Insanely slow boot, sometimes.

Question

Insanely slow boot, sometimes.

Very very strange - here is the setup.

Mac Mini, after upgrade to 10.4.10, sometimes takes better than half an hour to boot. I think the first time this happened was right after the upgrade, but I'm not sure. This is a machine I administer from afar, and it is a filemaker server for a business, so I can't just keep restarting or whatever. I did sit in front of it a few days ago, and booted in verbose, it got through that fine, got to a blue screen, and hung. It is set to auto log in as one of the user accounts.

After waiting maybe 20 minutes, the login screen came up. I rebooted, and it booted up and logged in fine in <2 minutes. Did it again, waited 45 minutes, reset finally, and again booted quickly next time. Sometimes, after about 20-30 minutes of blue screen it starts up fine, logged in as the right user.

I booted off the CD, repaired permissions and the disk (nothing wrong). It gets through all the UNIX info if I boot verbose, so it doesn't act as though it is waiting for anything. If I try to remote login when it is hung at the blue screen, I get no response, and the FM server daemon is not up. It runs fine once it is up.

Any thoughts????
Thanks,
Jeff

PS normally this machine would never really get restarted except for upgrades, but one or two of the people who use it don't really have a clue, so it gets slow for a second or some program hangs and they restart. I'm working on that 🙂

Mac Mini, Mac OS X (10.4.10)

Posted on Aug 17, 2007 5:28 AM

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Answer 1

Pe Bakk

Level 2

440 points

Aug 17, 2007 6:45 AM in response to Jeffrey McGowan

Sounds like it may be a login item that is incompatible with 10.4.10 or that is corrupted. This link will take care of it.

If that doesn't work, try the steps in the article Your Mac won't start up in Mac OS X, specifically the section on booting to a blue screen. The article says it's for 10.3.9 or earlier, but the steps are valid for 10.4, as well.

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Answer 2

Aug 17, 2007 6:53 AM in response to Pe Bakk

No login items, other than OSXVnc, which works fine on a bunch of machines with 10.4.10, and on this one once it boots. In any case, sometimes it boots up fine, which makes me think it is some weird hardware issue...?

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Answer 3

Pe Bakk

Level 2

440 points

Aug 17, 2007 7:05 AM in response to Jeffrey McGowan

If it's happening when it's logging (ie after all "the Unix info") in then it's unlikely that it's hardware.

Since you didn't mention any of them, I'm assuming you haven't tried any of the steps in the article I suggested. Try a Safe Boot, disable Automatic Login, and then restart the machine a few times. I'm guessing it will have no trouble reaching the login window and the problem only occurs after you try logging in.

Let me know how the steps in that article work out.

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Answer 4

Aug 17, 2007 7:11 AM in response to Pe Bakk

I did try a safe boot, but since it is flaky, sometimes OK sometimes not, who knows if that meant anything. There were no login items to remove, so there was nothing else to try from those articles. I'm going to try disabling auto login over the weekend and see what happens. If it consistently starts up OK with no auto login (which I need for FM server), then I'll try auto login as the admin user to see if that works consistently. If that does, then I assume it is a corrupted user, which I can fix easy. If not, ....

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Answer 5

Pe Bakk

Level 2

440 points

Aug 17, 2007 7:25 AM in response to Jeffrey McGowan

Jeffrey McGowan wrote:
There were no login items to remove, so there was nothing else to try from those articles.

You obviously did not read the second article then. Steps 1, 2, 4, 5 and 6 of the "empty, blue screen" section have nothing to do with login items and may very well correct the problem you posted about.

Jeffrey McGowan wrote:
I'm going to try disabling auto login over the weekend and see what happens. If it consistently starts up OK with no auto login (which I need for FM server), then I'll try auto login as the admin user to see if that works consistently. If that does, then I assume it is a corrupted user...

It is unlikely the whole user account is corrupted since, as you say, once it's logged in it runs fine. Follow the rest of the steps in that second article I linked to above and one of those should take care of it.

