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How to troubleshoot performance - MacPro, Mavericks

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  How to troubleshoot performance - MacPro, Mavericks Gary <gary_w1@hotmail.com> - 2014-02-08 08:19 -0500
    Re: How to troubleshoot performance - MacPro, Mavericks Alan Browne <alan.browne@FreelunchVideotron.ca> - 2014-02-08 09:43 -0500
    Re: How to troubleshoot performance - MacPro, Mavericks Jolly Roger <jollyroger@pobox.com> - 2014-02-08 16:45 +0000
    Re: How to troubleshoot performance - MacPro, Mavericks Kevin McMurtrie <mcmurtrie@pixelmemory.us> - 2014-02-08 09:41 -0800
      Re: How to troubleshoot performance - MacPro, Mavericks nospam <nospam@nospam.invalid> - 2014-02-08 12:54 -0500
        Re: How to troubleshoot performance - MacPro, Mavericks JF Mezei <jfmezei.spamnot@vaxination.ca> - 2014-02-08 13:14 -0500
      Re: How to troubleshoot performance - MacPro, Mavericks Lewis <g.kreme@gmail.com.dontsendmecopies> - 2014-02-08 18:45 +0000
      Re: How to troubleshoot performance - MacPro, Mavericks Jolly Roger <jollyroger@pobox.com> - 2014-02-08 21:07 +0000
        Re: How to troubleshoot performance - MacPro, Mavericks Kevin McMurtrie <mcmurtrie@pixelmemory.us> - 2014-02-08 14:37 -0800

#56218 — How to troubleshoot performance - MacPro, Mavericks

I have an older (5 years) MacPro which, for the last few years, has 
been progressively degrading in its performance.  Things were getting 
unbearable when I found myself clicking on Finder in the dock, and 
waiting for 10-20 seconds for the actual finder window to appear.

I finally got up the energy make an appointment and to lug my machine 
downstairs and into the car, and went to the Apple store genius bar 
with my complaints.  The genius I got was truly a genius.  Inside of 25 
minutes he had waved his magic wand over my machine and restored its 
performance to much more acceptable levels.  When I had asked him what 
he had done, he talked about running Console, Repairing Permissions, 
and generally spoke about things I ought to know a lot more about.  
What he could not give me was a reference to learn more about what was 
ailing my machine, and how I could continue a new wave of 
troubleshooting the performance of an aging machine.

Can anyone suggest (1) how I can learn more about diagnosing problems 
in my aging computer, and/or (2) some program I can purchase that will 
do the monitoring and fixing for me?

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#56223

On 2014.02.08, 08:19 , Gary wrote:
> I have an older (5 years) MacPro which, for the last few years, has been
> progressively degrading in its performance.  Things were getting
> unbearable when I found myself clicking on Finder in the dock, and
> waiting for 10-20 seconds for the actual finder window to appear.
>
> I finally got up the energy make an appointment and to lug my machine
> downstairs and into the car, and went to the Apple store genius bar with
> my complaints.  The genius I got was truly a genius.  Inside of 25
> minutes he had waved his magic wand over my machine and restored its
> performance to much more acceptable levels.  When I had asked him what
> he had done, he talked about running Console, Repairing Permissions, and
> generally spoke about things I ought to know a lot more about. What he
> could not give me was a reference to learn more about what was ailing my
> machine, and how I could continue a new wave of troubleshooting the
> performance of an aging machine.
>
> Can anyone suggest (1) how I can learn more about diagnosing problems in
> my aging computer, and/or (2) some program I can purchase that will do
> the monitoring and fixing for me?

"Running Console" and Repairing permissions had nothing at all to do 
with speeding up your computer.

Using a tool like Onyx (no more than 1 / year) to clean out various log 
files and such will help speed up a machine and he used his house brand 
program to do just that.  (I use Onyx about once / 2 years to tidy up as 
well as adjust some settings that aren't directly accessible).

Whatever you do, _don't_ install a program that claims to keep your Mac 
clean and fast (such as MacKeeper).

-- 
   Privacy has become an essential personal chore that most
   people are not trained to perform.
                  - Jaron Lanier, Scientific American, 2013.11.

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#56226

On 2014-02-08, Gary <gary_w1@hotmail.com> wrote:
> I have an older (5 years) MacPro which, for the last few years, has 
> been progressively degrading in its performance.  Things were getting 
> unbearable when I found myself clicking on Finder in the dock, and 
> waiting for 10-20 seconds for the actual finder window to appear.
>
> I finally got up the energy make an appointment and to lug my machine 
> downstairs and into the car, and went to the Apple store genius bar 
> with my complaints.  The genius I got was truly a genius.  Inside of 25 
> minutes he had waved his magic wand over my machine and restored its 
> performance to much more acceptable levels.  When I had asked him what 
> he had done, he talked about running Console, Repairing Permissions, 
> and generally spoke about things I ought to know a lot more about.  
> What he could not give me was a reference to learn more about what was 
> ailing my machine, and how I could continue a new wave of 
> troubleshooting the performance of an aging machine.

