Any solutions for "won't sleep" problem?

This has been a long-standing problem w/ 10.3.x (if not other OS X versions): no matter what the settings, the machine will not sleep after the timeout period. The display will sleep, but not the CPU. I've been thru all sorts of forums confirming this problem, but just wanted to check in to see if some sort of fix has been found in the last month or two.

thanks Calr

On 24/08/2005 4:53 PM, Carl Witthoft wrote:

This has been a long-standing problem w/ 10.3.x (if not other OS X versions): no matter what the settings, the machine will not sleep after the timeout period. The display will sleep, but not the CPU. I've been thru all sorts of forums confirming this problem, but just wanted to check in to see if some sort of fix has been found in the last month or two.

If it will not sleep even if you invoke Sleep directly from the Apple menu item, then it is almost assuredly a device of some kind. Many PCI devices do not honour the various optional powerdown states. I have such a device, and depending on what version and patch level of OS X and device drivers I had installed it would either sleep nicely, never sleep automatically or refuse to sleep at all.

The next time I get a mixer/preamp it will be a FireWire device, that's for sure.

The behaviour is complete luck, as OS X is assuming that if my device says it supports various powerdown states, it means it. As of 10.4 it now logs the specific device that is pissing it off when trying to go to sleep state.

Remove the PCI device and it generally works as advertised. The other "known" issue is that if iTunes is running the machine will not autosleep (since 10.3 or 10.4?) I've noticed that things like open PPP and SMB connections will also keep autosleep from working.

Voodoo some folks have tried is trashing the Power Saver prefs or downgrading device drivers (if this is the root cause of the problem.) I've heard some FireWire and/or USB devices will keep things from going to the right powerdown state as well.

Bottom line: you will have to experiment a bit and see what works for you, since the root cause of the problem can vary quite a bit.

In article carl-F7ACAF.16531124082005@redacted.invalid, Carl Witthoft carl@redacted.invalid wrote:

This has been a long-standing problem w/ 10.3.x (if not other OS X versions): no matter what the settings, the machine will not sleep after the timeout period. The display will sleep, but not the CPU. I've been thru all sorts of forums confirming this problem, but just wanted to check in to see if some sort of fix has been found in the last month or two.

It is usually an application that is running that keeps a device open that prevents automatic sleeping. I know on my G4, running 10.3.9, that if I start the application for my 35mm USB film scanner running, my G4 will never sleep as long as it is running.

Try closing ALL applications and see if you still have the problem.

Try disconnecting all USB/Firewire devices other than the keyboard and Apple supplied mouse (disconnect 3rd party mice) and see if you still have the problem.

If the problem goes away, find the offender through a process of elimination.

And, of course, restart the computer.

On 2005-08-24 Carl Witthoft carl@redacted.invalid wrote:

This has been a long-standing problem w/ 10.3.x (if not other OS X versions): no matter what the settings, the machine will not sleep after the timeout period. The display will sleep, but not the CPU. I've been thru all sorts of forums confirming this problem, but just wanted to check in to see if some sort of fix has been found in the last month or two.

My brand new iBook G4 has developed this problem already.

Auto-dim works, but auto-sleep doesn't sometimes.

Seems to depend on what's running noninteractively. For example, my shell script that uses /usr/sbin/ioreg to monitor the battery every few seconds prevents sleep.

Is there a way to check the idle-timer that Energy-Saver uses? "pmset -g" shows the trigger limits, but how can we see the current values to debug this problem?

If (on AC) (in EnergySaver) I set sleep to 1, then the display sleeps after 1 minute, but the computer sleeps after 2 minutes, even though pmset -g says 1 and 1.

Same on Battery. (actually, it takes about 12 seconds longer before sleep.)

Back on AC now.

This time it took 2m45s to sleep. (Dim after 1m)

-- Peter

In uUpQe.1055$884.98890@redacted.invalid On 2005-08-28 Peter Renzland phr040919@redacted.invalid wrote:

Is there a way to check the idle-timer that Energy-Saver uses? "pmset -g" shows the trigger limits, but how can we see the current values to debug this problem?

I found it: http://www.macosxhints.com/article.php?story=20040330161158532

#!/bin/sh

echo $((ioreg -c IOHIDSystem | sed -e '/HIDIdleTime/ \ !{ d' -e 't' -e '}' -e 's/.* = //g' -e 'q' / 1000000000))

-- Peter