Mac Pro 2013 6,1 Thunderbolt / Sleep /Wake Reboot Problem - Appreciate Help

[WillyWoo]

Problem: System goes into weird sleep wake states - inconsistent external drive mounts and kernel panics.

1) System will often not stay asleep - wakes after 1 second sleep
2) If System sleeping, will reboot at night (Kernel panic) - with sleep wake crash - reports problem to Apple in the morning.
3) System will not wake up, hung and needs hard power off
4) Pegasus R4 disappears - won't remount till powered off/on

Anyone else have these issues or anyone have Mavericks with TB drives working - especially Thunderbolt 2? Could be TB2 issues as other posts seem to have that as common denominator.

My config:

Mac Pro 2013, 6 Core / 64GB / 1TB SSD / D500
Two NEC 27" - Mini DP connect to MacPro directly
1 Pegasus R4 Thunderbolt V1 - 8 TB Raid 0 (4x2TB) - latest firmware
1 Areca 8050 Thunderbolt 21TB Raid 5 (8x3TB) - latest firmware
1 Anker USB 3.0 9-Port Hub with 5V 2.1A Charging Port hub VL812-B2 Chipset and updated Firmware 908
All Apple Thunderbolt cables attached to Mac Pro - not chained from other TB drives
Mavericks 10.9.1 - created from clean install
All software/firmware updates installed

Same problem as http://www.xlr8yourmac.com/archives/jan14/012414.html

Thunderbolt external drives worked fine on Mavericks 10.9 on Mac Book Pro 2011 17" - no sleep wake problems. Pegasus support suggested turning off power management on R4 - but no effect on Mac Pro issues.
The Pegasus R4 ran flawlessly on my Mac Book Pro - including sleep / wake.

Turning all power saving features off helps, including wake for network. I have to power down at night now.

Other users have reported TB problems with hardware other than Mac Pro 2013. Seem to point finger at Mavericks.

Will post update once I test various Sleep settings.

 

[Rock Hound]

Do you have any USB peripherals hooked to the Mac Pro? Some scanners, etc. will not let Macs sleep properly, and if the NEC monitors have USB hubs, that may be the source of the problem.

This is why I never let my desktop macs go into deep sleep; I only set display and disk sleep parameters.

Pegasus RAID boxes have a reputation for Thunderbolt connection problems; check out the discussion at https://discussions.apple.com/thread/3181015

 

[WillyWoo]

USB - part of problem?

Yes - I have a Anker USB 10 port USB 3 hub.

It had the NEC USB plugged in with no devices connect to it. I will try to run some tests with and without the hub.

Thanks for reply

 

[Einz]

If you have a UPS with USB connection, make sure to plug it into the Mac and not a hub. Plugging it into a hub keeps my nMP from sleeping.

 

[Bacvir]

similar problem with daisy chained FW800 drive

Had a similar problem with my nMP when I daisy chained a FW800 drive with TB adapter (Apple) to a Pegasus2 R4. Came in the day after and nMP was not asleep and Pegasus unmounted; it would not remount using Disk Utility or after restart. After a Verify Disk followed by attempt to Repair Disk the Pegasus2, I had to reformat it (loosing everything I'd transferred the day before). Couldn't tell you why it happened.

nMP + Pegasus2 has been working fine now for a little over a week, but that FW800 drive will never again come within 10 meters of the nMP.

 

[handheldgames]

Considering the following:

• IOUSBFamily.kext is still improperly ejecting Fresco Logic USB 3.0 SuperSpeed devices on sleep in 10.9.2, as a result of Apple's internal update to the code in 10.8.4. When I reported the issue to Apple, they blamed the hardware vendor when it was their code change in 10.8.4 that broke it in the 1st place.
  
  
• HDMI support for the MacPro platform is capped at the 1.0 specification, even though we're currently at the 1.4/2.0 specification. For reference 1.3 was introduced in 2006.
  
  
• Many, if not most, HDMI devices are improperly configured within OS X to display a capped color palette of 4:2:2 vs 4:4:4. This can only be corrected with hacks to the OS which may or may not correct the issue. Note: allowing users to select the color space has been a standard for 10+ years in the equivalent windows drivers
  
  
• 4K Support - It's been documented everywhere as being BORKED across many displays. Although a MacPro equipped with a HDMI and DVI port can easily drive 3840x2160 in boot camp, it's a no-go in OS X. Resulting in a 1920x2160 image sent to the display

With that said, I'm not surprised to see issues with external thunderbolt devices on the nMP. Who ever at Apple is in charge of the hardware drivers is either over their head or asleep behind the wheel.... Perhaps Apple should focus some of their BILLIONS on hiring some fresh and competent hardware driver engineers for the OS X team AND expand their testing platform beyond devices with the Apple logo....

