Support > Remote Buddy Forum > XBMC stops responding to RB after time, but RB continues to work in Finder // IOSPIRIT [EN]

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User

20.11.2013 03:51:05

XBMC stops responding to RB after time, but RB continues to work in Finder

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This posting is older than 6 months and can contain outdated information.

Hi - I'm having a problem where, after a restart, Remote Buddy works fine to launch and operate XBMC. But after an extended period of time (e.g. the next day) I can still launch XBMC, but once inside XBMC I get no response from Remote Buddy. I can operate XBMC from the keyboard, but there's no response at all from Remote Buddy. If I quit XBMC, Remote Buddy again operates at the Finder level, and I can use Remote Buddy to launch XBMC again, but as before, there's no response to Remote Buddy from within XBMC.

Quitting Remote Buddy and restarting does not fix the problem. Only restarting the computer restores proper XBMC operation.

I'm running Mavericks and Remote Buddy 1.24.2. I have XBMC and Remote Buddy set to Prevent App Naps.

Any ideas for me to try? I was wondering if this is related to the napping issue.

These entries from the FAQ may be relevant to this topic:

Hardware - Apple® Remote

After uninstalling/quitting Remote Buddy, my Mac® no longer reacts to the Apple® Remote. (FAQ015E0241)
To enable you to use all capabilities of the IR Receiver of your Mac®, Remote Buddy is using its own driver. In contrast, all other applications with integrated Apple® Remote support usually use the OS X Apple® Remote subsystem.

As long as you're running Remote Buddy, Remote Buddy and its driver are responsible for turning the received button presses into actions. As soon as you quit Remote Buddy, this task is again handled by the OS X Apple® Remote subsystem.

If other applications don't use the interface to the OS X Apple® Remote subsystem correctly, this can lead to the effect that nothing happens when you press a button on your Apple® Remote. For as long as you're running Remote Buddy, issues like this are covered by Remote Buddy and it's driver and are therefore not visible to you. However, as soon as you quit Remote Buddy, the OS X Apple® Remote subsystem is back in control and any issues caused in it by other applications become visible.

Therefore Remote Buddy is neither the cause of the issue nor is it responsible for it. Instead, the cause of the issue exists independently of Remote Buddy. It's located elsewhere and can also only be solved there.

Although our products can't cause any such issues, we're regularly contacted about such issues and asked for help. In order to make locating and fixing the cause of such issues as easy and efficient as possible, we've developed a free diagnostics tool: Remote Control Diagnostics. It can locate issues with a single click and will provide you with information about the issue as well as with instructions on how you can fix it.

User

20.11.2013 03:59:01

Re: XBMC stops responding to RB after time, but RB continues to work in Finder

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This posting is older than 6 months and can contain outdated information.

Update: having just read the post prior to mine which mentions a similar issue, I just downloaded and ran the Remote Control Diagnostics program:

The IR Receiver USB device is used by XBMC (PID 6316)
An application is accessing the IR Receiver USB device via an IOUSBDeviceUserClient. Depending on what it is doing, this may keep OS X and applications from receiving Apple® Remote button presses. The application is located at /Applications/XBMC.app/Contents/MacOS/XBMC.
Checking running applications
EyeTV (PID 5675) is using the Apple® Remote in exclusive mode
While EyeTV accesses your Apple® IR Receiver exclusively, no other application or OS X will receive Apple® Remote button press events. This can give you the impression that your Apple® Remote doesn't work. In that case, quit EyeTV (located at /Applications/• Video/EyeTV.app).
XBMC (PID 6316) is using the Apple® Remote
If XBMC is accessing your Apple® IR Receiver exclusively, no other application or OS X will receive Apple® Remote button press events for as long as the exclusive access is taking place. This can give you the impression that your Apple® Remote doesn't work. In that case, try quitting XBMC (located at /Applications/XBMC.app) and check whether it makes a difference.
Testing exclusive access
Can't get exclusive access
RCD's attempt to get temporary, exclusive access failed (error: The operation couldn’t be completed. (Mach error -536870203 - (iokit/common) exclusive access and device already open) (3)). This usually means that another application is already having exclusive access to the Apple® Remote. Neither OS X nor other applications will be able to respond to your Apple® Remote at the same time. This can give you the impression that your Apple® Remote doesn't work. Quit the application that exclusively accesses the Apple® Remote to make it available to OS X and other applications again.

Yes, EyeTV is running, and I didn't start it. I'll try to figure out why EyeTV is self-starting, determine if that's the issue, and then report back. Although interesting that RB still runs in the Finder but not XBMC. Stay tuned...

User

20.11.2013 11:02:01

Re: XBMC stops responding to RB after time, but RB continues to work in Finder

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This posting is older than 6 months and can contain outdated information.

Thanks for asking.

This is certainly not a Remote Buddy App Nap issue. That issue was isolated, reproduced, fixed in 1.24.2 and subsequently also verified with Apple. All affected users who got in touch also let me know that release fixed it for them.

Other applications, though - unless they adopt the new App Nap API - can theoretically still be put to sleep by Mavericks. They could then suffer the same responsiveness issues as any other app.

What could be happening here is that XBMC gets put to sleep by OS X. I don’t think that the UDP packets sent by Remote Buddy to XBMC would make OS X wake up XBMC, though giving XBMC keyboard focus and entering something on the keyboard most definitely will.

To find out whether XBMC is suffering an App Nap issue, open Activity Monitor.app, switch to the „Energy“ pane and watch the „App Nap“ column for the entries of XBMC and all of its helper processes. If XBMC stops responding and you see a „Yes“ there, App Nap has put XBMC to sleep.

Your Remote Control Diagnostics output is also very interesting and identifies a lot of possible issues. Though, for me to see the complete picture, please select „All“ on top of the window and copy and paste the full output in reply.

Thanks in advance.

Best regards,
Felix Schwarz

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