System start stalls on "Waiting for DSMOS"

Question

teorema67 Author

Level 4

1,067 points

System start stalls on "Waiting for DSMOS"

Since a few weeks my MBA (Rev. A, 1.8, OS 10.6.3) needs 3 minutes for boot/reboot. In verbose mode I see

waiting for DSMOS

for up to 2 minutes, after that appears

previous shutdown cause: 5

Permissions are repaired etc. and all startup items disabled (the only I'm using is "FontExplorerXAutoload"). I have not DSMOS component (e. g. dsmos.kext) on my AirBook. And my OS DVD is obviously original Apple and legal. The problem came with 10.6.3.

Thanks for any idea!
Andreas

AirBook 1.8 2/80GB, Mac OS X (10.6.3), iPod 160GB

Posted on May 16, 2010 10:22 AM

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Answer 1

sig

Level 8

35,862 points

May 16, 2010 10:37 AM in response to teorema67

How full is the hard drive? How much free space is there? How many files, folders and stuff is sitting on your desktop?

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Answer 2

teorema67 Author

Level 4

1,067 points

May 16, 2010 11:06 AM in response to sig

HD: 80GB, 46.6GB free, 94.340 folders, 396.913 files, not so much for 10.6, much less than 10.5 🙂 , nothing on the desktop.

The problem didn't exist unter 10.6.2 with nearby the same number of files and folders.

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Answer 3

sig

Level 8

35,862 points

May 16, 2010 11:10 AM in response to teorema67

Boot into safe mode, hold down the shift key until you see the spinning cog. Takes a while to get to the desktop. Run Repair Disk from Disk Utility and empty the Trash. Then reboot. Post back.

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Answer 4

teorema67 Author

Level 4

1,067 points

May 16, 2010 1:12 PM in response to sig

Thanks for your answer.

It didn't change anything, startup stalls on "waiting for DSMOS". I did fsck -fy in single user mode before (the "etc." of my first posting).

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Answer 5

teorema67 Author

Level 4

1,067 points

May 17, 2010 12:34 PM in response to sig

After all I did reinstall the OS. Unfortunately that 10.5 Upgrade DVD from Apple doesn't perform a clean install (e. g. "Archive and Install"). Anyway, the AirBook boots regularly now and needs 55 sec. from pushing the button to the logon screen. In verbose mode it doesn't say anymore "Waiting for DSMOS ...", but "DSMOS has arrived" as it did months ago.

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