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New Early 2009 Mac Mini not sleeping

Computer won't sleep

Try searching here: http://discussions.apple.com/category.jspa?categoryID=235


I seem to remember this happened to me years ago with one mac or another. I searched the Apple forums and finally found an answer. Seems to me it was something about a bad preference file, but I could be wrong.

Troubleshooting would be interesting. Disconnect everything from the computer, turn off sharing, wifi, everything. Once everything is as close to new computer as you can make it, does it sleep? If not, then you've ruled out all the stuff you disconnected and turned off. If it does sleep, then connect and turn on things one by one, checking after each step whether or not it sleeps. You will probably need to restart after each step. You might even want to trash the sleep-related pref files once everything is disconnected unless it sleeps just fine. This is an interesting and enjoyable process if you have some time.

Mooch
 
Moocher said:
This is an interesting and enjoyable process if you have some time.

Mooch
Click to expand...

Not really, this is the reason why people switch from PCs to Macs. People don't enjoy this sort of thing.

There are probably a very small amount of people that would enjoy the challenge of trying to figure it out. It appears that you and I however, are 2 of them. :D
 
txnoob said:
Not really, this is the reason why people switch from PCs to Macs. People don't enjoy this sort of thing.

There are probably a very small amount of people that would enjoy the challenge of trying to figure it out. It appears that you and I however, are 2 of them. :D
Click to expand...

You hit the nail on the head. As a long time PC user one of the reasons that I have elected to switch to Mac is to avoid having to waste my time dealing with such headaches.

I expect to have to troubleshoot power/sleep problems on my Windows PCs, not on a one week old Mac.
 
Moocher said:
Sorry, I was assuming you were going to try to find the cause. Just take the computer to an apple store or call them.

Mooch
Click to expand...

As indicated previously, I have worked on narrowing this down, however I have not been able to find the cause.

I do know that after a fresh reboot it works fine and I also have absolutely no issues with it being put to sleep manually.

It would be helpful if Apple would put better information in the system logs. I can see system log entries when the computer goes to sleep or when it comes out of sleep, but no log entries about it trying to sleep and not being able to.

While annoyed I'm willing to try to pinpoint what is causing this to happen. I'm a programmer/analyst with 13 years of industry experience in the IT world, so I'm sure I can get to the bottom of it if enough time is spent. The whole point (for me) of getting a Mac is not to have to deal with such things. For years all of my Mac owning friends have been going on about "it just works".

Well, guess what? It just doesn't work, at least in this case.
 
Okay, made a bit of progress.

Mini was not sleeping with several applications open. I shut down Firefox (and only Firefox) and now it's sleeping.

So, right now it seems as though Firefox and/or certain websites (this one?) are preventing the Mini from sleeping.
 
Okay,

The issue does appear to be Firefox 3 related, as detailed in this thread;

http://forums.mozillazine.org/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=726615

I've observed two things;

1. If the screen to black and sleep setting are set to the same value and Firefox 3 is running the machine doesn't seem to sleep correctly as detailed in the above thread. Setting the screen timeout to a value like 8 and the sleep timeout to a value like 10 does seem to allow the machine to sleep even with Firefox active.

2. I notice a bug with above in OS X. If I change the time values for the sleep/monitor timeout and then go back into settings, the values are set back to default of 15/15 which causes the problem to come back.
 
Moocher said:
Thanks for your work on this. The problem and solution are interesting and worth spreading.

Mooch
Click to expand...

It sleeps most of the time now, and when it won't sleep, shutting down Firefox seems to clear it up.

I'd still like to know why the power settings keep reverting back to 15/15 when I look at them, seems like it's a bug in OS X if you have a UPS connected.

Also, would be nice if Firefox would fix this stupid bug, maybe I will switch back to Safari when Safari 4 goes out of Beta.
 
Not to start a browser war or anything, but maybe try Camino out? Dunno if it has the same bug tho...
 
I was a 100% firefox user until the new beta for Safari came out and I tried it. Other than the fact that I can't use add-ons I like it a lot and it is very stable - at least as stable as Firefox. Now I'm 90% Safari.

Mooch
 
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