Sudden duplicates of volumes (10.13.6)

Hi there, my MacPro 5,1 (10.13.6) ran smoothly until a few day ago. Emptying trash with only a few Kb took a minute and then I noticed that my Nvidia prefpane was missing in the top toolbar. The Cuda prefpane was accessible in the prefpanes but the Nvidia Driver Manager wasn't. Investigating further and I then noticed that most of my connected volumes got copies. The original volumes got an 1 behind their names.

After some searching I found this thread: https://superuser.com/questions/657295/osx-duplicated-and-re-numbered-my-drive-in-volumes

I went through the process and now only my startup volume shows up as an alias in /Volumes but not on the desktop. I can control click and Show Original. The symptoms described above are still there. Here's the EtreCheck report:

EtreCheck report

How can I fix this? TIA Edit: typo.

Posted on Jul 20, 2021 3:06 AM

36 replies

Jul 26, 2021 11:42 AM in response to BDAqua

Bit the bullet and switched the machine off and booted in Safe Mode. SoftwareUpdate said I needed to reboot in order for the Security Update 2020-005 to take effect. And here things get weird. After a restart the screen remains black with only the arrow pointer visible. I tried to reinstall 10.13.6 from a flashdrive (which went ok) and a manual install of the Security Update which also hangs. Somehow the machine can't get passed this update. I tried to install Security Update 2020-006 but was rejected. It needs the installation of 2020-005 first. Any ideas?

Jul 27, 2021 8:56 AM in response to BDAqua

I'm still running this machine from the 2nd ssd, for which I was able to move over most of my settings. Some of them came flawless, some apps lost settings or serials or had to reinstall. Wacom is notorious. Safari is behaving very slow and in the next few days I will have some dealings with Creative Cloud I reckon.

The primary ssd is still a mess. As soon as the secondary ssd works (more or less) flawless, I have to wipe that ssd and reinstall an older backup. As for now I have to make up for lost time. Still no idea what has caused this as no new software or updates were installed the past few days. Grrrrr.

Jul 27, 2021 4:43 PM in response to BDAqua

Thanks for sticking with me BDAqua. Luckily I have both. But somehow I always worry that I'll miss something by going that route more direct. Thanks! Two things though: Safari being slow was due to an older version. Software Update only gave the update half an hour ago. Weird. And Gatekeeper gives me some issues with friendly apps. I ran sudo spctl --master-disable but that doesn't do much for rules already in Gatekeeper. I once saw a thread that dealt with that. Any ideas?

Jul 28, 2021 12:45 AM in response to BDAqua

In the meantime I found out some kext are in the quarantine folder and also found a Terminal command to remove them but it's not working. Here's what I found:

sudo xattr -r -d com.apple.quarantine /path/to/MyApp.app.

and

sudo xattr -d com.apple.quarantine /path/to/MyApp.app.

Should moving manually work in Safe Mode?

BDAqua

Level 10

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Jul 21, 2021 8:19 AM in response to Server rookie

Are those problem files in your home folder or elsewhere>

Jul 21, 2021 12:03 PM in response to BDAqua

Yes, the home folder. Usually files on the desktop, created by iWork suite or TextEdit.

BDAqua

Level 10

250,253 points

Jul 21, 2021 12:15 PM in response to Server rookie

You don't have iCloud Drive enabled do you?

Jul 21, 2021 12:24 PM in response to BDAqua

Yes, I use iCloud Drive.

BDAqua

Level 10

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Jul 21, 2021 1:06 PM in response to Server rookie

I think that is the lag then & even have seen spurious permission problems.

BDAqua

Level 10

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Jul 22, 2021 5:28 AM in response to Server rookie

How does that rule it out?

BDAqua

Level 10

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Jul 26, 2021 10:35 AM in response to Server rookie

Gulp, sounds like your only choice, looking more & more like some hardware problem.

BDAqua

Level 10

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Jul 26, 2021 2:00 PM in response to Server rookie

Can you try installing to an external drive?

BDAqua

Level 10

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Jul 26, 2021 7:14 PM in response to Server rookie

Great to hear, keep us posted after you rest!

BDAqua

Level 10

250,253 points

Jul 27, 2021 1:54 PM in response to Server rookie

Thanks for the report, &as far as making up for lost time that is why I like to have a clone of the drive besides a TM Backup.

BDAqua

Level 10

250,253 points

Jul 27, 2021 7:45 PM in response to Server rookie

No idea on that sorry, protecting us has almost ruled us out as computer operators. :(

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Sudden duplicates of volumes (10.13.6)