Constant Kernel Panics – userspace watchdog timeout: no successful checkins from com.apple.WindowServer

[Maxtoid]

Just had this happen on my 2019 Mac Pro today. Except I came home from work and it was powered off and unresponsive to power button. Tried reseating the power cable in the back of the machine and still unresponsive to power button. Confirmed power source had power then tried removing power cable for 30 seconds and reseating it and the machine powered on and booted like normal, displaying this crash report after it came back up. Not sure if this crash was what caused the thing to die or not, but I'm somewhat concerned about a brand new machine dying like that and not coming back on without resetting SMC.....

 

[metacollin]

Hey, just wanted to chime in. I'm running a 'HackPro' (Catalina 10.15.3 on a Super Micro X11DAi, dual Xeon Platinum 8260 CPUs, Radeon VII for the GPU) and I have been getting these exact panics in the exact manner as all the other people having this problem.

If it is impacting my hardware, which is quite different, completely lacking an SMC etc., I think that it might be safe to say that this is neither a hardware problem with specific units (so don't worry if your brand new machine is having these panics), nor specific to any particular hardware.

If anything, I would suspect a problem with video drivers, but instead of causing the problem driver/kext from panicking directly, it is causing the window server to stall. If the stall is severe enough, the watchdog throws a panic.

I wonder if it might be influenced by which display one uses too.

A very ugly possible workaround might be to binpatch the watchdog.kext to disable (or extend) the 120 second timeout on the hope that the window server can recover, if only given enough time.

 

[metacollin]

Hmmmmmmmmmmmmmm what do we have here....

=>sudo sysctl debug.defang_watchdogd=1
debug.defang_watchdogd: 0 -> 1

Could it be so simple? We shall see!

Obviously this isn't really a 'fix', but it might at least prevent your computer from automatically rebooting/panicking on a windowserver stall. But the real test will be if the window server can recover if given more time. If not, then there isn't much point in turning off the watchdogd panic. It would just force you to do a hard reset manually.

 

[Storm312]

I'm running into this for months with my Mac Mini 2018. Almost every night it kernel panics at some point with the same error. No idea what the cause is. Also some times during sleep it will suddenly go 100% fan speed for a second.

 

[spoonyfork]

Hmmmmmmmmmmmmmm what do we have here....

=>sudo sysctl debug.defang_watchdogd=1
debug.defang_watchdogd: 0 -> 1

Could it be so simple? We shall see!

Obviously this isn't really a 'fix', but it might at least prevent your computer from automatically rebooting/panicking on a windowserver stall. But the real test will be if the window server can recover if given more time. If not, then there isn't much point in turning off the watchdogd panic. It would just force you to do a hard reset manually.

I tried this on my late 2015 27" iMac running 10.15.3 but got the below result. Where did you get defang_watchdogd from?

$ sudo sysctl debug.defang_watchdogd=1
sysctl: unknown oid 'debug.defang_watchdogd'
$

 

[tonywalker23]

Had this happened two more times today. Went to my office to work on a school paper. First time was start of the day. Second time was about six hours later. Thankfully Pages saved what I’ve been working on. I chatted with Apple support and they said to reinstall the OS.

 

[jccrtv]

No it doesn't crash running the test video for me on a 2019 New Mac Pro. However it crashes with the "watchdog timeout: no checkins from watchdogd" all the time. I can make it crash on command running a Norton scan. "watchdog timeout: no checkins from watchdogd" It crashes with other programs as well.

 

[monstermac77]

No it doesn't crash running the test video for me on a 2019 New Mac Pro. However it crashes with the "watchdog timeout: no checkins from watchdogd" all the time. I can make it crash on command running a Norton scan. "watchdog timeout: no checkins from watchdogd" It crashes with other programs as well.

Hm, got it. Thanks for letting me know.

 

[stevemiller]

chiming in as my macbook pro crashes daily now since upgrading to 10.15.3.

it seems to happen when i've got the laptop connected to an egpu at home, and often during sleep/wake, but also sometimes randomly shuts down and restarts in the middle of usage.

 

[darthaddie]

Same here. Mac Pro 7,1. Random crashing with the same freaking error. I can't no longer rely on Catalina for a background render/export in FCP and even take a coffee brake. It crashes randomly and when I come back I find that the export did not go through. Hope someone at Apple is listening.

Yesterday it crashed while I was editing in Photoshop. Catalina froze and rebooted and I lost 10mins of work for no reason. Yikes!!!!!

 

[Dae]

Chiming in... I get these panics on MacBook Pro 16" (2019) running 10.15.3 (19D76) after sleep/wake.

 

[metacollin]

I tried this on my late 2015 27" iMac running 10.15.3 but got the below result. Where did you get defang_watchdogd from?

