Mac unusable (slow) first half hour after boot - syspolicyd

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304 points

Mac unusable (slow) first half hour after boot - syspolicyd

Hi all,

Every time my Mac (10.15.7) boots, it takes about 1/2 hour for the system to become usable. Before this time, the disk(s) is(are) constantly being read by syspolicyd. After this time, Activity Monitor shows syspolicyd has read 10 GB, sometimes more.

I have tried lowering the priority of syspolicyd using the renice command, but this has no noticable effect, possibly because the process is mostly just waiting on the disk, and not the CPU.

How is it acceptable to have the system tied up this long for what should be a nice, slow background task? Why does it need to do such intense disk activity every time the system boots? What can I do to make the system more usable?

Thanks,

Scott

Mac mini, macOS 10.15

Posted on May 27, 2022 7:59 AM

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Answer 1

May 27, 2022 8:46 AM in response to WoodPlane

Try running the Apple Diagnostics to see if any hardware issues are reported.

To look for possible software issues run EtreCheck with "Full Disk Access" so that more details are included in the report which may contain more clues. Post the report here using the "Additional Text" icon which looks like a piece of paper.

I suspect you may have a worn out or failing hard drive. Run DriveDx and post the complete text report here using the "Additional Text" icon which looks like a piece of paper. If you have Fusion Drive setup, then post a report for both the SSD and the hard drive.

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Answer 2

May 29, 2022 4:05 PM in response to WoodPlane

Disk Utility rarely reports any SMART errors. If Disk Utility does report a SMART error, then the drive is probably nearly unusable anyway. I've only ever seen Disk Utility report a SMART error two or maybe three times, but I've replaced hundreds of drives which had SMART errors that never triggered the alert in Disk Utility, but showed up within the health report provided by an app such as DriveDx. Disk Utility is only good for checking the health of the file system, not the physical health of the drive. Sometimes it may take a device a bit of time to go ready which may be a possibility here. Unfortunately we don't have enough information & specific details so you should post the EtreCheck report with "Full Disk Access" here so we can see if there are any software issues.

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Answer 3

Jul 1, 2022 4:00 PM in response to WoodPlane

Not necessarily. It may only have errors when trying to access the bad sectors on the drive.

We cannot assist you unless you we have more information which would be provided by posting the reports that I mentioned in my earlier posts. It would also help to know the results of the diagnostics. This information will helps us figure out what may be happening with your laptop both with the hardware & software. Remember we cannot see your system directly so these reports are critical for attempting to assisting you.

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Answer 4

WoodPlane Author

Level 2

304 points

May 27, 2022 8:07 AM in response to WoodPlane

I copied this from my original post (Posted on Jan 29, 2022 12:41 PM), which had replies disabled.

Bill_T1 replied, suggesting that I try booting in safe mode. I did that, and the system is just as slow as when running in normal mode. The syspolicyd process still runs in safe mode, and still hits the disk continuously until it is done doing whatever it does.

syspolicyd reads about 10 GB of data, after which the system becomes responsive. A background task that is so resource intensive should pace its operations to prevent impacting system performance.

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Answer 5

WoodPlane Author

Level 2

304 points

May 29, 2022 8:50 AM in response to HWTech

After syspolicyd is done reading about 10 GB from the disk, the system works fine. If the disk had a problem, it would always have a problem, not just for the first half-hour after boot. I have never had a delay in reading or writing a file. Disk Utility does not show any SMART errors on the disk. I ran the diagnostics when I set up the system. It did not report any disk errors. It has always had this problem since loading Catalina.

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Answer 6

WoodPlane Author

Level 2

304 points

Jul 1, 2022 2:12 PM in response to HWTech

When Time Machine does a backup, it is sometimes on the order of 4 GB (I don't use the automatic backup option), and my system is perfectly usagble during that time. If the disk were having errors, it would always have errors.

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Mac unusable (slow) first half hour after boot - syspolicyd

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