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Directory Services eating CPU cycles

I've got the same problem I've read about in other forums... Directory Services is hogging my cpu. Not doing anything, it's usually between 40% and 90% cpu... This has only begun happening since a format/reinstall of the OS (and everything else) about two weeks ago. I found some articles saying it was because of a long hosts file, and I have a huge ad-blocking hosts file, but I had that before and never had this problem until reinstalling... I'm also sharing the ethernet network via wifi, but again I was doing that before I reinstalled and never had any problems. Any clues?

Macbook Pro, Mac OS X (10.6.6), big hosts file, no other significant tweaks to network settings

Posted on Jan 28, 2011 7:47 PM

24 replies

Feb 7, 2011 5:39 PM in response to Targon

As I included in the bug notes yesterday - on a whim, while trying to "optimize" my macbook for audio latency, I tried this and it seems to have almost completely taken care of the hosts file issue:

Try using Disk Utility to "Repair Disk Permissions". Please report back here if it helped or not so I can let dev know.

Targon

Level 1

55 points

Feb 7, 2011 6:16 PM in response to akickintheteeth

LOL no repair permissions can't do anything in this case. The problem is caused by DirectoryService grepping the /etc/hosts file for EVERY domain lookup. Apple moved DNS lookups to the DirectoryService daemon in Snow Leopard. The situation occurs with a large hosts file. So tell the dev to use this hosts file on his test system, and use a web browser that saves sessions like OmniWeb with a dozen or so tabs. Try refreshing all the tabs and watch the CPU utilized by DirectoryService consume over 400%. Or refresh a load of RSS feeds.

http://www.mvps.org/winhelp2002/hosts.txt

Belmakor

Level 1

11 points

Feb 10, 2011 2:06 AM in response to akickintheteeth

I've been having this exact same problem (DirectoryService taking up crazy amounts of CPU time) and yet my /etc/hosts file has exactly 4 entries. What else can cause it? Anyone?

Marcov64

Level 1

0 points

Feb 11, 2012 1:26 AM in response to akickintheteeth

Fixed!

I had the DirectoryService taking 100% of CPU since today. Thought of the last stuff I installed/updated. The latest was Samsung Kies (yes, still desperatedly hoping to marry my Galaxy with my MBP...). In monitor activities I found a KiesViaWifi process (or something similar). Killed it and it worked: DirectoryServices went from 100% to 0%.

Don't know what's going to happen after rebooting. I have a MBP 15'' , i7, 8Gb RAM, SL 10.6.8

Good luck

Mar 4, 2012 1:46 PM in response to Marcov64

Thank you for posting this. Samsung Kies was the cause of the problem on my machine as well.

Apr 18, 2012 6:27 AM in response to Marcov64

Samsung Kies (KiesViaWifi) was also the problem in my case, thank you very much!

Apr 21, 2012 5:40 AM in response to Marcov64

Dude, thank you so much for posting this! You just saved my Macbook!

*** SAMSUNG?!?!?!?! 😠

May 15, 2012 8:10 AM in response to akickintheteeth

Hi -

In my case, I have a very short hosts file and no Samsung stuff installed, but was still having DirectoryServices peg the needle at 100% CPU. I noticed that a process called dscl running and using 10% CPU.

Some man-page reading revealed that it is a command line utility for managing users and groups. It seems to me that a command line utility like that shouldn't run for hours, so I sudo kill -9'd it. Immediately after that DirectoryServices usage dropped back to 0.

I'm not sure why root wanted to run dscl, but whatever the reason dscl seemed to be asking DirectoryServices to do lots of stuff.

csgzs

Level 1

0 points

May 21, 2012 11:33 PM in response to Marcov64

Thanks a lot - this was my problem too!

Directory Services eating CPU cycles