F@H 3.3.18 on iMac M4 won't run in background

[calxalot]

You should know within a minute if idle folding is working by monitoring from your iPhone.

[gibhenry]

You seem to be saying that idle folding does indeed work when you log out.

Correct. But with my previous iMac Intel, folding would start at some point after I walked away from the computer, and the log would show it stopping when I jiggled the mouse or pressed a key. There was no need to log out. In fact, I virtually never log out, sometimes for a month or two between reboots.

That does not happen on the iMac ARM. If I don't log out, it simply does not fold, no matter how long I leave it "idle." And with your neat trick of monitoring it via another device, I can tell, for example, when I wake up in the morning, that it is not folding, and hasn't done so all night.

I set up the new machine via Migration Assistant, so it should be basically like the old machine. But maybe there's something running that I don't know about, or something about the ARM processor that views "idle" differently.

[calxalot]

It must be that the screen is not actually put to sleep, or that it is woken up by something.

Some mice and other devices continually send events to the computer, preventing sleep. Vibration can also cause bogus mouse move events.

[calxalot]

Monitoring from phone is an intended feature.
But it is only briefly mentioned in the user guide.

[calxalot]

Maybe Migration Assistant didn't copy everything.

What settings do you have in System Settings > Lock Screen top section?

My remote systems have "Turn display off" Never.

[gibhenry]

Some mice and other devices continually send events to the computer, preventing sleep.

Interesting…this machine came with BlueTooth mouse and keyboard. Maybe…?

It must be that the screen is not actually put to sleep, or that it is woken up by something.

Well, looking at the Console system log overnight, it has a certain amount of activity on a repeating basis:

Code: Select all

Jan 13 01:40:11 iGibToo AMPDeviceDiscoveryAgent[782]: Entered:_AMMuxedDeviceDisconnected, mux-device:578
Jan 13 01:40:11 iGibToo AssetCacheTetheratorService[1243]: Entered:_AMMuxedDeviceDisconnected, mux-device:578
Jan 13 01:40:11 iGibToo AMPDeviceDiscoveryAgent[782]: Entered:__thr_AMMuxedDeviceDisconnected, mux-device:578
Jan 13 01:40:11 iGibToo AssetCacheTetheratorService[1243]: Entered:__thr_AMMuxedDeviceDisconnected, mux-device:578
Jan 13 01:47:10 iGibToo syslogd[377]: ASL Sender Statistics
Jan 13 01:53:45 iGibToo AMPDeviceDiscoveryAgent[782]: Entered:_AMMuxedDeviceDisconnected, mux-device:579
Jan 13 01:53:45 iGibToo AssetCacheTetheratorService[1243]: Entered:_AMMuxedDeviceDisconnected, mux-device:579
Jan 13 01:53:45 iGibToo AMPDeviceDiscoveryAgent[782]: Entered:__thr_AMMuxedDeviceDisconnected, mux-device:579
Jan 13 01:53:45 iGibToo AssetCacheTetheratorService[1243]: Entered:__thr_AMMuxedDeviceDisconnected, mux-device:579
Jan 13 01:56:11 iGibToo AMPDeviceDiscoveryAgent[782]: Entered:_AMMuxedDeviceDisconnected, mux-device:580
Jan 13 01:56:11 iGibToo AssetCacheTetheratorService[1243]: Entered:_AMMuxedDeviceDisconnected, mux-device:580
Jan 13 01:56:11 iGibToo AMPDeviceDiscoveryAgent[782]: Entered:__thr_AMMuxedDeviceDisconnected, mux-device:580
Jan 13 01:56:11 iGibToo AssetCacheTetheratorService[1243]: Entered:__thr_AMMuxedDeviceDisconnected, mux-device:580
Jan 13 01:59:49 iGibToo AMPDeviceDiscoveryAgent[782]: Entered:_AMMuxedDeviceDisconnected, mux-device:581
Jan 13 01:59:49 iGibToo AssetCacheTetheratorService[1243]: Entered:_AMMuxedDeviceDisconnected, mux-device:581
Jan 13 01:59:49 iGibToo AMPDeviceDiscoveryAgent[782]: Entered:__thr_AMMuxedDeviceDisconnected, mux-device:581
Jan 13 01:59:49 iGibToo AssetCacheTetheratorService[1243]: Entered:__thr_AMMuxedDeviceDisconnected, mux-device:581

But this was true of the Intel machine too; in fact, I think all machines "dream" while they sleep.

What settings do you have in System Settings > Lock Screen top section?

Start Screen Saver when inactive: for 20 minutes
Turn display off on power adapter when inactive: for 20 minutes

I did have Show large clock set to On Lock Screen, so I set that to never. We'll see if that was it, but I'm not hopeful. Maybe I should try streaming all messages to catch the culprit—although that in itself might prevent sleep.

[calxalot]

The Apple mouse and keyboard should be fine.
But you could try turning them off "for fun".

What is iGibToo?

[gibhenry]

What is iGibToo?

Machine name.

[gibhenry]

Interesting: I just created a new user to trouble-shoot Backblaze, and I had to switch back and forth. i find that every time I switched, my user started folding again, even though the machine is running and busy/not idle; evidently switching to another user idles the folding user. So maybe something is running when the machine is "idle." How can I catch it?

NOTE: There's a lot of useless cruft in the log, instead of which I wish they'd stamp the date when it has been more than an hour since the last activity.

[daiko]

On fah installation, you have the option to allow folding for all users or only the single current user. Could this be an issue? I’ve always selected “all users” on my Macs, and never seen this problem, even when logged out.

[calxalot]

All users is the only installer choice on macOS.
The panel with other (disabled) choices always appears anyway on some releases on macOS.

When changing users, I think "loginwindow" briefly owns the console.
After ~20 seconds, idle folding starts. It should stop immediately once you login to other account.

[calxalot]

With the config.xml changes suggested, you should see log lines like

Code: Select all

22:55:45:D4:OSXOSImpl:consoleUserChanged() loginwindow
22:55:56:D4:OSXOSImpl:consoleUserChanged() kevin2

[gibhenry]

On fah installation, you have the option to allow folding for all users or only the single current user. Could this be an issue? I’ve always selected “all users” on my Macs, and never seen this problem, even when logged out.

I didn't reinstall on the ARM iMac; Migration Assistant took care of that. I'm pretty sure that I would have installed for all users, but is there a way to check once it's installed?

…and are you using an ARM machine?

[Joe_H]

I haven't tried out a Migration Assistant install of F@h on my Mac Studio. But since running into issues with Migration Assistant and F@h installs years ago on strictly Intel Macs, I have installed F@h separately ever since. About the most I have done is copy over a config.xml file to copy and paste the settings for user, team and passkey.

[gibhenry]

But since running into issues with Migration Assistant and F@h installs years ago on strictly Intel Macs, I have installed F@h separately ever since.

You gave me an idea: i uninstalled and reinstalled F@H. Oddly, it still had all my settings, so I guess the uninstaller didn't uninstall the data files. Anyway, it still doesn't run ever when "Only when idle" is selected.