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ehendrix
11-08-2013, 12:54 AM
On Mavericks (10.9) with 1 DisplayLink display attached using 2.1 driver. When doing "show desktop" (thus moving all the windows out of the way) crashes WindowServer.
Attached are 2 crash logs.

ehendrix
11-12-2013, 12:13 AM
I had opened a bug report with Apple on this ... just got a reply that this is not an Apple issue but a third-party vendor issue (DisplayLink).
Would thus like someone from DisplayLink to look at this and report.

advntstrfe
11-18-2013, 10:27 PM
Would someone please look into this problem as I am having a similar experience (crashes and reverts to login screen every time I attempt to Show Desktop and intermittently when attempting to use Mission Control).

ehendrix
12-09-2013, 06:26 PM
Bump as this is a definite issue and does not seem that Apple is recognizing it as being on their end.

advntstrfe
12-11-2013, 04:16 AM
Agreed. This continues to occur sporadically throughout. It is frustrating not being able to use Show Desktop.

itadmincrbc
12-11-2013, 09:55 PM
Apple will say it's DisplayLink and DisplayLink will say it's apple. It's called passing the buck back and forth. Everyone knows Apple doesn't want you connecting non Apple devices to their hardware LOL.

ehendrix
12-11-2013, 10:58 PM
Understood, but would be nice for someone from DisplayLink to at least acknowledge the issue exist and that they are looking into it as well.
I opened the report with Apple and they at least responded back, have not heard anything from Displaylink.

ehendrix
12-17-2013, 04:01 PM
Just updated to 10.9.1 and tried the "Show desktop" again, did it 3-4 times and no crashes. Before it crashed each and every time I tried. So look like Apple fixed this bug even although they responded that it is not on their end.

Carlo
12-18-2013, 12:20 PM
We have found different WS crashes in our tests so far in 10.9.1 compared to 10.9. It must be a timings issue that is triggered by different use cases on different setups.

Thank you for posting the update!

Carlo

ehendrix
01-13-2014, 09:56 PM
Carlo,

So are these items DisplayLink can/needs to address in the driver?

shandy
01-14-2014, 04:29 PM
+1 for this issue

It seems to trigger in the majority of instances when I do a 4-finger-swipe (i.e. App Expose) to show all the windows for the currently active application.

I'm running 10.9.1 - but experienced the same issue in 10.9.0

I'm using on DL monitor and one Displayport external monitor on 2013 MBA.

It only crashes when the DL monitor is plugged in.

Melia
01-15-2014, 05:50 PM
No issues with expose or show desktop so far on my early 2013 iMac 10.9.1

jeff-y
02-10-2014, 11:40 PM
It's happening to me too. Even if it's Apple's fault, a workaround would be great.

(Of course, when I chatted with Apple to report the problem, they just suggested I reinstall the OS... *sigh*)

Any update?

chimaira77
02-11-2014, 02:19 PM
This is how my screen looks like after 5-10 mins being plugged into my macbook 2011 i7 16gb ram:
http://sv.tinypic.com/view.php?pic=kcfnra&s=8#.Uvov7mTuI2U

Havent found a fix for this yet and the pic shows the first symptoms, after 15 mins the screens goes unreadable.

tried ML and Mavericks, driver 1,8, 2,0 and now 2,1 and nothing seems to work.

incase the image wont show up here a url for copy paste
http://sv.tinypic.com/view.php?pic=kcfnra&s=8#.Uvov7mTuI2U

edit: theres no specific program related to this, this occurs even if i have no program running and i dont do anything with the computer.

Carlo
02-12-2014, 09:13 AM
This is how my screen looks like after 5-10 mins being plugged into my macbook 2011 i7 16gb ram:
http://sv.tinypic.com/view.php?pic=kcfnra&s=8#.Uvov7mTuI2U

Havent found a fix for this yet and the pic shows the first symptoms, after 15 mins the screens goes unreadable.

tried ML and Mavericks, driver 1,8, 2,0 and now 2,1 and nothing seems to work.

incase the image wont show up here a url for copy paste
http://sv.tinypic.com/view.php?pic=kcfnra&s=8#.Uvov7mTuI2U

edit: theres no specific program related to this, this occurs even if i have no program running and i dont do anything with the computer.

