PulseWay Helper Crashing Constantly

[dwhagar]

I am running PulseWay on my Mac laptop, running 10.10.  Agent version 4.7.6.

This doesn't happen all the time, but when it does it won't stop until I reboot the machine.  About once a week, and I haven't figured out why yet, PulseWay's Helper crashes.  When it does, launchd attempts to restart it.  I then crashes less than a second later, and this goes on forever until I reboot.  I've tried using launchctl to unload then reload the Daemon, but that is ineffective.  The only thing that returns the system to normal is a full reboot.

There is also a heavy load on system resources when this happens, as the crash reporter loads for every crash and slogs down the system.

I'd really like some help with this issue.

I have attached the crash dump file to this message, in hopes it might be useful in diagnosing the issue.  As well as entries in the console log.

9/11/15 8:06:00.127 PM com.apple.xpc.launchd[1]: (com.pulseway.PulsewayHelper[11898]) Service exited due to signal: Segmentation fault: 11

9/11/15 8:06:00.127 PM com.apple.xpc.launchd[1]: (com.pulseway.PulsewayHelper) Service only ran for 8 seconds. Pushing respawn out by 2 seconds.

9/11/15 8:06:01.635 PM Pulseway[345]: checkServerForMessage: connection timeout

9/11/15 8:06:02.154 PM com.pulseway.PulsewayHelper[11912]: PulsewayHelper: Launched (uid: 0, euid: 0, pid: 11912)

9/11/15 8:06:02.154 PM com.apple.xpc.launchd[1]: (com.pulseway.PulsewayHelper[11912]) Endpoint has been activated through legacy launch(3) APIs. Please switch to XPC or bootstrap_check_in(): com.pulseway.PulsewayHelper.mach

9/11/15 8:06:02.483 PM PulsewayHelper[11912]: PulsewayHelper: Pulseway 4.7.6 (2015063001) is starting...

9/11/15 8:06:02.820 PM PulsewayHelper[11912]: PulsewayHelper: Configuration loaded for account titanshadow

9/11/15 8:06:10.956 PM com.apple.xpc.launchd[1]: (com.pulseway.PulsewayHelper[11912]) Service exited due to signal: Segmentation fault: 11

 

 

com.pulseway.PulsewayHelper_2015-09-11-211920_Thom.crash

[ofir]

Same here

[dwhagar]

I found out some more information...

For me, it has something to do with using OpenVPN.  I use the VPN service PIA (Private Internet Access) and I have found that I can pretty much solidly get it to happen with the following steps:

• Boot / Login
• Start VPN
• Make sure VPN is connected
• Suspend computer
• Wait until fully in suspend
• Wake computer
• Check Console.app - you'll see PulseWay crashing

Now, this might happen any time you change network interfaces, it seems to be (but I'm not certain) related to changes in the network stack or network interface.  However, I tried this 5 times and every time it reproduced the issue.  The only solution I could come up with is that my Desktop had never been updated from v4.6 - it has to stay running as I'm not the only user and I have a strict, don't fix it if it isn't broken policy.  So I grabbed v4.6 off of the Desktop computer and removed v4.7 from the laptop, installed v4.6 and since then the problem hasn't happened.

I don't know if the dev's are watching this thread at all, I hope they are, if any further logs are needed, let me know.

[Chris]

Hi,

The development team is watching indeed the forums, rest assured as they will check everything and then come back at you with a reply.

Chris

[redwolf1]

I'm seeing this error as well.  I also had an OpenVPN connection established via the TunnelBlick application.  As soon as I disconnected my VPN session, the errors went away.  Now I'm seeing this error:

com.pulseway.PulsewayHelper: *** -[NSMachPort handlePortMessage:]: dropping incoming DO message because the connection is invalid

[Mark]

Thanks for the reports!

We're setting up a test environment to replicate the issue. What network connection are you using? LAN only? Wi-Fi only? Are both, LAN and WiFi, enabled? If yes, which one is routing the traffic?

Thanks,

Mark

[ofir]

Any plans to fix this? Pulseway has become useless to me because I get so many alerts now I just delete them all.

[Chris]

Hi Ofir,

We are working on the Mac OS X agent issues as we speak. We will keep you posted with updates on this case.

Chris

[dwhagar]

Thanks for the reports!

We're setting up a test environment to replicate the issue. What network connection are you using? LAN only? Wi-Fi only? Are both, LAN and WiFi, enabled? If yes, which one is routing the traffic?

Thanks,

Mark

Sorry for the long delay between posts - Midterms are upon me...  I use a WiFi connection myself.  I have not tested other connections.  Though i do have an ethernet port.

[ofir]

Any news? We are coming up to 3 months where Pulseway has been useless, I now have a filter to delete all the alerts because I get 100 a day. 

[Chris]

Hi Ofir,

Thank you for your patience. We've released yesterday a new version of the Mac OS X agent. Can you uninstall the current one (Manager -> About -> Uninstall - tick the keep configuration box) and then install the latest version and see if it resolves the problem.

Chris