Snow Leopard update and Flash online game

[hgordon]

I recently updated a friend's iMac (late 2006, Intel Core2 Duo, discrete graphics) from OS X 10.4.11 to Snow Leopard, 10.6.8. It was an erase and install, so there is no "baggage" from their previous settings. Installed RAM was increased from 1 GB to 2.5 GB as part of the upgrade.

Installed browsers are Safari 5.1.1, Firefox 18.0 and whatever the most current version of Google Chrome is. Also installed the most current version of Adobe Flash Player.

Everything is working fine, expect for one thing: Her son plays Farmville online through Facebook, and Farmville is now essentially "dead" - the farm takes about 20 minutes to load, and the game is not playable.

The OS is new, the browsers are new, and so is FlashPlayer - it had been the highest version available for Tiger.

I have tried quite a few possibilities, especially adjusting page-specific settings for Flash 11, but nothing has made the game playable.

I'm aware that it would be possible to roll back Flash Player to something earlier, but am concerned about the security risks in doing that.

Thanks for looking

[hayne]

Any virus scanners or other security-related software installed on this Mac? (They might be slowing it down)

[hgordon]

Great to hear from someone. No, nothing like an antivirus app or "security suite" - pretty much a bare bones Snow Leopard installation. Even kept it fairly lean on foreign language support and printer drivers. Rosetta and Quicktime 7 were added.

One interesting observation: the memory upgrade from 1 GB to 2.5 occurred about 6 weeks ago, while the computer was still running Tiger, Safari 4, and whatever the final version of Flash for Tiger was. Farmville (the game in question) went from being definitely playable, but a bit sluggish, to being very fast.

Now it literally takes 15 minutes for the game to load, if it even loads completely, and you can't play the game if it does load.

[hayne]

Try the usual things:
- check the logs for relevant messages (around the time of trouble) using the "Console" application
- create a fresh user account (using the Accounts preferences) and log out of current user account and log in as new user to see if problem exists there
- see what Activity Monitor says about CPU usage and memory usage (during times of trouble)

[hgordon]

No change trying a new user. The game is still unusable.

Tried using Activity Monitor.

Finder - about 700 MB of memory in use, no process (other than Activity Monitor) using more than 0.1%.

Safari, at google.com - about 850 MB of memory in use, Safari at about 1-2%

YouTube - to bring Flash into Play - about 1100 MB of memory in use, Safari around 5-7% and Flash Player around 15%.

The Facebook game in question (Farmville) - total memory use to 1400 MB, so still at least 1 GB still Free Memory. Safari still around 5-10%. Flash around 10-15%. Then, a new very intermittent process - Safari Web Content. Varying from absent, to 5-10%, to 65%, but EXTREMELY variable.
Network tab looks like saw teeth - varying from absolutely 0 incoming to near full speed of ISP. More than half of the time - zero incoming.

In summary - it looks to me as if at least 50% of the time, the Mac is not even trying to load this game.

Adobe says having popup blocking enabled in browsers kills many online Flash games, so I will look into that.

I got a console log. Pasting it here puts it over the character limit, so I will heavily edit. The Mac's firewall is on, and in stealth mode. As soon as we attempted to load this game, the Console is overwhelmed with Stealth Mode messages - thousands, so I have put in a few. Some are UDP requests from the user's router, which I thought interesting.

