kernel_task at 103%!!
Overheating on MacBook Pro’s is a rare problem, usually down to nothing more than new users mistakenly thinking the aluminium casing is supposed to feel cool to the touch. However, you know something’s wrong when the glass touchpad feels warm and the fan’s not even stirring…
When Finder and other apps start crashing, what might have been a small concern now starts to look like a real problem. You can try re-booting, but if you find that the reboot takes ten minutes or so and/or the keyboard doesn’t function at the login window, chances are your kernel_task process is running wild. If you’ve still got access to the desktop, you can check this in Activity Monitor, or use Terminal by typing:
>top -u
Normally, kernel_task won’t take up much more than one or two percent of CPU activity, so if you’re running at over 100% or you can’t get past the login window, its time to do a PRAM/VRAM reset.
Here’s how:
1. Power down the machine.
2. Locate the following keys on your keyboard in preparation for Step 4:
‘command’ – ‘option’ – ‘P’ – ‘R’
3. Press the ‘power on’ button.
4. Immediately – and before the grey screen appears – hold down ‘command-option-P-R’ all together.
5. Keep them held down until you’ve heard the start-up chime twice. After you release them you should hear it again, and hopefully your Mac will boot up as it should and with the kernel_task process back to normal.
Tooltip: download and run smcFanControl in your ‘Login items’ to keep an eye on your temps and fan speed in the Menubar. 😉
Have you still got this problem, or found another solution? Let us know in the Comments! 🙂
Related posts:
Why is my mac running so hot?
Why is my mac running so slow?
Also see:
Resetting the System Management Controller (SMC)
featured picture wormhole by IVIXIVIXVXII
maximizing screen space in OS X
If you don’t like full-screen apps because they hide the menubar, or you’re using Snow Leopard and you need to increase screen real-estate, here’s a few tricks you can try.
1. Try to maximize the app to take up all the rest of the screen space by clicking the green indicator light in the top left corner (there are three in a row, red, amber, green).
2. You can hide or collapse the toolbar (that’s the top part of the app that the indicator lights and other icons sit in) in some apps by clicking the elongated button on the far-right of the toolbar (if present). Alternatively, if there’s no button, look in the menubar at the top for ‘View > Hide Toolbar‘. While you’re there, look for ‘Hide Status Bar‘, which is the strip at the bottom of an application window.
3. Try either right-clicking or ‘control’ clicking anywhere on the toolbar and experimenting with the options. Some apps will let you hide the toolbars (like Office for Mac), while others give you options such as ‘use text only’ to remove icons which will reduce the size of the toolbar. Experiment to see what works best.
how to unfreeze your iPad
iPads are so easy to use, why bother with the manual? 😉 The chances are though, that at some point you’re either going to find that an app freezes on your screen or your whole tablet becomes unresponsive. Don’t panic, the answer’s simple:
First, be sure that it’s connected to a power source. The most common reason for iPads not working is people don’t realise they’re out of battery! Otherwise try these:
If it’s just a particular App that’s frozen on your screen:
— Hold down the ‘sleep/wake’ button (top right, back edge) for about 5 seconds until the slider appears. Release the ‘sleep/wake’ button. Now hold down the ‘Home’ button (bottom front, centre) until you see your Home screen.
If your whole machine is unresponsive, then do a restart:
— Hold down the ‘sleep/wake’ button for about 5 seconds until the slider appears. Slide it to ‘Off’. Then hold it down again until the Apple logo appears showing that the iPad is restarting.
If that doesn’t work, do a hard reset:
— Hold down the ‘sleep/wake’ button AND the ‘Home’ button simultaneously for about 10 seconds or until the Apple logo appears.
*For more serious problems with your iPad, such as continual restarting or no home screen, have a look here.
featured picture: ice crystals by Typen
how to fix permissions (Permissions Pt 2)
(This post continues from here on file permission problems.)