 

[phrehdd]

Considering the following:

• IOUSBFamily.kext is still improperly ejecting Fresco Logic USB 3.0 SuperSpeed devices on sleep in 10.9.2, as a result of Apple's internal update to the code in 10.8.4. When I reported the issue to Apple, they blamed the hardware vendor when it was their code change in 10.8.4 that broke it in the 1st place.
  
  
• HDMI support for the MacPro platform is capped at the 1.0 specification, even though we're currently at the 1.4/2.0 specification. For reference 1.3 was introduced in 2006.
  
  
• Many, if not most, HDMI devices are improperly configured within OS X to display a capped color palette of 4:2:2 vs 4:4:4. This can only be corrected with hacks to the OS which may or may not correct the issue. Note: allowing users to select the color space has been a standard for 10+ years in the equivalent windows drivers
  
  
• 4K Support - It's been documented everywhere as being BORKED across many displays. Although a MacPro equipped with a HDMI and DVI port can easily drive 3840x2160 in boot camp, it's a no-go in OS X. Resulting in a 1920x2160 image sent to the display

With that said, I'm not surprised to see issues with external thunderbolt devices on the nMP. Who ever at Apple is in charge of the hardware drivers is either over their head or asleep behind the wheel.... Perhaps Apple should focus some of their BILLIONS on hiring some fresh and competent hardware driver engineers for the OS X team AND expand their testing platform beyond devices with the Apple logo....

Yes Apple is 'innovative' when it comes to find new ways to fluster the Mac device user by holding back on many items that can readily be found on other OS's. I personally get a kick how OSX cannot handle HD audio streams yet when either Windows or Linux is installed on a Mac, those OS's can handle HD audio streams. You brought up a decent list to show a tend in how Apple limits the use of their hardware to their eco system of iTunes level audio/video and more. Ideally, real Mac Fanboys would rally and petition Apple to unleash its potential by 'fixing' much of what you have mentioned rather than wasting time defending Apple.

 

[WillyWoo]

Results of Testing and Workarounds

I perceive this problem to be caused by an intermittent combination of Thunderbolt issues. They are getting rather frustrating - especially after paying $7000 for a computer and almost $3000 for new hard drives I expect them to work flawlessly.

Problems:

1) Sometimes the Pegasus R4 Raid 0 8TB (Version 1 - Thunderbolt V1) disappears - since its my Time Machine drive, backups stop.(workaround in place to address this issue). The Mac Pro sleeps normally if my second drive the Areca 8050 is not connected.

2) When the Mac Pro goes to sleep, so does my Areca 8050 Raid 5 - 21TB Drive for about 1-2 seconds. After about 1 second, the Areca and the Mac Pro wake up. Given the power requirements of both of these devices and cost of both units - I would like this to be fixed. If the Areca is not connected, the Pegasus allows the Mac Pro to sleep normally. In other words, the Areca is the cause of the wake 1 second after sleep.

3) Mac Pro (if I do get it to sleep) will crash during the night - sleep/wake kernel panic loosing any work if I forget to save it.

4) To workaround solving problem 1 - I turned on the first checkbox in the Energy Saver (not to sleep) but now I burn up a lot more power each day and have to remember to shut down at night.

Other Points of Interest:

Connecting or removing the Anker USB hub made no difference.

The dual displays both sleep as expected - even if the Mac Pro wakes when it should not.

Interestingly enough - my Mac Book Pro 17" late 2011 - runs all of the above drives flawlessly including all variations of sleep/wake without crashing.

Workarounds:

1) Naturally I have upgraded the firmware of all devices and applied all fixes to all software. That did not result in any change for better or worse.

2) Following Pegasus Support suggestions I changed the Pegasus configuration to turn off all power management. This had no impact in making the problem better or worse, so I believe Pegasus power management is back on. It does not power off during Mac Pro sleep however.

3) Through experimentation I changed the Mac Pro power settings to the attached screen dump.

This seemed to be optimal to prevent drives from disappearing. It has solved the Sleep / Wake issues (problem 1)

Daisy chaining the Areca to the Pegasus made no difference - same awake from sleep after few seconds.

