My fans go like crazy randomly as Java loses its marbles and my Crashplan backup stops working. This was different. This time the fans come on 2 minutes after boot and stay on.

In the console, I saw 4,000 entries an hour. Almost all of them had something to do with ReportCrash. In Activity Monitor, ReportCrash had 96 to 600% cpu. I decided to search google and MR to find a solution. I tried deleting caches, checking disk permissions, all to no avail. With Apple support on the phone, I reset SMC, cleared PRAM and verified Macintosh HD. All to no avail. The system was running so poorly, I couldn't even launch the remote support app.

Finally we decided to do internet recovery. What a joke. It said it would finish in 12 hours. I don't have that kind of time. I whipped out a usb stick with 10.8 on it and booted from that and I gave the Apple support agent (and http://www.apple.com/feedback) a huge earful about internet recovery that takes 12 hours. OSX is now officially worse than windows in the recovery department. I remember wasting 90 minutes dealing with Windows but never 12 hours waiting for an over the internet install. BTW, this isn't only Apple's fault. It's Comcast too. Testmy.net says I get 24 MB down but Comcast does all kind of throttling and other silliness that left me with a 12 hour estimate for completion of recovery. Shame on Apple for putting my Mac recovery at the mercy of clueless idiots like Comcast.

Anyway now that I'm back to 10.8, my fans are off and Crashplan is working again. I have to file my taxes in a few days so I don't plan to tinker with this crap any more until after April 15th. Until then (and possibly a LOT longer, I'm a 10.8 user).

 

[r0k]

Well it's day 2 with a Macbook Pro that doesn't suck. No loud fans. CPU temp (iStat menus) fluctuating between 139 and 154 degrees (not 190 to 200!). Crashplan running. Spotlight index complete. The only thing I haven't turned back on yet is Time Machine. The 10.8.2 combo update sits unused in my downloads folder. And there it will probably remain for_a_while until I convince myself that everything is working well enough to move on to tinkering with OS updates. Wait. OS updates used to be considered tinkering when I had Windows and Linux boxes. On OSX they have been a non-event. Since 2005. Now I cringe whenever the app store icon has a red badge floating nearby. O how I long for the good old days...

Now to be fair to Apple... Which is hard right now after 7 phone calls with support, 2 of which were dropped on their end... I must admit that they did mention that this is not typical behavior for Mountain Lion and they suggested that updating to 10.8.3 should be uneventful. I don't believe them. Yet. I know that 10.8.1 and beyond bring that whole nasty JVM quagmire that breaks not only Crashplan but my ability to order checks from my bank. I may agree that having a JVM lying around is a bad thing but I think the ability to back up my files and pay my bills is more important to me right now than Apple's low opinion of their own JVM.

Did I mention that Time Machine failed me twice? It was Crashplan that saved my wife's data. Not Time Machine with its "corrupted destination volume" bullcrap that I found out AFTER her disk was wiped and when I tried to do a restore.

I really wish I had found a solution to the ReportCrash loop but everything I found both on MR and the wider web led me to nothing that made matters better. In fact the steps I took seemed to make matters markedly worse. I suppose I really should boot into safe mode just to prove to myself that it is available now. Sheesh. Why am I spending so much time twiddling with something that is supposed to "just work?"

In the course of testing to make sure things were still working, I decided to run iPhoto. It REQUIRES 10.8.2. Drat. So I installed the combo update. So far no runaway ReportCrash and no fans running but my plan to "sit this one out" and stick at 10.8 didn't last a whole 2 days. Perhaps I'll download the 10.8.3 combo update and give it a try now that I know how to get back to stable 10.8.2. As the Apple support rep was saying, perhaps something "went wrong" during the 10.8.3 update so if I run it from a combo download I won't hit the same problem again. For now I'm at 10.8.2. For now.