MacOS – Troubleshooting spontaneous logout (window server crash?)

crashmacbook promacos

After upgrading to Mavericks while running GoTo Meeting (v5.*) I'm suddenly logged out and sent to the login screen. The behavior is very erratic, and when it happens, it happens repeatedly, enough that I have to stop using GoTo Meeting.

I've searched around for issues on this, but none seem to apply to my scenario. In the past I've been able to troubleshoot crashes with the kernel dump you get after the restart, but since it's a successful logout I'm not getting any info. Where else can I look to try and identify the source of this issue?

Update

After some extensive console scanning it appears I do have some crash reports which I've uploaded as a gist. I'm trying googling random portions of it, but no luck so far. There isn't anything exception in there that seems to jump out at me as to what the issue might be. Help!!

Best Answer

In the case of GoTo Meeting, it turns out there is a driver issue on MBP Retinas that have upgraded to Mavericks.

Machines and Cards Affected:

  • MacBook Pro Retina 2012 (NVIDIA GeForce 650M) running Mac OSX 10.9 (Mavericks)
  • MacBook Pro Retina 2013 (NVIDIA GeForce 750M) running Mac OSX 10.9 (Mavericks)

Symptoms

  • Mac totally frozen, webcam light on. Hard reboot required to recover.
  • Mac goes to login screen; logging back will show you the starting panel, but no control panel.
  • When a new session is started, you will be asked to terminate the session you were previously running.

Workaround #1: Upgrade to GoToMeeting 6.0, build 1259.

  • Prevents GoToMeeting from dynamically switching between integrated and discrete video cards on session start.
  • Hides webcam viewer for Presenters who are screen sharing with affected machines and cards.

Workaround #2: Prevent OSX from dynamically switching between discrete and integrated GPUs.

  • Download gfxCardStatus, available here.
  • Unzip and run the application.
  • Click the 'd' icon in the menu bar.
  • Select Integrated Only from the menu.
  • When finished with a GoToMeeting session, select Dynamic Switching to restore normal use.

Note: Using multi-monitor configurations will force discrete GPU usage and neither workaround will avoid this. [Source]

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