Help with Processes needed!!

spookyspooky
Posted:
in macOS edited January 2014
Hi,



I have recently upgraded to a broadband internet service which included a speedtouch USB modem.

everything works fine except that from time to time my modem starts disconnecting and remains disconnecting until I shut down or restart my mac. This is really infuriating!!

The modem status in the menubar just keeps saying "disconnecting". I have tried to have a look in the activity monitor but the entries are totally alien to me. I wouldn't know by the look of them which process to kill.

is there anywhere where there is a list of processes or help identifying processes so that I can just kill this modem one and not have to restrart my mac?

BTW G4 dual 450 896MB panther 10.2.6

Comments

  • Reply 1 of 8
    kickahakickaha Posts: 8,760member
    You can export the Activity Monitor process list and post it here, if you like.
  • Reply 2 of 8
    toweltowel Posts: 1,479member
    Try looking in /Library/StartupItems, too, to see if your modem software put itself there.
  • Reply 3 of 8
    spookyspooky Posts: 504member
    Quote:

    Originally posted by Kickaha

    You can export the Activity Monitor process list and post it here, if you like.



    Hi kickaha,



    I tried exporting the monitor list and it created an exported processes plist file. when i tried to open it to copy it it came out as a html looking file several pages long and not the dozen or so processes in the activity window. is this normal? should i just paste the plist into here anyway? (its VERY long)



    thanx
  • Reply 4 of 8
    kickahakickaha Posts: 8,760member
    Crud. Yes, that's normal, it's showing all processes. If you click the pop-up upper right in the ActMon app, you'll see that you can select all processes, and voila - tons of stuff pops up, not just your apps.



    Okay, try this. A little more work, but gets the info across:



    In Activity Monitor, in the upper-right Show popup, select All, Hierarchically. Then collapse the WindowServer list. Type in here the rest of the items. \ If you could prepend a dash to each indent level, that would keep clear what processes are subprocesses of which others.



    I suspect that the offending process will be a subprocess of configd, but I could be wrong.
  • Reply 5 of 8
    jwri004jwri004 Posts: 626member
    If your modem is stuck disconnecting then look for the pppd process.



    From experience kill it twice in the terminal as the first time will NOT work.



    If you are not terminal savvy then look in versiontracker or similar for an app that will do it for you.



  • Reply 6 of 8
    vox barbaravox barbara Posts: 2,021member
    Quote:

    Originally posted by jwri004

    If your modem is stuck disconnecting then look for the pppd process.



    From experience kill it twice in the terminal as the first time will NOT work.



    If you are not terminal savvy then look in versiontracker or similar for an app that will do it for you.







    Right. The same prob occured on my iMac a while ago. It was really weird, because the "disconnecting process" came to no halt anyway. Nobody came up with a solid fix, - except killing pppd process.



    Anyway, you forgot to mention how to kill ppd via terminal



    Well, open terminal typ in:

    sudo killall pppd

    enter

    Perhaps you have to perform this action twice.



    BTW, finally the misbehaviour ceased all of a sudden, and i still don't no why - perhaps a little clue. At this time i learned that corrupted cache files can be pretty nasty. So trash all your Cache files (local and system wide) and look what happens



    perhaps this thread helps
  • Reply 7 of 8
    jeastwoodjeastwood Posts: 3member
    I have been working on this problem just this morning, also with a speedtouch USB modem. It would appear to be exactly the same issue that you are having.



    the driver CD seems to install all the necessary files to the Mac - what doesn't appear to have happened, at least on the Mac I was looking at, is that the software installs the drivers but then doesn't select the correct modem file in the 'Network' preference panel.



    To do this I opened 'Network' in 'System Preferences' and selected the speedtouch modem from the list.



    On the 'Modem' tab in the resulting window the modem file was listed as the 'Apple Internal 56K Modem (v.90)' - changing this to the correct 'speedtouch' file enabled the Mac to connect to the broadband service.



    Hope this helps you out.



    James
  • Reply 8 of 8
    jwri004jwri004 Posts: 626member
    Quote:

    Originally posted by Vox Barbara

    Anyway, you forgot to mention how to kill ppd via terminal



    Too busy. 49 hours in three days with a similar forecast until Sunday, where I get to do the washing, clean the house, and sleep in preparation for next week!



    But I knew someone would "fill in the gaps"



    I get this all the time. With a 5 day uptime I can have a hanging disconnect occur more than 10 times. It is one of the reasons why I still have the terminal in the dock.....
Sign In or Register to comment.