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powerd CPU hog
#38051 12/31/15 10:01 AM
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Every time I launch Activity Monitor (and only while it's open) powerd kicks in at around 70-80% CPU and impedes all other activity on my deuced Mac(hina).

AV has always used in the range of 25% CPU, but I've never seen powerd before El Cap.

Googling has turned up nothing relevant.

Thanks.


The new Great Equalizer is the SEND button.

In Memory of Harv: Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities. ~Voltaire
Re: powerd CPU hog
artie505 #38052 12/31/15 10:09 AM
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I can't answer your question, but I opened Activity Monitor and powerd was using either 0% CPU or 0.1%.


Jon

macOS 11.7.10, iMac Retina 5K 27-inch, late 2014, 3.5 GHz Intel Core i5, 1 TB fusion drive, 16 GB RAM, Epson SureColor P600, Photoshop CC, Lightroom CC, MS Office 365
Re: powerd CPU hog
jchuzi #38053 12/31/15 10:23 AM
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Thanks, Jon; I think that was helpful.

I quit powerd from Activity Monitor and quit/relaunched AM and not only is powerd now using -0-% CPU, AM, itself, is only using about 25% of the CPU time it used to use.

I'm now going to restart and update this.


The new Great Equalizer is the SEND button.

In Memory of Harv: Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities. ~Voltaire
Re: powerd CPU hog
artie505 #38054 12/31/15 10:32 AM
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I shut down and restarted, and both Activity Monitor and powerd are well behaved.

It's not like this is the first time I've ever shut down and restarted, so I'm prepared to see the anomalous activity again, and I'm just as unlikely to be aware of its onset as I've apparently been since I upgraded. tongue


The new Great Equalizer is the SEND button.

In Memory of Harv: Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities. ~Voltaire
Re: powerd CPU hog
artie505 #38057 12/31/15 02:22 PM
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Artie, with the additional system tweaks that you run (Little Snitch, et al) you may be seeing a symptom of a conflict with one of those add-ons being a contributing factor. Next time this one surfaces, try starting in Safe Boot mode to lock out third party add-ons and let us know what that does for you.

FWIW, my 10.11.2 El Capitan install has been without any challenges and without system add-ons.


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Re: powerd CPU hog
artie505 #38061 12/31/15 03:21 PM
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FYI
Originally Posted By: FreeBSD Manual
Powerd: The power utility monitors the system state and sets various power control options accordingly. It offers power-saving modes that can be individually selected for operation on AC power or batteries.

Additionally have you looked at this Apple Discussion thread?


If we knew what it was we were doing, it wouldn't be called research, would it?

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Re: powerd CPU hog
MacManiac #38130 01/04/16 07:13 AM
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Thanks to both you and joemike for your responses. smile

This is a bizarre one that I hope will be the real final chapter of this saga.

Reflecting on your posts (joemike’s linked discussion isn't analogous.), I realized that LabTick’s unvarying “Avg Energy Impact” of ~20 might be my culprit, quit it, restarted, and learned that it was not only not guilty, it wasn't even necessary any longer. (One less 3rd party utility! cool )

And then I remembered NoSleep, which I’d have sworn I’d trashed 3 weeks ago but had, much to my chagrin, found on my Pref Panes list just a few days ago:
  1. I realized that I had trashed only those of its components that EasyFind permitted, not those that required a password.
  2. Although it’s not on my list of Login Items - the option is grayed out in its pref pane - it opens automatically when I log in, anyhow...somehow.
  3. Its obligatory menulet is missing from my menu bar.
  4. It doesn't show as an active process in Activity Monitor!
  5. It doesn’t open in safe mode.
Ideally, I’d have stayed in safe mode until I was certain that No Sleep is my culprit, but (as opposed to my earlier misstatement) powerd’s % CPU does get reset back to 0.00-0.01 after a restart and takes waaay longer than I can stand to be in safe mode to ramp up to a noticeably unusual level.

At this point, though, I’m ready to hang my hat on its being my culprit.

It looks like it has somehow gotten its hooks into powerd such that both it and Activity Monitor run amok when AM tries to read it, but only then. (“top” shows 0.00-0.01% $ CPU for powerd with AM quit.) crazy

My real answer, then, is apparently to get rid of NS (which might require a nuke & pave), but I like my current hybrid functionality(*), and quitting powerd every once in a while is a small price to pay for it, so…

(*) NoSleep is supposed to keep a laptop awake indefinitely while its lid is shut, but it now does so only until Energy Saver’s sleep setting overrides it, and it can still be toggled on/off in its pref pane.