From poking around the watchdog.kext binary in Hopper Disassembler. That's odd it isn't there... I wonder if it only gets exposed if SIP is turned off?

 

[SCADApsi]

Can you try the instructions I provided above to see if you can reproduce it without using your doc and monitors? All you have to do is download and play that 4k video for 30-60 seconds.

Ok I haven't tried with the video, but I too have the TS3+, it only happens when I am plugged into the dock. I don't have to be playing anything, I can leave the system with a browser open or excel .

When not plugged in it does not do this.

The difference that I have when plugged in is I have two HDMI to Thunderbolt 3 (iconnectors plugged into the "system" one is into my Mac port the other into one of the TS3+. it did not do this prior to 10.15.3


Not sure what to do to capture what is happening because of the doc. perhaps I'll try removed the additional displays for now.

Any suggestions?

 

[monstermac77]

Ok I haven't tried with the video, but I too have the TS3+, it only happens when I am plugged into the dock. I don't have to be playing anything, I can leave the system with a browser open or excel .

When not plugged in it does not do this.

The difference that I have when plugged in is I have two HDMI to Thunderbolt 3 (iconnectors plugged into the "system" one is into my Mac port the other into one of the TS3+. it did not do this prior to 10.15.3


Not sure what to do to capture what is happening because of the doc. perhaps I'll try removed the additional displays for now.

Any suggestions?

My guess is that when you're plugged into the dock, your dedicated GPU kicks into use? If you download this, it'll notify you when your computer switches between the integrated and dedicated GPUs: https://gfx.io/

 

[star-affinity]

Are we all using external displays or do some get the Kernel Panic even on the built-in display of their MacBook's?

I got a watchdog Kernel Panic the other day on my MacPro5,1 which I know isn't officially supported, but Catalina works well on my machine except for this Kernel Panic which luckily doesn't happen very often.

One thing that's noteworthy is that this time I had just started up the computer and put it to sleep at the login screen, so no user was logged in and no user had logged in since the computer was started. Later when I came back to wake the computer no video would come on and after a while the computer restarted showing the watchdog Kernel Panic log.

 

[Glen6437]

I’ve had this well over 50 times on my 2019 15 inch MacBook Pro this year (with promise raids and external monitor etc) I swapped out all my USB-c and thunderbolt cables a week ago for new Apple ones and haven’t had a single kernel panic this week...

 

[star-affinity]

I’ve had this well over 50 times on my 2019 15 inch MacBook Pro this year (with promise raids and external monitor etc) I swapped out all my USB-c and thunderbolt cables a week ago for new Apple ones and haven’t had a single kernel panic this week...

That's very interesting.
I have a DisplayPort to DVI adapter (from HP, so at least not a "no name" adapter) connected from my RX 5700 XT card (supported since Catalina 10.15.1) to a 23" Apple Cinema display. I've been wonder if things would behave differently if I had the computer connected to a different display with say DisplayPort to DisplayPort or HDMI to HDMI. Still, it sounds like something that should be fixed if possible, since it can happen that you want to connect your computer to an older device requiring an adapter or a special cable.

 

[dmrowley]

Just had this today on my 2017 27" iMac. No external monitor. I was running Handbrake and woke to find the Mac had shut down. Exactly the same message in the error log.....

 

[impulse462]

Yeah I'd add i get this same error when unplugged my 16" from the ultrafine 5k and then plugging it back in. has happened quite frequently and is very frustrating. somewhat glad to at least know its a software error i guess

 

[ukulele68]

Same error about 90% of time when my 16" two-week old macbook pro 2019 goes to sleep. Two new 27" LGs over new Belkin's thunderbolt cables attached (left and right usb-c port in use). Resets do nothing. Disappointed
EDIT: 1. I have no problem when I don't have the monitors hooked up; 2. If the monitors are hooked up, problem persist if I use Belkin's thunderbolt or LG's usb-c cables. 3. It looks like I have no issue when monitors are attached and I wake up up mac by its keyboard, but using bluetooth (Logi) keyboard (which connects to the receiver which is attached to the monitor) to wake it up is causing the crash.

 

[randomgeeza]

Whilst I was getting KP's with an updated Catalina install. A clean 10.15.3 install seems to have settled this issue... How many of you are running clean installs versus update installs...?

 

[canyonlight]

Running a clean install - from an earlier problem with my 2019 16" MBP - and am still getting the KP's.

 

[makdeniss]

started to have this problem on my 2015 retina iMac after update to 10.15.3. Very annoying. running two extermal displays. The funnyt thing is that first video freezes but the sound is working and then the shutdown / restart happens.

 

[dmrowley]

Latest beta seems to fix this. Installed beta on Sunday , and have not had the issue since.

 

[monstermac77]

Latest beta seems to fix this. Installed beta on Sunday , and have not had the issue since.

First good news I've heard in a long time. Thank you.