 

[jerryrock]

Try plugging your displays into different Thunderbolt buses.

http://support.apple.com/kb/HT591

 

[nathan43082]

Yes Apple is 'innovative' when it comes to find new ways to fluster the Mac device user by holding back on many items that can readily be found on other OS's. I personally get a kick how OSX cannot handle HD audio streams yet when either Windows or Linux is installed on a Mac, those OS's can handle HD audio streams. You brought up a decent list to show a tend in how Apple limits the use of their hardware to their eco system of iTunes level audio/video and more. Ideally, real Mac Fanboys would rally and petition Apple to unleash its potential by 'fixing' much of what you have mentioned rather than wasting time defending Apple.

1. I have no issue playing audio of up to a 24-bit depth at bit rates up to 192kHz on my 2013 Mac Pro.

2. I can play a variety of audio formats—lossy-compressed, lossless-compressed and uncompressed—through the system without ever needing iTunes, which is nothing more than a fairly well-designed media cataloging and management application which *also* happens to have a fairly good audio transcoder built into it.

2. Why would you need anything higher than 16-bits @ 44.1kHz except for recording and mixing? No, I am not crazy. Check out this essay and watch the (currently) two videos at this site: http://people.xiph.org/~xiphmont/demo/neil-young.html

 

[Mechanic]

Considering the following:


4K Support - It's been documented everywhere as being BORKED across many displays. Although a MacPro equipped with a HDMI and DVI port can easily drive 3840x2160 in boot camp, it's a no-go in OS X. Resulting in a 1920x2160 image sent to the display

Consider your full of it. I have a 2013 Mac Pro 8 core that is currently running 3 4k displays, 1 on thunderbolt bus 0 on the hdmi port and 1 on thunderbolt bus 1 and 1 on thunderbolt bus 2. They run perfectly fine no driver issues here.

 

[puckhead193]

I'm sorta having the same issue. If I go to the apple menu to force the computer to sleep. It will go black for one second then the screen pops back on. If I try to move the mouse nothing happens ( the screen is frozen). Only until I click the mouse, the screen flickers once then I'm able to move the mouse etc.
The only thing connected to the computer are the display (NEC PA272W) the apple keyboard and USB mouse. I tried to move around the connections same thing. Any ideas

Also I connected the monitor to my 17" MBP and have no issues sleeping using the same micro display port.

 

[Mechanic]

Handheldgames said:

[*]HDMI support for the MacPro platform is capped at the 1.0 specification, even though we're currently at the 1.4/2.0 specification. For reference 1.3 was introduced in 2006.


[*]Many, if not most, HDMI devices are improperly configured within OS X to display a capped color palette of 4:2:2 vs 4:4:4. This can only be corrected with hacks to the OS which may or may not correct the issue. Note: allowing users to select the color space has been a standard for 10+ years in the equivalent windows drivers

You are simply wrong here the current Late 2013 mac pro supports HDMI 1.4 Ultra HD

 

[WillyWoo]

I'm sorta having the same issue. If I go to the apple menu to force the computer to sleep. It will go black for one second then the screen pops back on. If I try to move the mouse nothing happens ( the screen is frozen). Only until I click the mouse, the screen flickers once then I'm able to move the mouse etc.
The only thing connected to the computer are the display (NEC PA272W) the apple keyboard and USB mouse. I tried to move around the connections same thing. Any ideas

Also I connected the monitor to my 17" MBP and have no issues sleeping using the same micro display port.

There have been reports that the next release of Mavericks 10.9.3 will address this problem with Nec displays. It is a bug with the display drivers and those on the Developer program indicate the problem is resolved. We just need to wait for the release which should be soon as 10.9.3 has been in beta through about 5 releases, which typically means its getting close to release.

 

[hydr]

Problem: System goes into weird sleep wake states - inconsistent external drive mounts and kernel panics.

1) System will often not stay asleep - wakes after 1 second sleep
2) If System sleeping, will reboot at night (Kernel panic) - with sleep wake crash - reports problem to Apple in the morning.
3) System will not wake up, hung and needs hard power off
4) Pegasus R4 disappears - won't remount till powered off/on

Anyone else have these issues or anyone have Mavericks with TB drives working - especially Thunderbolt 2? Could be TB2 issues as other posts seem to have that as common denominator.