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Answer 6

Aug 17, 2007 7:30 AM in response to Pe Bakk

I said I booted in Safe mode, which is what the steps you list have you do. Safe mode in the case the article talks about is just to get you in, since Apple is assuming you can't boot at all, which I usually can, just really slowly. Booting with the shift key down won't "fix" anything long term, it just stops the system from loading extra stuff for that one boot. In any case, as I said in my first post, I administer this machine from afar so safe mode is not an easy option to keep trying.

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Answer 7

Pe Bakk

Level 2

440 points

Aug 17, 2007 7:52 AM in response to Jeffrey McGowan

One last time I will point you to the second article I linked to. To make it more convenient for you, here is a link right to the beginning of the steps you need to follow.

Once you have opened it, please note how certain steps will say to boot to Safe Mode +and then+ to perform some steps +while booted in Safe Mode+. Other steps will have you do other things. You have not indicated that you have tried any of the steps listed in the article. Try them. One of them is most likely going to correct the problem you are encountering.

+In any case, as I said in my first post, I administer this machine from afar so safe mode is not an easy option to keep trying.+

While I can understand it may not be easy for you to do, that doesn't make the steps any less necessary or less likely to correct the problem. All I can do is suggest things for you to try and wait for you to say whether or not they worked. If you choose not to perform the steps, there's not really anything I can do.

+Booting with the shift key down won't "fix" anything long term, it just stops the system from loading extra stuff for that one boot.+

Not entirely correct. The reason a Safe Boot takes so long is because it's running fsck in the background. fsck is more than capable of permanently correcting a number of issues. It also can clear up some issues caused by faulty font caches, etc. You may want to read this third article to familiarize yourself with Safe Mode, and this fourth article that explains about fsck.

Safe Boot and fsck are valuable tools for someone remotely administering a computer.

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Answer 8

Aug 17, 2007 8:08 AM in response to Pe Bakk

Jeez, relax. First, the things to do in safe mode from your link are 1. Get rid of OS 9 fonts - no OS 9 on this computer (it's an Intel Mac...) 2 and 3 Incompatible startup/login items - there aren't any of these. So those are not relevant. As I said, I did safe mode, I also started from the CD and did Disk Repair and Permissions repair (several times, to make sure everything was really clean). I probably forgot to say, but I also started up in single user mode and did fsck, I always try that first with the hope I won't have to dig out the CD to start up from. This is none of the easy obvious things, which is why I posted to discussions.

btw, for safe boot and fsck you need someone sitting at the machine pushing a key for you, so remote admin with these is an issue (I can of course usually get someone to sit and hold the keys for me, it's just a pain to do regularly).

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Answer 9

Aug 17, 2007 8:14 AM in response to Jeffrey McGowan

Is there anyway to disconnect it from the network? I know you are remote but many of the HPs I worked on could get confused by network traffic especially when RPC commands are flying around the network.

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Answer 10

Aug 17, 2007 8:16 AM in response to Kid_Stevens

That's a thought. I'll have someone in the office disconnect the ethernet and turn off airport and see if that helps....

Thanks,

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Answer 11

Pe Bakk

Level 2

440 points

Aug 17, 2007 8:33 AM in response to Jeffrey McGowan

Jeffrey McGowan wrote:
Jeez, relax.

Don't be rude. You asked for help, I offered it, you didn't follow it. I had to repeat it 4 times in order to get information from you. Not quite what you expect from someone who is requesting help.

Jeffrey McGowan wrote:
First, the things to do in safe mode from your link are 1. Get rid of OS 9 fonts - no OS 9 on this computer (it's an Intel Mac...)

Wasn't so hard, was it?

Jeffrey McGowan wrote:
2 and 3 Incompatible startup/login items - there aren't any of these. So those are not relevant.

So you actually emptied the third party Startup Items as the article suggested and the same issue occurred?

Jeffrey McGowan wrote:
As I said, I did safe mode...

Which really says nothing other than you started up in Safe Mode.

Jeffrey McGowan wrote:
I also started from the CD and did Disk Repair and Permissions repair (several times, to make sure everything was really clean).

And because you said you had done those, you'll note I didn't ask you to do them. It pays to provide details.

Now then, how did the rest of the steps in that article (specifically steps 4, 5, and 6) go?

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