This very much looks like memory corruption, a HW issue. I would expect this to be covered by the manufacturer's warranty, best to check with them.

Cheers,
Carlo

cfenollosa
03-10-2014, 06:44 PM
This is happening to me too, and is absolutely frustrating. The crash is random and seemingly non-reproducible, so when it crashes, it takes down all the work I was doing.

Mission Control/Show Desktop seems to trigger the bug, but it's not an exclusive trigger. It also happened playing youtube videos or moving windows around.

By the way, on my displaylink-driven monitor I have no Apple logo (the rest of the menu bar looks as it should, though), and no miniatures on Mission Control. Video is super choppy, and some windows turn black randomly. I have to move them to the MBA's monitor and back again to refresh them.

Overall I am not happy with the performance of the Displaylink and I'd like somebody to fix the issues once and for all. This is a product I can't definitely recommend. The annoyances are one thing, but the random crashes make it almost unusable.

Sorry for the criticism but this is unacceptable.

PS: I'm running 10.9.2 on 2013 MBA

Edit: my latest crash log https://www.dropbox.com/s/jfnr37xd61wnm5a/displaylink-windowserver.txt

huku22222222
03-30-2014, 10:55 AM
Signed up to post this as well as it's extremely annoying.

This happens frequently on my brand new 13'' Macbook Pro, 16GB RAM, running 10.9. Two external monitors via DisplayLink, one via HDMI. By the way this never happened on my previous Macbook, also running 10.9!a

Carlo
04-01-2014, 09:24 AM
Hi all,

We have discussed 2 well defined Window Server crashes with Apple so far, but we don't have a good reproduction of the random one.
It would be very helpful if you could let us have a system profiler of the issue and the description of the trigger for your case.

You can send us the information using http://www.displaylink.com/support/ask_question.php

Thank you!
Carlo

cfenollosa
04-02-2014, 08:10 AM
Carlo, I sent you the information through the form

Thanks

Carlo
04-03-2014, 09:14 AM
Carlo, I sent you the information through the form

Thanks

Apologies for the partial instructions,

In order to analyse the issue and in case open a bug or technical incident with Apple we need our logs and the full system profile.

Immediately after the issue has happened can you please use this tool http://www.displaylink.com/support/ticket.php?id=269
And then send us the information using http://www.displaylink.com/support/ask_question.php

Thank you!
Carlo

cfenollosa
04-04-2014, 08:37 AM
I will definitely try that Carlo.

In a few days I'll allocate some time to run tasks that usually crash WindowServer for me and send some logs.

Thanks

cfenollosa
04-08-2014, 07:40 AM
Carlo,

I am unable to submit the report. The bug report webpage drops this error: https://www.dropbox.com/s/3d2b2lgwu2gb4fw/database_error.txt and doesn't allow me to submit it. Please fix it. I'm trying to be as helpful as possible but this is annoying as hell. At least I know you read the forums and can contact you here, thanks for that.

This is the text of the bug report:

Version 2.1 (51922)

Hi

I'm having the following issues only on the external monitor handled by the displaylink adaptor (I have another monitor connected by a displayport to vga adaptor which doesn't suffer these issues)

-The apple menu icon doesn't appear, though the menu works (see video)
-No miniatures, or scrambled miniatures on mission control (see other video)
-Choppy fullscreen video with screen flickering
-Random windowserver crash when activating mission control.
This happens about 5% of the times, which means that if I use mission control, the mac will crash once every 2-3 days. my thoughts about that is that it is a memory leak, because the issue seems to happen when the mac has been running for a long time, and never near after boot.

The windowserver crash happened me once while watching a youtube video, but I haven't been able to reproduce it. the crash log I send you happened when I activated mission control.

Please contact me if you need further information

thanks
Carlos

Bug report file: https://www.dropbox.com/s/6511dx5btpgsijl/Archive.zip

Carlo
04-09-2014, 02:04 PM
Thank you we'll look at them now. The issue in the form has just been fixed... thank you again.