My config:

Mac Pro 2013, 6 Core / 64GB / 1TB SSD / D500
Two NEC 27" - Mini DP connect to MacPro directly
1 Pegasus R4 Thunderbolt V1 - 8 TB Raid 0 (4x2TB) - latest firmware
1 Areca 8050 Thunderbolt 21TB Raid 5 (8x3TB) - latest firmware
1 Anker USB 3.0 9-Port Hub with 5V 2.1A Charging Port hub VL812-B2 Chipset and updated Firmware 908
All Apple Thunderbolt cables attached to Mac Pro - not chained from other TB drives
Mavericks 10.9.1 - created from clean install
All software/firmware updates installed

Same problem as http://www.xlr8yourmac.com/archives/jan14/012414.html

Thunderbolt external drives worked fine on Mavericks 10.9 on Mac Book Pro 2011 17" - no sleep wake problems. Pegasus support suggested turning off power management on R4 - but no effect on Mac Pro issues.
The Pegasus R4 ran flawlessly on my Mac Book Pro - including sleep / wake.

Turning all power saving features off helps, including wake for network. I have to power down at night now.

Other users have reported TB problems with hardware other than Mac Pro 2013. Seem to point finger at Mavericks.

Will post update once I test various Sleep settings.

I had the exact same issues when I got my 6C/512GB/64GB/D700 Mac Pro. After some back and forth with AppleCare we determined that it was hardware, and I had the unit sent back for a replacement unit. It´s the same config but without these issues. I think it´s GPU related, but hard to say. I would send it back for a new unit.

 

[Ray2]

I perceive this problem to be caused by an intermittent combination of Thunderbolt issues. They are getting rather frustrating - especially after paying $7000 for a computer and almost $3000 for new hard drives I expect them to work flawlessly.

Hilarious. Don't buy a BMW or other expensive car. The more cost the more complexity, the more complexity the more problems. This has been true since day one in Appleland, as well as a ton of other products.

 

[krazygoat]

The Areca RAID, and really any big RAID are not designed for sleep. They are designed to keep the drives spinning and in sync. If you are running RAIDS you pretty much want your system running while the RAID is running. We are running mavericks with a mixture of systems and RAIDs (servers and edit workstations including everything from Airs to new Mac Pros) and are having no issues but we turn off sleep on RAID connected workstations.

The same would be true is the RAID was connected fiber or eSAS. Also while technically thunderbolt RAIDs can support hot plugging it is a bad practice in general. You should do a full shutdown when adding or removing the RAIDs from the system.

Mac Pro also has three thunderbolt buses (6 ports). So I would put the Promise on one (top row), the Areca on one (middle row), and the two monitors on the other (bottom row). The monitors will have a big impact on the RAID performance if they are on the same bus.

It is RAID that makes things complicated. If all you are doing is connecting thunderbolt desktop drives and thunderbolt peripherals than hot swapping and sleeping are not an issue. Keeping RAIDs healthy and running smoothly takes a bit more effort. It is akin to a server setup at this point so you pretty much have to run it as a 24/7 machine.

Problem: System goes into weird sleep wake states - inconsistent external drive mounts and kernel panics.

1) System will often not stay asleep - wakes after 1 second sleep
2) If System sleeping, will reboot at night (Kernel panic) - with sleep wake crash - reports problem to Apple in the morning.
3) System will not wake up, hung and needs hard power off
4) Pegasus R4 disappears - won't remount till powered off/on

Anyone else have these issues or anyone have Mavericks with TB drives working - especially Thunderbolt 2? Could be TB2 issues as other posts seem to have that as common denominator.

My config:

Mac Pro 2013, 6 Core / 64GB / 1TB SSD / D500
Two NEC 27" - Mini DP connect to MacPro directly
1 Pegasus R4 Thunderbolt V1 - 8 TB Raid 0 (4x2TB) - latest firmware
1 Areca 8050 Thunderbolt 21TB Raid 5 (8x3TB) - latest firmware
1 Anker USB 3.0 9-Port Hub with 5V 2.1A Charging Port hub VL812-B2 Chipset and updated Firmware 908
All Apple Thunderbolt cables attached to Mac Pro - not chained from other TB drives
Mavericks 10.9.1 - created from clean install
All software/firmware updates installed

Same problem as http://www.xlr8yourmac.com/archives/jan14/012414.html

Thunderbolt external drives worked fine on Mavericks 10.9 on Mac Book Pro 2011 17" - no sleep wake problems. Pegasus support suggested turning off power management on R4 - but no effect on Mac Pro issues.
The Pegasus R4 ran flawlessly on my Mac Book Pro - including sleep / wake.

Turning all power saving features off helps, including wake for network. I have to power down at night now.

Other users have reported TB problems with hardware other than Mac Pro 2013. Seem to point finger at Mavericks.

Will post update once I test various Sleep settings.