Afterthought: I'm going to try to avoid restarting for a while to see how long it takes powerd to ramp up to the 75% CPU point it was at when I first posted, and then I'll boot into safe mode when I'm leaving my house for a while and make sure that my issue doesn't follow me...hopefully nail down my theory.


The new Great Equalizer is the SEND button.

In Memory of Harv: Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities. ~Voltaire
Re: powerd CPU hog
artie505 #38136 01/04/16 04:08 PM
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Originally Posted By: artie505
And then I remembered NoSleep, which I’d have sworn I’d trashed 3 weeks ago but had, much to my chagrin, found on my Pref Panes list just a few days ago:
  1. I realized that I had trashed only those of its components that EasyFind permitted, not those that required a password.
  2. Although it’s not on my list of Login Items - the option is grayed out in its pref pane - it opens automatically when I log in, anyhow...somehow.
  3. Its obligatory menulet is missing from my menu bar.
  4. It doesn't show as an active process in Activity Monitor!
  5. It doesn’t open in safe mode.

  1. A major part of the trick is finding all of the various components. EasyFind is a good application as far as it goes but finding all of the components assumes there is a common element in the file name which is not always (often?) the case. In fact most app removal tools work the same way. The only one I know of that is different is CleanApp (currently on sale for $7.95) which has a daemon that tracks tracks installations and keeps a database of what files are installed and where. Additionally it keeps track of what files other users remove when they delete an application.
  2. Login Items are deprecated in favor of Launch Agents and LaunchDaemons. I have found Etrecheck (free) helpful in identifying vagrant Launch Agents and LaunchDaemons. I have encountered a couple of cases where even though all the bits parts and pieces of an older app had been removed an entry in ~/Library/com.apple.loginitems.plist still remained and as a result ghost menu references etc still appeared.
  3. Generally that means at least that part of the application has been successfully deleted
  4. That is good — now you need to exorcize the ghosts — which may be the hardest part. See 1 and 2 preceding.
  5. Which is as it should be if OS X is operating normally and the problem app has not hacked the system.

FULL DISCLOSURE I have no relationship, pecuniary or otherwise, with either Synium Software, the developers of CleanApp, or Etresoft, the developers of Etrecheck, other than that of a satisfied user.


If we knew what it was we were doing, it wouldn't be called research, would it?

— Albert Einstein
Re: powerd CPU hog
joemikeb #38255 01/13/16 10:18 AM
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I was hoping to wrap this thread, but NoSleep no longer looks like the culprit in my powerd issue, and I haven't nailed down the alternative at which I've been looking, so there's still more to come.

Thanks for your insights.

Originally Posted By: artie
It doesn't show as an active process in Activity Monitor!

Originally Posted By: joemike
That is good....

Sorry, but I don't understand what's good about it.

We both forgot about uninstallers (Yep, NoSleep has one.), and you overlooked the option of examining installers with Pacifist or another of its ilk to see what they've placed where (as I've now done).

NoSleep did, in fact, place three anonymous files...in /.fseventsd, two of which have magically disappeared, leaving me with the final one (fseventsd-uuid) and its pref pane and kext, and if anybody can divine from that how it's starting up automatically and running without leaving a footprint in Activity Monitor I'll be much obliged. (I found NoSleep among several "ghost" entries in ~/Library/Preferences/loginwindow.plist [but none in its apparent replacement, ~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.loginitems.plist]; deleting the entire plist changed nothing, nor did EtreCheck contribute anything new.)

As I've said, I'm happy with my hybrid functionality, so I'm not the least bit anxious to get too deeply into "troubleshooting" and risk losing something that I may not be able to recreate.


The new Great Equalizer is the SEND button.

In Memory of Harv: Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities. ~Voltaire
Re: powerd CPU hog
artie505 #38525 01/30/16 09:01 AM
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Well, I thought I had the powerd issue tied to the snapshot.db issue, but no such luck, so I'm back to NoSleep as my suspected culprit.

Maybe I'll uninstall it some day and find out for sure.


The new Great Equalizer is the SEND button.

In Memory of Harv: Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities. ~Voltaire

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