Simulator crashes constantly - unable to reset or run anything

Using El Capitan Beta 6 and Xcode Beta 4.


Simulator is now trigger constant Springboard crashes with EXC_BAD_ACCESS every few seconds. Cannot run unit tests or app.


Simulator screen is black and reset/shutdown does nothing.


Haved tried:


* Clearing all simulator settings from ~/Library/Developer/CoreSimulator.

* Clearing DerivedData.

* Reinstalling XCode.

* Clearing cached data.


Does anyone have any ideas what else I can try or is this a dead duck until a XCode beta 5 arrives?

Accepted Reply

Hi drekka,


This has been a very widespread problem. The good news is that it has resulted in a fix:

From Terminal (copy-paste the following in bold):

  1. cd /Applications/Xcode-beta.app (or wherever your Xcode 7 beta 4 is located)
  2. cd Contents/Developer/Platforms/iPhoneSimulator.platform
  3. cd Developer/SDKs/iPhoneSimulator.sdk/usr/lib
  4. sudo mv dyld_sim dyld_sim.orig
  5. cd /Applications/Xcode-beta.app (or wherever your Xcode 7 beta 4 is located)
  6. cd Contents/Developer/Platforms/WatchSimulator.platform
  7. cd Developer/SDKs/WatchSimulator.sdk/usr/lib
  8. sudo mv dyld_sim dyld_sim.orig


There's also a one-liner that should do the same thing as those 8 steps, but I haven't tried it so can't attest to it's efficacy:


sudo find $(xcode-select -p) -name '*dyld_sim*' -exec mv -v {} {}.orig \;

Replies

Hi drekka,


This has been a very widespread problem. The good news is that it has resulted in a fix:

From Terminal (copy-paste the following in bold):

  1. cd /Applications/Xcode-beta.app (or wherever your Xcode 7 beta 4 is located)
  2. cd Contents/Developer/Platforms/iPhoneSimulator.platform
  3. cd Developer/SDKs/iPhoneSimulator.sdk/usr/lib
  4. sudo mv dyld_sim dyld_sim.orig
  5. cd /Applications/Xcode-beta.app (or wherever your Xcode 7 beta 4 is located)
  6. cd Contents/Developer/Platforms/WatchSimulator.platform
  7. cd Developer/SDKs/WatchSimulator.sdk/usr/lib
  8. sudo mv dyld_sim dyld_sim.orig


There's also a one-liner that should do the same thing as those 8 steps, but I haven't tried it so can't attest to it's efficacy:


sudo find $(xcode-select -p) -name '*dyld_sim*' -exec mv -v {} {}.orig \;

Thanks. That worked a treat.

Sorry that didn't work for me. Cant get the simulator to work on xcode 6 or 7 beta. Springboard constantly crashes.

After I wrote the original post I found this large thread https://forums.developer.apple.com/thread/13170?start=0&tstart=0


Reading through it I came across the same solution as suggested by Max108. I've now run his one line solution on two machines and it has fixed both.


You might find some other things in there that will get you going again.


Best of luck.

This is happening after upgrading to Xcode beta 5 also. And the Downloads pane under preferences now shows no simulators at all.


Process:               SpringBoard [1685]
Path:                  /Library/Developer/CoreSimulator/Profiles/Runtimes/iOS 8.1.simruntime/Contents/Resources/RuntimeRoot/System/Library/CoreServices/SpringBoard.app/SpringBoard
Identifier:            SpringBoard
Version:               2933.6.11.18
Code Type:             X86 (Native)
Parent Process:        launchd_sim [1674]
Responsible:           SpringBoard [1685]
User ID:               501


Date/Time:             2015-08-06 17:44:25.882 -0700
OS Version:            Mac OS X 10.11 (15A244d)
Report Version:        11
Anonymous UUID:        9B018422-C69D-CE45-6AAE-EABB05381C87


Sleep/Wake UUID:       A5460515-E7A9-4F2B-8EA7-AD6DE824E37E


Time Awake Since Boot: 140000 seconds
Time Since Wake:       10000 seconds


Crashed Thread:        0  Dispatch queue: com.apple.frontboard.applicationLibrary.taskQueue


Exception Type:        EXC_CRASH (SIGABRT)
Exception Codes:       0x0000000000000000, 0x0000000000000000
Exception Note:        EXC_CORPSE_NOTIFY


Application Specific Information:
*** Terminating app due to uncaught exception 'NSInvalidArgumentException', reason: '*** -[__NSArrayM insertObject:atIndex:]: object cannot be nil'
terminating with uncaught exception of type NSException
abort() called
CoreSimulator 179 - Device: iPhone 4s (8.1) - Runtime: iOS 8.1 (12B411) - DeviceType: iPhone 4s

Deleting the simulators from /Library/Developer/CoreSimulator solved the crashing problem and I can run in an iOS 9 simulator. But Xcode still refuses to download any other simulators so only iOS 9 simulators can be created.