Did you know there are two levels of permissions on your mac? User level and system level. Most discussions of fixing permissions only discuss the latter, but you may also need to fix the former (also sometimes called ‘ACLs’) for some problems caused by upgrading Lion on top of Snow Leopard.
4. System Level Permissions
You can safely repair your system level permissions at any time, and doing it once in a while is a good maintenance activity even if you’re not experiencing any problems. It’s also the first thing to do as soon as you notice any problems with apps launching, file access problems, or your computer seems to be running unusually slow.
How to do it:
— 1. Go to Applications > Utilities > Disk Utility.app and double click the app to open it.
— 2. Click your HDD icon in the left column (if you have more than one, click the one that contains your startup disk).
— 3. If it is not already selected, click on the ‘First Aid’ tab. Choose the ‘Repair Disk Permissions’ button near the bottom of the window (see the larger of the two windows in the screenshot above).
— 4. Wait for the process to finish (it could take ten minutes or more), then quit Disk Utility. You can ignore most of the error messages that appear unless they’re in red.
5. User Level Permissions (ACLs)
These permissions apply only to your ‘Home’ folder and its contents, and if you have more than one user you will need to do this procedure for any user experiencing a problem. However, unlike system level permissions, repairing ACLs isn’t something you should do unless there is a specific issue to be solved. Problems that this repair might help with include permission conflicts inherited from an earlier Snow Leopard or Leopard installation, such as Finder always asking for your password when you try to delete, move or copy a file.
To reset the ACLs in Lion: (To reset the ACLs in Leopard/Snow Leopard have a look here.)
— 1. Remove the current ACLs by opening Terminal.app (Applications > Utilities > Terminal.app) and copy and pasting this command:
sudo chmod -RN ~
Press return. You’ll be asked for your password. Notice that when you type it in you won’t see anything on the screen. Press return again. If you get an error message, you probably didn’t type in your password correctly. Repeat this step till its accepted. It will take some time to complete. Then paste this command into Terminal also:
sudo chown -R `id -un` ~
and press return. Enter your password again if necessary.
— 2. Press the Power button on the computer and choose ‘Restart’. When the screen goes blank, hold down the ‘command’ and ‘R’ keys on the keyboard until you hear the start up chime. In the menu bar at the top, choose Utilities > Terminal
— 3. At the Terminal prompt type
resetpassword
Then hit ‘Return’
— 4. Forget about resetting your password; what you’re looking for is your hard disk icon at the top. Hit that, and then from the drop-down menu select your user account.
— 5. Go to the bottom of the dialogue window – leaving all password fields blank – and choose ‘Reset’ under ‘Reset Home Folder Permissions and ACLs’ (see the smaller of the two windows in the screenshot above, inside the red dotted line).
— 6. When the process finishes, quit everything and restart your Mac. 🙂
Related Posts
How to Troubleshoot Your Mac with FT2
can’t create kext cache error
FastTasks – download the free OS X utility app from Applehelpwriter
why does Trash ask for a password? (Permissions Pt 1)
There are several reasons why Trash may ask for your password. Let’s deal with the obvious ones first:
1. FileVault is turned on
Solution: either turn FileVault off, or put up with the behaviour.
2. If you are using an account with ‘Parental Controls’ enabled, the person who set up your account may have denied you permission to delete, modify or move some or all files.
Solution: Speak to mom!
If 1 and 2, aren’t your problem, then you may have some permissions errors.
3. Check Permissions on .Trash
— 1. Open a Terminal window (Applications >Utilities > Terminal.app) and check the permissions by typing/pasting in the following:
ls -al
You should end up with a long list, among which will be the permissions for your .Trash folder. Mine looks like this:
drwx—— 2 SnowLpd staff 68 29 Nov 15:33 .Trash
— 2. What’s important here that the name after the series of ‘drwx’ letters is the same as your user name (my user name, as you can see, is ‘SnowLpd’). If it is, then ignore the rest of this post and go to the post Permissions Pt2.
