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I'm hoping someone can help with regular, persistent hangs that my 'cheese grater' 5,1 Mac Pro has suffered for several years, across major OS updates (10.12 > 10.13 > 10.14 etc.) and despite my efforts to eradicate them by replacing hard drives (HDD to SSD), memory, GPU etc. Basically everything but the CPU and motherboard.

I can't pin it down to any specific application or triggering event, and I've tried looking through the Console messages, but very little of it means anything to me, and Googling messages that seem to coincide with the hangs doesn't produce any usable path to resolution. But still it continues, varies anywhere from 20 - 120 seconds, stuff like audio from iTunes or YouTube continues to play in the background, mouse is responsive, sometimes just the app I'm in is frozen, sometimes the whole UI is completely locked up. Usually happens at least once a week, sometimes more than once a day.

Could anyone with experience and expertise in system diagnostics identify a possible cause based on the process samples and spindumps I've managed to take during some recent hangs?

EDIT #1: Here's the trace for the PSU 12V (PSMI) sensor, if that's any help: enter image description here

Ian Davies
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    Having had some experience keeping older Mac Pros alive, I found that failing power supplies can be the weakest link. They may not shutdown the MacPro outright, but under- and over-voltage dips and spikes can cause havoc with the other components in the computer. – IconDaemon Apr 19 '20 at 15:22
  • How far back does your Time Machine drive stretch? I've found if you can go back a year or more, each time it catalogues to backup, it slows the entire machine down in periodic halts - lsd & the md processes taking 100% core or more. My Time Machine went back about 16 months; for unrelated reasons I recently wiped it to start afresh & the main halts have gone away. – Tetsujin Apr 19 '20 at 15:37
  • @Tetsujin Thanks for the response, but I don't use Time Machine – Ian Davies Apr 19 '20 at 15:56
  • @IconDaemon Thanks for the response. Any way to confirm that in software? I have iStat Menus installed, so would such a thing show up in the sensors? Any one in particular to keep an eye on? – Ian Davies Apr 19 '20 at 15:57
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    Not really. Several slightly older models of MacPros (2008 in particular) worked much better after power supplies were changed. The only way to test is to check the various outputs of the power supply itself to make sure it is putting out the correct voltages. More of a test-bench exercise than anything else. These old Mac Pros are beasts, but eventually they get too long in the tooth. – IconDaemon Apr 19 '20 at 17:53
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    This can be really tough to diagnose because what I'd normally do (with an IT department) is put a blank drive in there, load up an OS and run some bench marking or CPU/Memory stress tests on it to see if I could get it to fail. Thing is, I'd have a replacement for the user. For me personally, I'd do the same thing, but bite the bullet and upgrade and then spend the time figuring out the problem so I could fix and either sell it or make it a spare machine for the garage or another family member. – Allan Apr 19 '20 at 17:54
  • @Allan In a previous life I would have done the same, but been freelance for the last 13 years so I am my own IT department now! Annoyingly, I was also on the point of upgrading to a new Mac Pro but the lockdown and loss of work has meant we're now living off the money earmarked for that. Is there really nothing in logs and/or process dumps that might give a clue as to what's causing the beach balling? – Ian Davies Apr 19 '20 at 18:11
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    Try this. https://apple.stackexchange.com/a/384339/119271. If it's a "3" or a "0" it's definitely the power supply. Anything else will be "hardware" (includes power supply). "5" is a normal shutdown. @IconDaemon is correct in that the PS could be sending incorrect voltages or dirty power to the main board. To find that you'd need an Osciliscope..by the time you buy that, you'd be well into the price of a new machine. – Allan Apr 19 '20 at 18:16
  • @Allan Is there somewhere in particular I should enter this? i.e. a specific directory? I tried both versions and got an 'invalid predicate'. I then tried 'log show | awk '/shutdown cause/ {print $12}'' which seemed to do something, but didn't return any results. – Ian Davies Apr 19 '20 at 20:27
  • It seems Apple changed things again..that was good on High Sierra. I'll have to test it on Catalina, but for now, just issue the command log show | grep -i "shutdown cause". It will output it just fine. – Allan Apr 19 '20 at 20:31
  • Ok..I've got a better command...try this one: log show --predicate '(process = "kernel") && (eventMessage CONTAINS "shutdown cause")' --last 48h --style compact. You may need to change or omit the -last 48h if you want to narrow or expand the time you want to search – Allan Apr 19 '20 at 20:47
  • First command produced no results, the second returned 'Timestamp Ty Process[PID:TID]' – Ian Davies Apr 19 '20 at 21:13
  • Just tried omitting the last 48hr but got the same 'timestamp' results. I don't often power cycle to be honest, and I've had no unexpected shut downs. What would I be looking for? – Ian Davies Apr 19 '20 at 21:16

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