Mac not sleeping

I'm wondering if there is any third-party software that will ensure the Mac sleeps when I am not using it.
Daniel Cohen wrote on :

My Mac seems to sleep ok manually, but not via Energy Saver. at any rate, the fan seems to be on (with screen black) if I leave the machine unused for an hour or two.

I'm pretty sure I know the reason. I stream music to my hifi using a Squeezebox (wireless hardware) and SlimServer. As SlimServer is a server, I assume that Energy Saver does not want to sleep the machine if SlimServer is active.

I'm wondering if there is any third-party software that will ensure the Mac sleeps when I am not using it. As far as I an concerned, I would be happy to wake the machine manually when I need to stream music.

Power Mac G4 Quicksilver, OS 10.3.8.

morenuf replied on :

In article 1gxfsu6.1tccn1kal5xisN%danspam@redacted.invalid, danspam@redacted.invalid (Daniel Cohen) wrote:

My Mac seems to sleep ok manually, but not via Energy Saver. at any rate, the fan seems to be on (with screen black) if I leave the machine

I'm pretty sure I know the reason. I stream music to my hifi using a Squeezebox (wireless hardware) and SlimServer. As SlimServer is a server, I assume that Energy Saver does not want to sleep the machine if SlimServer is active.

Some sleep/wake OSX issues seem to be as problematic as the SCSI voodoo of the past (and USB/Firewire voodoo of the present). Some USB & Firewire devices may prevent sleep as well as SCSI cards, ATA IDE controlers, etc.

Your SlimServer & Squeezebox may be part of your sleep issue.

I have had variations of sleep issues too under 10.3.4 and 10.4x. Somewhere along the line someone mentioned files in ~/pref/ByHost/ and experimentally I removed them (all in the ByHost folder) under 10.4.1 and now my iMac G4 (iLamp model) once again sleeps/wakes fine automatically and manually once again.

I did not trash the files, just saved them in a folder elsewhere. So far, about a week- 10 days the iMac 10.4.1 runs fine, sleeps fine, wakes fine auto & manually, and the file suspect files (which may be caches) have not been recreated. I am not sure what created those files or their purpose. All I know is my iMac G4 is now sleeping correctly and the files absence has not caused discernable problems.

You might try removing these files (SAVE them elsewhere in case you need to replace them) from ~/pref/ByHost/ folder.

Hope it works for you too.

Wish I knew more about those files function/creation etc. before recommending experimental removal. For me at least under 10.4.1 it seems to be helping.

Morenuf

Daniel Cohen replied on :

For a considerable time, my iMac running OS 10.5.6 won't sleep via Energy Saver settings. The display sleeps ok, and I can make it sleep manually.

I happened to be looking at Activity Monitor for another reason, and noticed that there is a constant small amount of writes to the disk, which presumably is why the machine won't sleep.

Is there a way of seeing which process is doing the writes?