If the name is not the same, then you need to type this command into Terminal:
sudo chown -R your_username .Trash
Where you replace your_username with (surprise…) your user name, which is also the name of your home folder (note there’s a space both before and after your_username). Thus, for example, if in the previous step it said ‘root’ instead of my username, then I’d type in ‘sudo chown -R SnowLpd .Trash’.
—3. Now press ‘Return’. You will be prompted for your admin password. Type it in, but notice that you won’t see anything as you type, so type carefully. Hit ‘Return’ again. You should be returned to the Terminal prompt pretty quickly. Quit Terminal.app and see if your problems are solved.
4. If your .Trash permissions were OK, then you may need to fix either system permissions or ACL permissions. To do that, go to the next post.
Related Posts
how to fix permissions (Permissions Pt 2)
‘delete’ doesn’t send files to Trash
avoiding autosave applications
If autosave is slowing you down, there may be nothing else for it than to switch from your favourite Apple app to an alternative that doesn’t use the feature. Here’s a rundown of some of the main autosave-enabled apps and some possible non-autosave replacements.
Preview –> Skim (for pdfs)
Skim is a great little free program that is based on Preview but adds some extra functionality, especially useful if you do a lot of annotations and note-taking. All the basic controls are familiar from Preview, including trackpad zooms and rotations. There’s two limitations: it’s pdf only, and it doesn’t have the ability to create hyperlinks.
Preview –> Graphic Converter (for images)
Old standard beloved by many Mac users. Note that the latest version does support autosave, but unlike native Apple apps, gives you the option to turn it off. Available on the app store. Main drawback: it’s not free (current price about $40).
TextEdit –> Tincta
Love this free program, and you can find it in the app store. Does everything TextEdit does and more. If you do any sort of coding, you’ll love Tincta. Everyone should have this!
Terminal –> iTerm2
You’re not really going to notice autosave in Terminal if you only use it for the odd command. If you’re doing anything more than that, well, you should be using iTerm2 anyway. Free, powerful, essential.
Pages & Numbers –> Office/Libreoffice
The only real answer to these outside of the MSOffice suite is the free Libreoffice.
Keynote –> Powerpoint/OpenSong
Well, sometimes it’s just the devil you know. Yes, you can’t really beat MSPowerpoint, but of course that’s a heavy investment. A free option that might be worth giving a try is OpenSong.
Tried any of these, or found your own alternative to autosave-apps? Let us know in the Comments below!
upgrading to Lion – the golden rules!
Nearly three months since the initial public release of OS X Lion 10.7 and a couple of updates later (we’re currently at Release 10.7.2) a lot of upgraders are reporting problems to Apple Support Communities. These problems could be avoided or their severity reduced if people upgraded in the right way.
There’s a wrong way? Oh yes…the Apple way is to encourage you to click on the App Store, click on Lion, pay your money, sit back and watch as everything falls into place without barely a finger lifted from the user. That’s great — when it works, but as noted, a lot of people are finding that all sorts of things are going wrong from software incompatibility to hardware incompatibility and sometimes (like in my own case) just plain user incompatibility (yes, some of us — and it could be you too! — are just not that thrilled with the reduced configurability and usability of Lion compared to Snow Leopard, even when it works as intended). There’s also some reported problems even with Apple’s own products: Time Machine, Time Capsule and Spotlight are all being reported as having problems for some users.
But much of this need not give you a headache, put your computer out of action or require a call to Apple Support if you follow the golden rules to doing any major OS upgrade.
Golden Rule No. 1: Check the compatibility of your key software tools.
Why do I need to do this?
Lion does not support a lot of older technologies such as Rosetta and PowerPC apps. If you make heavy use of these programs in your daily use, you’re going to need to upgrade those too or continue to run Snow Leopard on an external disk.
Golden Rule No. 2: Buy an external disk and clone your current system to it.
Why do I need to do this?