Carlo

ChristianP
04-11-2014, 04:23 PM
Could you please post the WindowServer crash logs on 10.9.2 again? The dropbox link is no more valid. The WindowServer crash logs are located in /Library/Logs/DiagnosticReports/. Thanks

cfenollosa
04-12-2014, 03:28 PM
ChristianP, are you referring to my logs? I sent you an updated version here: https://www.dropbox.com/s/6511dx5btpgsijl/Archive.zip

If you still want to access the old log, I restored the file: https://www.dropbox.com/s/jfnr37xd61wnm5a/displaylink-windowserver.txt

cheers
Carlos

ChristianP
04-14-2014, 02:04 PM
Thanks Carlos, the old log you restored is OK and it seems containing the info we need.

ChristianP
05-06-2014, 10:13 AM
Hi Carlos,
we think that the crash you experience is caused by an Apple bug. There are several similar bugs in Mavericks with the WindowServer process crashing during fullscreen transitions.
Since your bug seems machine specific and not easy to reproduce on different machines, the best option would be for you to open a bug with Apple.
You can connect to https://bugreport.apple.com and submit a bug report, including your system profile and your WindowServer crash logs. Please send us the bug ID, when done, so we can follow up with Apple directly and find out if it really was our issue and in case which issue so we can actually do something about it.
Thanks

MickM
05-06-2014, 06:04 PM
I've been experiencing this same bug for ages as well. I have a hot corner for Show Desktop and every now and then when my mouse hits that corner the window server crashes and I'm logged out. Super annoying.

I reported it as a bug to Apple back in January (although at the time I didn't know DisplayLink was involved).

cfenollosa
05-08-2014, 07:42 AM
Hi ChristianP,

I submitted the bug to Apple. Here it is: #16850534

Thanks for your help. I hope to have this resolved soon because this may be the first time I'm suffering a random crash using a mac since 2007 and it's making it unusable. I can't gamble on the system crashing while I'm doing work.

cheers,
Carlos

cfenollosa
05-09-2014, 07:51 AM
Apple determined that the bug is a duplicate of #14201901

Carlo
05-10-2014, 09:26 AM
Apple determined that the bug is a duplicate of #14201901

Thank you cfenollosa,

I'm adding this to our collection. This is a new one for us, we have never been able to reliably reproduce this class of issues.
ID 14.2M should correspond to the second half of June 2013, Apple has had already 10 months to fix this. We will follow up.

Cheers,
Carlo

cfenollosa
05-11-2014, 08:49 AM
A pity they don't give information about bugs not reported by them, I couldn't access #14.2 so I can't really tell if it's a duplicate.

Anyway, thanks for your support, Carlo!

wacamoe
05-29-2014, 12:34 AM
I also randomly will get logged out of the OS when using a "Show Desktop" shortcut. (See https://discussions.apple.com/message/25732327#25732327 for an ongoing thread).

Carlo, if there is anything I can do when it happens on my machine to help you, let me know.

Thanks!

BryGuy
05-29-2014, 06:38 PM
This has gotten really bad for me since upgrading to 10.9.3. I upgraded to the 2.2b driver hoping it would resolve the issue, but no luck. Attempts to show the desktop almost always end in the WindowServer crashing (I think I've crashed it about 10 times in the hour and a half I've been at work this morning... gotta remember to stop trying to show the desktop!). I will note that my setup seemed a lot more stable with 10.9.2 and the 2.1 driver.

I've submitted a crash report as Carlo suggest earlier in this thread.

Carlo
06-03-2014, 05:09 PM
Hi All,

If you see this class of issues please follow cfenollosa's footsteps and raise a bug at https://bugreport.apple.com. We have a good opportunity to get fixes in OS X now that Yosemite is in early development stages.

Cheers,
Carlo

BryGuy
06-03-2014, 05:53 PM
I will note that I disabled the animations for show desktop and mission control which has restored stability for me. Fire up your terminal and run the following two commands.


MyCompy:~$ defaults write com.apple.dock expose-animation-duration -float 0
MyCompy:~$ killall Dock

cfenollosa
06-04-2014, 08:37 AM
Thank you so much for this. While we wait for the fix, this is going to be so helpful in preventing crashes.

mirko77
09-26-2014, 11:55 AM
I will note that I disabled the animations for show desktop and mission control which has restored stability for me. Fire up your terminal and run the following two commands.


MyCompy:~$ defaults write com.apple.dock expose-animation-duration -float 0
MyCompy:~$ killall Dock


This is useful, but I am still experiencing crashes when I open a Chrome extension popup, like AdBlock or Pushbullet

Any suggestions?