Weirdly slow crashes

[bonsaihawk]

I've just recently picked up a new graphics card, and upgraded to Mojave. Possibly not clever
doing both at once, but I couldn't get a decent driver for the card whilst under Sierra.

Everything used to work just peachy before the upgarde. I did a full, clean install of 10.14.5. It took
a while to remember all the magic options needed to get things working with Clover and MultiBeast,
but everything (audio, ethernet, TurboSpeed etc) all work. My smbios is a bit weird because of the i3
(iMac11,2 + Board-id of iMac14,2) but that's what it seems to need.

Well, it doesn't really work. Every so often, maybe 15minutes, maybe hours after booting it
crashes. Sorta. The screen keeps updating - spinning beach ball keeps spinning, menumeters keep
scrolling along, sometimes the pointer moves around, sometimes not.
Applications stop responding one by one - but only after they're touched. Then they beachball.
ssh-ing into the machine fails.

Occasionally it doesn't do all that, it just restarts the whole machine.

Either way, there's *nothing* in the log files that I can see. Not even irrelevant stuff - at the time
of crashing no entries have been made.

Any ideas where I can look for clues as to the culprit?

 

[UtterDisbelief]

I've just recently picked up a new graphics card, and upgraded to Mojave. Possibly not clever
doing both at once, but I couldn't get a decent driver for the card whilst under Sierra.

Everything used to work just peachy before the upgarde. I did a full, clean install of 10.14.5. It took
a while to remember all the magic options needed to get things working with Clover and MultiBeast,
but everything (audio, ethernet, TurboSpeed etc) all work. My smbios is a bit weird because of the i3
(iMac11,2 + Board-id of iMac14,2) but that's what it seems to need.

Well, it doesn't really work. Every so often, maybe 15minutes, maybe hours after booting it
crashes. Sorta. The screen keeps updating - spinning beach ball keeps spinning, menumeters keep
scrolling along, sometimes the pointer moves around, sometimes not.
Applications stop responding one by one - but only after they're touched. Then they beachball.
ssh-ing into the machine fails.

Occasionally it doesn't do all that, it just restarts the whole machine.

Either way, there's *nothing* in the log files that I can see. Not even irrelevant stuff - at the time
of crashing no entries have been made.

Any ideas where I can look for clues as to the culprit?

Hi there. Not at my desk at mo, but check system-definition. With Mojave is iMac11,2 still supported? 14,2 is a good reliable one for older hardware.

You look to be an experienced hackintosher so know the pitfalls If all worked fine with Sierra then not likely to be a hardware problem. Mind you, you haven't said what the new GPU is. Or is it the GT710?

 

[Gigamaxx]

I've just recently picked up a new graphics card, and upgraded to Mojave. Possibly not clever
doing both at once, but I couldn't get a decent driver for the card whilst under Sierra.

Everything used to work just peachy before the upgarde. I did a full, clean install of 10.14.5. It took
a while to remember all the magic options needed to get things working with Clover and MultiBeast,
but everything (audio, ethernet, TurboSpeed etc) all work. My smbios is a bit weird because of the i3
(iMac11,2 + Board-id of iMac14,2) but that's what it seems to need.

Well, it doesn't really work. Every so often, maybe 15minutes, maybe hours after booting it
crashes. Sorta. The screen keeps updating - spinning beach ball keeps spinning, menumeters keep
scrolling along, sometimes the pointer moves around, sometimes not.
Applications stop responding one by one - but only after they're touched. Then they beachball.
ssh-ing into the machine fails.

Occasionally it doesn't do all that, it just restarts the whole machine.

Either way, there's *nothing* in the log files that I can see. Not even irrelevant stuff - at the time
of crashing no entries have been made.

Any ideas where I can look for clues as to the culprit?

Your iMac 11.2 could be the issue. Also, I noticed you have Nvidia Web drivers = yes. GT710 doesn't need any fixes so no inject nv or web drivers needed. Check out the changes to this plist.

 

[bonsaihawk]

Hi there. Not at my desk at mo, but check system-definition. With Mojave is iMac11,1 still supported? 14,2 is a good reliable one for older hardware.

You look to be an experienced hackintosher so know the pitfalls If all worked fine with Sierra then not likely to be a hardware problem. Mind you, you haven't said what the new GPU is. Or is it the GT710?

No, the iMac11,1 wasn't supported - had to fiddle that before I could download the Mojave installer. But once installed it doesn't seem to check anymore. The GT710 is the new card, yes. But I'd expect a problem from that source to be a hard crash, not this slow decline.

If you know how to get the i3 to do its TurboBoost thing without being on iMac11,1 I'm all for changing it. But it literally halves the machine's speed without it!

I forgot to mention - when it does the occasional hard crash(*), it manages to reset some BIOS options on the way down! I don't even know how it can access that after boot-time.

Thanks for trying, I'll keep tinkering with the smbios a bit more.


(*) Does a slow decline end in this hard crash if left alone long enough? Are there two completely separate crashing events happening? I've not worked that out yet.

 

[bonsaihawk]

Your iMac 11.2 could be the issue. Also, I noticed you have Nvidia Web drivers = yes. GT710 doesn't need any fixes so no inject nv or web drivers needed. Check out the changes to this plist.

Hah! I noticed that nvidia=yes bit just as I was reading through before posting, and made that change then!
(Not sure where it came from, as I was being assiduous in not ticking any such box). Anyway, machine has since crashed (shocker), so the new plist is in place. I'll compare my efforts to what you've posted also.

thanks for the detailed read!

 

[bonsaihawk]

OK, try 2 today.

Since June, the crashing hasn't stopped. The hardware's been replaced to no effect.
All of the kexts in Library/Extension have been removed/replaced. Every switch in Clover Configurator has been toggled. A multitude of system configs in SMBIOS have been tried. A few things have made matters worse, but nothing got better.

Crashes vary from abrupt rebooting to the titular slow crashes. There's never any mentions in system logs. Before upgrading the gfx and OS, this machine was rock solid.

Anyone any ideas where to look for incriminating evidence? Or suggestions of other switches to fiddle with?

 

[bonsaihawk]

Does anyone have any pointers to a list of what Safe Mode *doesn't* do on boot-up? As horrible as running like this is, it seems to be stable.

 

[bonsaihawk]

Right. I think I've fixed it. I've switched from FakeSMC to VirtualSMC, and there's been 0 random crashes since. (I've changed a hundred other things also, so there's always a chance of a mad interaction.)

I've not the slightest idea what the problem, or why this was the solution. FakeSMC has worked very well for years on this machine. But FSMC + Mojave + this hardware just occasionally hiccupped very badly.

This has been a very dispiriting experience - I felt like a caveman running around hitting everything and anything with a big club until something changed. It did, in the end - so I suppose this is really a message of hope for anyone else out there.

 

[bonsaihawk]

Oh well. After a short break, and a system rebuild with a new HD, it seems this hasn't sorted things after all. Perhaps less frequent crashes now, but a lucky long run or three misled me.