1/30/13 4:53:44 PM kernel Wake reason = USB2
1/30/13 4:53:44 PM kernel System Wake
1/30/13 4:53:44 PM kernel The USB device Hub in Apple Extended USB Keyboard (Port 1 of Hub at 0x3d000000) may have caused a wake by issuing a remote wakeup (2)
1/30/13 4:53:44 PM com.apple.UserEventAgent-LoginWindow[760] dontAutoLoad = EMPTY!
1/30/13 4:53:48 PM kernel The USB device Apple Extended USB Keyboard (Port 3 of Hub at 0x3d100000) may have caused a wake by issuing a remote wakeup (3)
1/30/13 4:53:48 PM kernel Ethernet [AppleYukon2]: Link up on en0, 100-Megabit, Full-duplex, Symmetric flow-control, Debug [796d,6d4c,0de1,0200,45e1,4000]
1/30/13 4:53:48 PM configd[13] network configuration changed.
1/30/13 4:53:48 PM configd[13] setting hostname to "Gordons-iMac.local"
1/30/13 4:53:48 PM configd[13] network configuration changed.
1/30/13 4:53:48 PM configd[13] setting hostname to "gordons-imac.
"
1/30/13 4:53:52 PM mDNSResponder[29] RegisterInterface: Frequent transitions for interface en0 (FE80:0000:0000:0000:0217:F2FF:FEC73F4)
1/30/13 4:54:09 PM SecurityAgent[764] User info context values set for karl
1/30/13 4:54:09 PM authorizationhost[763] Failed to authenticate user <karl> (tDirStatus: -14090).
1/30/13 4:54:15 PM SecurityAgent[764] User info context values set for karl
1/30/13 4:54:15 PM SecurityAgent[764] Login Window Showing Progress
1/30/13 4:54:16 PM SecurityAgent[764] Login Window done
1/30/13 4:54:16 PM loginwindow[755] Login Window - Returned from Security Agent
1/30/13 4:54:16 PM loginwindow[755] USER_PROCESS: 755 console
1/30/13 4:54:16 PM com.apple.launchd.peruser.503[775] (com.apple.ReportCrash) Falling back to default Mach exception handler. Could not find: com.apple.ReportCrash.Self
1/30/13 4:54:17 PM com.apple.launchd.peruser.503[775] (com.apple.Kerberos.renew.plist[794]) Exited with exit code: 1
1/30/13 4:54:17 PM kernel CODE SIGNING: cs_invalid_page(0x1000): p=797[GoogleSoftwareUp] clearing CS_VALID
1/30/13 4:54:21 PM hdiejectd[817] running
1/30/13 4:54:21 PM KernelEventAgent[31] tid 00000000 received event(s) VQ_LOWDISK, VQ_VERYLOWDISK (516)
1/30/13 4:54:24 PM kernel CODE SIGNING: cs_invalid_page(0x1000): p=834[ksadmin] clearing CS_VALID
1/30/13 4:54:24 PM kernel CODE SIGNING: cs_invalid_page(0x1000): p=837[ksadmin] clearing CS_VALID
1/30/13 4:54:24 PM kernel CODE SIGNING: cs_invalid_page(0x1000): p=839[ksadmin] clearing CS_VALID
1/30/13 4:54:33 PM hdiejectd[817] quitCheck: calling exit(0)
1/30/13 5:01:25 PM Firewall[56] Stealth Mode connection attempt to TCP 192.168.1.100:54031 from 69.171.234.34:80
1/30/13 5:01:33 PM Firewall[56] Stealth Mode connection attempt to TCP 192.168.1.100:54053 from 205.251.242.101:80
1/30/13 5:01:33 PM Firewall[56] Stealth Mode connection attempt to TCP 192.168.1.100:54057 from 50.17.238.142:80
1/30/13 5:01:34 PM Firewall[56] Stealth Mode connection attempt to TCP 192.168.1.100:54058 from 208.88.226.69:80
1/30/13 5:01:34 PM Firewall[56] Stealth Mode connection attempt to UDP 192.168.1.100:50603 from 192.168.1.1:53
1/30/13 5:01:36 PM Firewall[56] Stealth Mode connection attempt to TCP 192.168.1.100:54079 from 216.137.43.21:80
1/30/13 5:02:39 PM Firewall[56] Stealth Mode connection attempt to TCP 192.168.1.100:54264 from 54.239.132.250:80
1/30/13 5:03:05 PM Firewall[56] Stealth Mode connection attempt to TCP 192.168.1.100:54299 from 208.88.226.69:80
1/30/13 5:03:06 PM Firewall[56] Stealth Mode connection attempt to TCP 192.168.1.100:54394 from 72.21.214.200:80
1/30/13 5:04:05 PM Firewall[56] Stealth Mode connection attempt to UDP 192.168.1.100:53316 from 192.168.1.1:53
1/30/13 5:04:17 PM /System/Library/CoreServices/CCacheServer.app/Contents/MacOS/CCacheServer[801] No valid tickets, timing out
1/30/13 5:05:16 PM Firewall[56] Stealth Mode connection attempt to UDP 192.168.1.100:61926 from 192.168.1.1:53
1/30/13 5:06:18 PM Firewall[56] Stealth Mode connection attempt to UDP 192.168.1.100:50094 from 192.168.1.1:53

[hgordon]

Changing Flash 11.5 settings - specifically disabling hardware acceleration and increasing local storage by a factor of 100 for the site fixed this problem. The game now runs well.