Power Mac won't stay asleep

1. Craig Bailey - 7 July 2003

   Running Mac OS X (10.2.6) on a Power Mac G4 1GHz (FW800) since February, and suddenly since the other day I've had trouble keeping it asleep.

   I'll put it to sleep, and come back some hours later and it's awake again.

   Any ideas what could be causing this?

   Could it be an app? I tend to have a couple web browsers open, Mail, iChat, iTunes, iCal, Address Book, Stickies, Suitcase, and Word open pretty constantly. (But, then again, I always have, and the problem just started.)

   Floydian Slip(tm) - "Broadcasting from the dark side of the moon" Random Precision Productions(tm)
   67 Union St. #2D, Winooski, Vt. 05404-1948 USA
   Sundays, 7-8 pm - Champ 101.3 FM, Colchester; 102.1 FM, Randolph, Vt. ccb@floydianslip.com - AIM: RandomPrec - www.floydianslip.com

2. Gregory W. Blank - 7 July 2003

   Previously, Craig Bailey wrote:

   Running Mac OS X (10.2.6) on a Power Mac G4 1GHz (FW800) since February, and suddenly since the other day I've had trouble keeping it asleep. I'll put it to sleep, and come back some hours later and it's awake again.
   Any ideas what could be causing this?

   Do you have it plugged directly into the wall socket,
   line current flucuations can waken it,...I know because I have my computer plugged into a surge suppressor, with a bunch of other stuff like a window fan,....if I put the computer to sleep then turn off the fan to leave the room the computer will wake up.

   Check out My Homepage at
   http://members.bellatlantic.net/~gblank

   Support bacteria - they're the only culture
   some people have." -Stephen Wright

3. Craig Bailey - 8 July 2003

   It's plugged into a battery backup with all my peripherals. (The same set up as always, which, again, puzzles me as to why this has started happening all of a sudden.)

   Floydian Slip(tm) - "Broadcasting from the dark side of the moon" Random Precision Productions(tm)
   67 Union St. #2D, Winooski, Vt. 05404-1948 USA
   Sundays, 7-8 pm - Champ 101.3 FM, Colchester; 102.1 FM, Randolph, Vt. ccb@floydianslip.com - AIM: RandomPrec - www.floydianslip.com

4. Steve Hanson - 8 July 2003

   You must be causing it. Macs "just work".

5. Mr Dewsons - 8 July 2003

   <billgates> It's not a bug, it's a feature! </billgates>

6. stacey cole - 12 October 2003

   why do you wanna keep it asleep, macs have always had sleep problems (either waking from or going to), i just use a screen saver, sleep mode doesn't save much power anyway, but if you wanna continue, you can go to the console in OSX and it will list everything your mac has done from a set period of time (the time is adjustable for app logs too). this is very helpful for troubleshooting probs, hope this helps in some way.

   Craig Bailey wrote:

   Running Mac OS X (10.2.6) on a Power Mac G4 1GHz (FW800) since February, and suddenly since the other day I've had trouble keeping it asleep.

   I'll put it to sleep, and come back some hours later and it's awake again.

   Any ideas what could be causing this?

   Could it be an app? I tend to have a couple web browsers open, Mail, iChat, iTunes, iCal, Address Book, Stickies, Suitcase, and Word open pretty constantly. (But, then again, I always have, and the problem just started.)

   --
   Floydian Slip(tm) - "Broadcasting from the dark side of the moon" Random Precision Productions(tm)
   67 Union St. #2D, Winooski, Vt. 05404-1948 USA
   Sundays, 7-8 pm - Champ 101.3 FM, Colchester; 102.1 FM, Randolph, Vt. ccb@floydianslip.com - AIM: RandomPrec - www.floydianslip.com

7. Lloyd Parsons - 12 October 2003

   I dunno how this got crossposted to comp.sys.mac.advocacy, but....

   What world do you live in where sleep mode doesn't save much power?

   In my experience Apple's have been much better than an wintel or amd box I've seen for coming out of sleep. I literally cannot remember the last time my G4/933 wouldn't wake up.

   Lloyd

8. Brian Paul Ehni - 12 October 2003

   To get to the original question, I've seen this where the computer was set to wake on LAN activity. Since the computer was connected to a network via ethernet.......

   Brian

9. Woofbert - 12 October 2003

   Doctor, Doctor! It hurts when I do this!

   Woofbert, Chief Rocket Surgeon, Infernosoft
   Woofbert's Law on Learning Linux: When attempting to learn Linux, study it thoroughly before you begin.

10. Eveline - 12 October 2003

    Brian Paul Ehni schreef:

    To get to the original question, I've seen this where the computer was set to wake on LAN activity. Since the computer was connected to a network via ethernet.......

    Wake on LAN only works with a specific 'wake-up' package. It does not make the computer wake up when there's just network activity.

11. Chad Sexington - 26 October 2003

    I have another computer (linux) and monitor next to my G4's monitor and when I turn on the linux monitor it wakes up my G4.

12. Kadin2048 - 1 July 2007

    -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
    Hash: SHA1

    Any possibility it's a PCI card?

    I've always had problems getting my G4 to stay in sleep, and I think the problem is related to one of the PCI cards I have in it, or some combination of multiple ones. I don't care enough to really diagnose the problem in my machine but it might be worth pulling all the cards out of yours and seeing if that solves the issue.

    At least on mine it doesn't cause random powerups though, it causes it to immediately come out of sleep maybe 30s after I put it down. (So generally right as I'm walking out the door I hear it go on behind me.)

    There was an Apple TIL on it a while back, IIRC the advice was "update the firmware on all your PCI cards or get new ones." I didn't care enough to do either.

    -Kadin.

    -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
    Version: GnuPG v1.4.1 (Darwin)

    iD8DBQFGiH/GbusI/auJ9CsRAqGTAKDYDi1Zm/qratnSRYst/jGGiuL0wwCeJziP ItwjpV6HbSszsdS5HOV/qJg=
    =s2Um
    -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

13. Matthew Lybanon - 2 July 2007

    It may very well be some application. I do not normally put my system to sleep manually, but I have noticed the following behavior.

    My system is set to go to sleep automatically when the system is inactive for some length of time. When I have no (or only a few) applications running, it works fine. But when a greater number of applications are running (loaded, but I am not doing anything with them), usually the system will not put itself to sleep. I have never tried in any systematic way to find out what application, or combination of applications, leads to this behavior. But it is pretty clear that applications have something to do with it.