He didn't tell you much then.

> Can anyone suggest (1) how I can learn more about diagnosing problems 
> in my aging computer, and/or (2) some program I can purchase that will 
> do the monitoring and fixing for me?

No, but you can and should start monitoring the system and console logs
whenever you have a problem, and learning about what the messages in
them mean. The kind folks in this news group can help you with that.

-- 
E-mail sent to this address may be devoured by my ravenous SPAM filter.
I often ignore posts from Google. Use a real news client instead.

JR

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#56239

In article <52f62ec9$0$22490$c3e8da3$f6268168@news.astraweb.com>,
 Gary <gary_w1@hotmail.com> wrote:

> I have an older (5 years) MacPro which, for the last few years, has 
> been progressively degrading in its performance.  Things were getting 
> unbearable when I found myself clicking on Finder in the dock, and 
> waiting for 10-20 seconds for the actual finder window to appear.
> 
> I finally got up the energy make an appointment and to lug my machine 
> downstairs and into the car, and went to the Apple store genius bar 
> with my complaints.  The genius I got was truly a genius.  Inside of 25 
> minutes he had waved his magic wand over my machine and restored its 
> performance to much more acceptable levels.  When I had asked him what 
> he had done, he talked about running Console, Repairing Permissions, 
> and generally spoke about things I ought to know a lot more about.  
> What he could not give me was a reference to learn more about what was 
> ailing my machine, and how I could continue a new wave of 
> troubleshooting the performance of an aging machine.
> 
> Can anyone suggest (1) how I can learn more about diagnosing problems 
> in my aging computer, and/or (2) some program I can purchase that will 
> do the monitoring and fixing for me?

MacOS is like Windows.  It has accumulated so many layers of bugs poor 
designs that fixing it is a matter of luck and magic.

Finder being slow is a known fault in Mavericks.  It's a collection of 
problems so there's no one trick to completely fixing it.  One 
collection of problems seems to be related to needless network scans for 
volumes.  The other collection of problems is features, bugs, and poor 
tuning that causes Finder to scan the metadata of files so frequently 
that the old HFS+ codebase can't keep up.

There was probably no network connection when you took your computer to 
the Apple Store.  Turn off any Finder features related to showing 
available network volumes and you may get back enough speed to be 
functional.

Disable offline Time Machine backups too.  It also overloads the old 
filesystem.

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#56242

In article
<mcmurtrie-EB275D.09414408022014@c-61-68-245-199.per.connect.net.au>,
Kevin McMurtrie <mcmurtrie@pixelmemory.us> wrote:

> Finder being slow is a known fault in Mavericks. 

finder being slow is a known fault in all versions of os x.

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#56244

On 14-02-08 12:54, nospam wrote:

>> Finder being slow is a known fault in Mavericks. 
> 
> finder being slow is a known fault in all versions of os x.


The OP mentioned the system slowed down over time.

One would neeed to knwo how full the system disk was, and whether it was
fragmented which would greatly slow down paging/swapping. Perhaps there
were a number of large and old page/swap files that weren't getting
deleted and eating up disk space whcih limited new page files.

While Apple has hidden disk management under voodoo and told users to
never worry about it, I am quite site there are circumstances where the
voodoo fails and the user than has to worry about it.

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#56245

In message <mcmurtrie-EB275D.09414408022014@c-61-68-245-199.per.connect.net.au> 
  Kevin McMurtrie <mcmurtrie@pixelmemory.us> wrote:
> In article <52f62ec9$0$22490$c3e8da3$f6268168@news.astraweb.com>,
>  Gary <gary_w1@hotmail.com> wrote:

>> I have an older (5 years) MacPro which, for the last few years, has 
>> been progressively degrading in its performance.  Things were getting 
>> unbearable when I found myself clicking on Finder in the dock, and 
>> waiting for 10-20 seconds for the actual finder window to appear.
>> 
>> I finally got up the energy make an appointment and to lug my machine 
>> downstairs and into the car, and went to the Apple store genius bar 
>> with my complaints.  The genius I got was truly a genius.  Inside of 25 
>> minutes he had waved his magic wand over my machine and restored its 
>> performance to much more acceptable levels.  When I had asked him what 
>> he had done, he talked about running Console, Repairing Permissions, 
>> and generally spoke about things I ought to know a lot more about.  
>> What he could not give me was a reference to learn more about what was 
>> ailing my machine, and how I could continue a new wave of 
>> troubleshooting the performance of an aging machine.
>> 
>> Can anyone suggest (1) how I can learn more about diagnosing problems 
>> in my aging computer, and/or (2) some program I can purchase that will 
>> do the monitoring and fixing for me?

