Articles tagged with "macOS, XNU, kernel"

macOS has a 49.7-day networking time bomb built in that only a reboot fixes — comparison operation on unreliable time value stops machines dead in their tracks

A networking time bomb in macOS causes machines to fail after precisely 49.7 days of uptime, requiring a reboot to fix. The issue stems from a bug in Apple's XNU kernel related to a networking-related timer that overflows after the specified time. This bug leads to the TCP stack becoming unresponsive, impacting network connections. The problem has been identified by the team at Photon, who are working on a solution to address the issue. The issue has been observed in Macs used as servers and has been linked to various bugs reported in Apple Community forums.