Q: Slow file open dialogue box

Sorry for the long delay. I had left for the day shortly after posting.

OK, I opened private/etc/auto_master in Text Wrangler, I put a # in front of /net and saved it.

That is correct. It's all you needed to do to that file. If you view the file again in TextEdit, it should look basically like this:

#

# Automounter master map

#

+auto_master             # Use directory service

#/net                                                       -hosts                  -nobrowse,hidefromfinder,nosuid

/home                         auto_home          -nobrowse,hidefromfinder

/Network/Servers               -fstab

/-                                -static

So you're done with that file. Your last post is also correct. The automount command briefly notes the current home and net settings (after updating them as necessary). That's all it does and goes back to the prompt.

Close the Terminal app and you're done. You may not even have to restart to see windows and dialogue boxes opening now without the delay.

Okay, not quite like the above. The lines wrapped funny in the forums. More like this:

#

# Automounter master map

#

+auto_master          # Use directory service

#/net                       -hosts              -nobrowse,hidefromfinder,nosuid

/home                      auto_home       -nobrowse,hidefromfinder

/Network/Servers     -fstab

/-                            -static

Have been looking for a workaround for a while now. This one finally works. Thanks!

These work arounds aren't working for me, can I suggest those that are unhappy report the problem and lets get apple to help fix this, I've wasted days on various Craperick problems.

http://www.apple.com/feedback/macosx.html

All you have to do is add a hash/pound symbol in front of one line of the auto_master file, then run the Terminal command:

sudo automount -vc

Is that not working?

I made the auto-master change and rebooted, which I guess should do the automount part. It did nothing for me.

And even worse, my Parallels Windows 8.1 VM now has disk access errors (to my SSD).

Some were from Norton on the Mac interpreting them as ARP cache attacks. I turned off detecting them in Norton. Now I get other disk busy errors.

Disk utility says all disks are fine, as does SMART.

I'm having this problem on a brand new, late-2013 15" Retina MBP with quad core i7 and 16GB RAM, 512GB SSD, set up as new machine, not restored from Time Machine backup.

Can someone tell me exactly what the terminal workaround does and what (if any) negative effects it has?

You may need to manually mount something... Full details of what's involved, what the file is meant to be used for, and related man pages:

https://developer.apple.com/library/mac/documentation/Darwin/Reference/Manpages/ man5/auto_master.5.html

I have never used automount for networked drives since my backups are local and I only access my NAS when I need to and just wait the few seconds it takes to connect when doing so. Nothing negative unless you cannot spare a few seconds to do what was once automated. You can follow my instructions earlier in this thread to make sure you have a backup in place (invoke cp to create an easy backup before editing) before making the edit using nano so that a quick reworking of files will get you right back to where you started if for some reason there would be problems.

As has also been mentioned by many, undo this change before applying an update from Apple that may fix the problem and make this workaround irrelevant (10.10.x maybe???) and be sure to take your place in the bug reporting parade.

I'm not sure I woud ever use automount, whatever it is.

I'm not sure I woud ever use automount, whatever it is.

It would be a pain to access your drives without it.

Give me an example?

I've applied the workaround.  On my MBP if I click "Mac Mini" under "Shared" in Finder, all my drives on the Mac Mini show up in the Finder window.  If I double click one, it mounts on my MBP dekstop just fine.

Unless I'm completely missing the point here...

all my drives on the Mac Mini show up in the Finder window

Automount in action.

Yeah, but I've already applied the workaround, and yet my Mac Mini's drives still show ok in my MBP Finder.

Specific to what you comment out with this workaround: Not a big deal for the vast majority of users, and, for those that it may impact, there may be some level of inconvenience that is not as annoying as the problem being addressed.

I'll go ahead and assume you'll be fine with this workaround in place, markmc78. I hope it works for you as it has fore most of those that have tried it and after seeing no reports of anyone's world coming to an end :)

Yup, but the Mavericks issue seems to be that the OS gets hung up looking for a network drive that may not be mounted. And that's about the extent of what I know.

I did look at the auto_master file in Snow Leopard and Mountain Lion. It's basically identical, but works correctly without having to comment out the /net ... line. So it appears some other bug related to the contents of the auto_master file is the problem.