> MacOS is like Windows.  It has accumulated so many layers of bugs poor 
> designs that fixing it is a matter of luck and magic.

Another absurd statement from the clueless.

-- 
I WILL NOT HIDE BEHIND THE FIFTH AMENDMENT Bart chalkboard Ep. 7F18

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#56251

On 2014-02-08, Kevin McMurtrie <mcmurtrie@pixelmemory.us> wrote:
> In article <52f62ec9$0$22490$c3e8da3$f6268168@news.astraweb.com>,
>  Gary <gary_w1@hotmail.com> wrote:
>
>> I have an older (5 years) MacPro which, for the last few years, has 
>> been progressively degrading in its performance.  Things were getting 
>> unbearable when I found myself clicking on Finder in the dock, and 
>> waiting for 10-20 seconds for the actual finder window to appear.
>> 
>> I finally got up the energy make an appointment and to lug my machine 
>> downstairs and into the car, and went to the Apple store genius bar 
>> with my complaints.  The genius I got was truly a genius.  Inside of 25 
>> minutes he had waved his magic wand over my machine and restored its 
>> performance to much more acceptable levels.  When I had asked him what 
>> he had done, he talked about running Console, Repairing Permissions, 
>> and generally spoke about things I ought to know a lot more about.  
>> What he could not give me was a reference to learn more about what was 
>> ailing my machine, and how I could continue a new wave of 
>> troubleshooting the performance of an aging machine.
>> 
>> Can anyone suggest (1) how I can learn more about diagnosing problems 
>> in my aging computer, and/or (2) some program I can purchase that will 
>> do the monitoring and fixing for me?
>
> MacOS is like Windows.  It has accumulated so many layers of bugs poor 
> designs that fixing it is a matter of luck and magic.

Bull. Simple, logical, methodical diagnosis has always allowed me to
figure out the cause of Finder issues and solve them.

-- 
E-mail sent to this address may be devoured by my ravenous SPAM filter.
I often ignore posts from Google. Use a real news client instead.

JR

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#56255

In article <blnkkmFqau0U3@mid.individual.net>,
 Jolly Roger <jollyroger@pobox.com> wrote:

> On 2014-02-08, Kevin McMurtrie <mcmurtrie@pixelmemory.us> wrote:
> > In article <52f62ec9$0$22490$c3e8da3$f6268168@news.astraweb.com>,
> >  Gary <gary_w1@hotmail.com> wrote:
> >
> >> I have an older (5 years) MacPro which, for the last few years, has 
> >> been progressively degrading in its performance.  Things were getting 
> >> unbearable when I found myself clicking on Finder in the dock, and 
> >> waiting for 10-20 seconds for the actual finder window to appear.
> >> 
> >> I finally got up the energy make an appointment and to lug my machine 
> >> downstairs and into the car, and went to the Apple store genius bar 
> >> with my complaints.  The genius I got was truly a genius.  Inside of 25 
> >> minutes he had waved his magic wand over my machine and restored its 
> >> performance to much more acceptable levels.  When I had asked him what 
> >> he had done, he talked about running Console, Repairing Permissions, 
> >> and generally spoke about things I ought to know a lot more about.  
> >> What he could not give me was a reference to learn more about what was 
> >> ailing my machine, and how I could continue a new wave of 
> >> troubleshooting the performance of an aging machine.
> >> 
> >> Can anyone suggest (1) how I can learn more about diagnosing problems 
> >> in my aging computer, and/or (2) some program I can purchase that will 
> >> do the monitoring and fixing for me?
> >
> > MacOS is like Windows.  It has accumulated so many layers of bugs poor 
> > designs that fixing it is a matter of luck and magic.
> 
> Bull. Simple, logical, methodical diagnosis has always allowed me to
> figure out the cause of Finder issues and solve them.

Awesome.  I'm sure you're totally resistant to the thousands of open 
bugs that exist in any modern operating system.  I bet your methodical 
process magically fixes the low operations per second in HFS+ caused by 
old code with coarse grained locking and serious cache architecture 
problems that have been documented by many developers who write 
performance critical code.  Finder magically stops hammering stat64 
hundreds of times a second when you're around.

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