Without a doubt, this is the most important thing you should do before upgrading. What cloning means is that if anything goes wrong with the install, if it doesn’t work, or it isn’t to your taste, you can simply boot back into your old system within minutes (no longer than it takes to restart the computer, in fact). Your clone is your insurance, a fail-safe against the unexpected. Don’t even think about hitting that App store upgrade till you have your clone in the bag.
Or what? Simply put, if you don’t make a clone of your system, you’re going to have to live with any problems until you can work out a way to either solve them (and some issues haven’t even been resolved yet) or revert back to your previous OS the hard way, with the potential of data loss.
Although cloning your system will cost you the price of an external USB or Firewire hard disk, it’s an investment you should not overlook. Even if your upgrade goes well, keep the clone for a month or so till you’re sure everything works fine. Once you’re happy, you can use that disk to clone your Lion OS regularly as an incremental backup (like Time Machine only more configurable and less erratic!).
Golden Rule No.3: Make sure you have a bootable DVD or USB recovery disk.
Why do I need to do this?
Unlike every other proprietary OS upgrade ever, Lion is downloaded from the internet and does not come with an install disk. Does it matter? Well, yes. Sometimes Lion doesn’t install properly for a number of different reasons and sometimes your system just goes belly-up. Now you may have heard that Lion comes with its own recovery partition, but that assumes that the recovery partition installs properly, and it relies on having an internet connection. Re-downloading the installer takes a lot longer than simply copying it the first time and making a bootable Lion recovery disk in case of emergency.
Golden Rule No.4: Do a clean install to your internal disk.
Why do I need to do this?
A clean install basically means two things: you wipe the history of the disk you’re going to use for your new OS, and you don’t import any settings from your previous OS. This should ensure that the OS installs exactly as it was designed, without being infected with any hidden or unknown problems from your previous OS install.
Golden Rule No. 5: Use the clone to add manually the stuff you use everyday, and as-and-when you need it for other stuff.
Why do I need to do this?
Using the auto-upgrade, Time Machine or Disk Migration features have been known to introduce problems such as corrupted files and permissions that Snow Leopard ignored for some reason or other but which Lion won’t tolerate, and/or files and settings which are just plain incompatible with Lion. Trying to find out what is causing your system problems is a gruelling process if you just import everything en masse. On the other hand, if you import things manually over time, it’ll be both a lot easier to figure out which change caused the problem but also — using your clone — to roll your system back if needs be.
Let us know your upgrade stories in the Comments below. Was it just one-click to happiness or a whole world of pain?😉
how to back up your Mac – the best way!
iCloud? Time Machine? Noooo……! We’re talking about the best way to backup your precious data, not the most convenient way…
What’s wrong with using the cloud? The fact that you need an internet connection, a password to be accepted, to act in accordance with the T&C of your cloud provider, the fact that someone – government, corporation, hacker – could interfere with your data, lose it or just add unwanted stuff to it. Also, if you want to backup your whole system then the various free storage offers are not going to be big enough to do the job, and you’re going to end up paying a lot more than if you backup your system properly.
How about Time Machine? Yes, it’s simple and convenient and pretty much automatic, but its not secure. TM has three major problems. First, it doesn’t allow proper archiving so anything you delete from your HDD will eventually get deleted from TM. Second, it doesn’t tell you what it’s doing before it does it, meaning you are at the mercy of its automated decisions. Third, it’s not bootable. If your whole system crashes or your HDD just fails, Time Machine won’t help you. You’ll have to restore the system or replace the HDD before you can use your machine again.
But there is a much better way, and aside from you providing the hardware (a couple of external hard disks), one that’s also free. The most secure system is to run an hourly or daily scheduled cloner on one disk, and a weekly cloner on the other. You can use SuperDuper or, my own favourite, Carbon Copy Cloner.
If you want to read up on and understand the various backup options and what they entail, you can’t do better than to read this superb post by Apple Discussions member ds store.
applehelpwriter.com 