The process that wouldn't die...

How do you get rid of a process that keeps rising from the dead?
Almost as soon as I kill the process cfbackd, it returns with a different process ID.

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Details:
Apparently, cfbackd is a background daemon for the data recovery software Disk Drill.
And it is now using nearly 100% of (one core of) my CPU, making my computer run hot.

My first solution: Uninstall Disk Drill* and restart -- but no apparent effect.

Next: Log in to admin account,** open Terminal, and kill the process using sudo (since it's a process that belongs to the root user).
sudo kill -15 3196
(where 3196 is the current process ID of cfbackd.)

And sure enough, the process disappeared, only to reappear a moment later with a different process ID. (Same result if instead of -15, I used -9, -2, or -1.)

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*I uninstalled Disk Drill with AppCleaner and then with CleanMyMac. So if there are any other active files around, I don't know where.
Oh, and I removed "Disk Drill" from my list of login items.

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**The kill command doesn't seem to work in Terminal in my regular account, even when I put in the administrator password. That's why I used the admin account for it.
Note that the process shows up in Activity Monitor, but only in my regular user account. But it also shows up in Terminal in both accounts.

MacBook Pro 15" Early 2008, Mac OS X (10.5.8)

Posted on Oct 26, 2010 8:44 PM

Reply
7 replies

Oct 26, 2010 10:01 PM in response to Jeremy Kohn

I took a look inside the Disk Drill.app bundle, but I didn't install it. It contains a second app bundle named BackService, and contains a property list file named com.cleverfiles.cfbackd.plist, which in TextEdit looks like this:

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<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<!DOCTYPE plist
PUBLIC "-//Apple Computer//DTD PLIST 1.0//EN"
"http://www.apple.com/DTDs/PropertyList-1.0.dtd">
<plist version="1.0">
<dict>
<key>Disabled</key><false/>
<key>Label</key><string>com.cleverfiles.cfbackd</string>
<key>ProgramArguments</key>
<array>
<string>/Library/Application Support/CleverFiles/BackService.app/Contents/MacOS/cfbackd</string>
</array>
<key>OnDemand</key><false/>
</dict>
</plist>
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This is not an area I know much about, but this .plist file might be a launch daemon or launch agent for cfbackd, which is the executable contained in BackService.app. BackService.app apparently gets installed in /Library/Application Support/CleverFiles.

AppCleaner and CleanMyMac may have already found and removed these items, but I would check manually.
So look for this file:
com.cleverfiles.cfbackd.plist
in these locations:
HD>Library>LaunchAgents
and
HD>Library>LaunchDaemons

and look for this folder:
*HD>Library>Application Support>CleverFiles*

If you find these items, trash them both and restart.

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The process that wouldn't die...

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