General Topics

IntegrityCheckerJava

DiskTester

MemoryTester

IntegrityChecker

dgl

Tips and How-To

Troubleshooting

Troubleshooting: System locks up while testing (run-sequential, run-area-test)

This hang is a new OS X bug introduced in 10.9 Mavericks (bug report filed at Apple, bug also confirmed by multiple 3rd parties also). It exists in 10.9.1 and 10.9.2 and probably 10.9.3.

Behavior

When the hang occurs, the system must be hard-rebooted. DiskTester will stop and everything else on the system will lock up, then the rainbow beach ball will appear.

But the test folder and file will hang the system again even after reboot if accessed or an attempt is made to remove/delete.

Conditions under which it occurs

Various:

Workaround

The workaround is to temporarily disable HFS file system journaling. This is a non-destructive and easily reversible file system setting.

This workaround is also recommended for drive testing:

  1. Disable HFS journaling.
  2. Run the desired tests.
  3. Re-enable HFS journaling when done testing).

Open a Terminal window and use the commands in red. Enter only the commands in red (the # lines are comments and the rest is output which might vary a bit for each system).

    # Disable HFS journaling on volume 'Scratch'
    diglloyd: lloyd$ diskutil disableJournal Scratch
    Journaling has been disabled for volume Scratch on disk14

... now remove the “disktester-test” folder, e.g., put into trash and empty trash ...
    
    # Enable HFS journaling on volume 'Scratch'
    diglloyd: lloyd$ diskutil enableJournal Scratch
    Journaling has been enabled for volume Scratch on disk14