A possible fix for failure to sleep when inactive

Feb 14, '07 07:30:04AM

Contributed by: JayJay1974

I recently purchased a 17" MacBook Pro and after I first started using it, it would sleep when inactive (as set in System Preferences » Energy Saver » Sleep ». Put the computer to sleep when it inactive for). After installing the applications I require, and playing with settings (I didn't use Migration Assistant from my previous PowerBook), I noticed that the laptop had become an insomniac. This same thing happened with my previous PowerBook and the one before that, but I didn't investigate it too much. But with my week-old MBP displaying the same behaviour, an investigation was warranted.

Sleep worked when booted up in Safe Boot. So using Terminal, I output all the running processes to a text file using top -l 1 > /Users/jj/Desktop/Processes.txt (-l being logging mode, and 1 being the number of samples) during Safe Boot, and then again after a normal boot and compared them. Note that I didn't have any login items set up from my account.

I narrowed it down to networking, as this is disabled in Safe Boot. Then I narrowed it down to AirPort. Turn AirPort off, all was OK. Initially I thought it was maybe slpd or ntpd. After killing processes and slowly getting to the answer, I decided to check Console output. In system.log, I found the following:

ICBM-266 kernel[0]: Stealth Mode connection attempt to
 UDP 192.168.0.101:3283 from 192.168.0.100:3283
...with .100 being my D-Link router and .101 being the MBP. So I disabled stealth mode in System Preferences » Sharing » Firewall » Advanced... » Enable Stealth Mode. (Port 3283 is net-assistant.)

I'm not sure yet why my router polls this every 20 seconds; that's the next step. But on initial investigation, I have found nothing. Maybe it's UPNP? In any event, now my computers happily count electric sheep.

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