Lion login screen hangs
Hello, this is more of a FYI than a question.
Symptom: Upon entering your credentials in Mac OS X Lion Server, the login window will hang. However you can still move the mouse.
Since the Mac's background services were up and running at this point, I could SSH in and look around.
system.log revealed this:
Jan 19 18:55:01 Tesseract com.apple.authorizationhost.00000000-0000-0000-0000-0000000186AF[482]: buffer size: 1024 length: 592
Jan 19 18:55:01: --- last message repeated 1 time ---
Jan 19 18:55:01 Tesseract loginwindow[461]: Login Window - Returned from Security Agent
Jan 19 18:55:01 Tesseract loginwindow[461]: USER_PROCESS: 461 console
Jan 19 18:55:01 Tesseract applepushserviced[103]: Unable to bootstrap_lookup connection port for 'com.apple.iCalPush': unknown error code
Jan 19 18:55:01 Tesseract applepushserviced[103]: Unable to bootstrap_lookup connection port for 'com.apple.syncdefaultsd.push': unknown error code
Jan 19 18:55:01 Tesseract applepushserviced[103]: Unable to bootstrap_lookup connection port for 'com.apple.AddressBook.PushNotification': unknown error code
Jan 19 18:55:01 Tesseract applepushserviced[103]: Unable to bootstrap_lookup connection port for 'com.apple.safaridavclient.push': unknown error code
Jan 19 18:55:01 Tesseract airportd[499]: _doAutoJoin: Already associated to “Emerald”. Bailing on auto-join.
Jan 19 18:55:01 Tesseract com.apple.launchd.peruser.501[453] (com.apple.ReportCrash): Falling back to default Mach exception handler. Could not find: com.apple.ReportCrash.Self
Jan 19 18:55:01 Tesseract com.apple.launchctl.Aqua[502]: com.apple.RemoteDesktop.agent: Already loaded
Jan 19 18:55:01: --- last message repeated 1 time ---
Jan 19 18:55:01 Tesseract com.apple.launchctl.Aqua[502]: load: option requires an argument -- D
Jan 19 18:55:01 Tesseract com.apple.launchctl.Aqua[502]: usage: launchctl load [-wF] [-D <user|local|network|system|all>] paths...
Jan 19 18:55:01 Tesseract loginwindow[461]: -[__NSCFConstantString count]: unrecognized selector sent to instance 0x10eeda8e0
Jan 19 18:55:01: --- last message repeated 1 time ---
Jan 19 18:55:01 Tesseract loginwindow[461]: (
0 CoreFoundation 0x000000010ed87286 __exceptionPreprocess + 198
1 libobjc.A.dylib 0x000000010ebf1d5e objc_exception_throw + 43
2 CoreFoundation 0x000000010ee134ce -[NSObject doesNotRecognizeSelector:] + 190
3 CoreFoundation 0x000000010ed74133 ___forwarding___ + 371
4 CoreFoundation 0x000000010ed73f48 _CF_forwarding_prep_0 + 232
5 loginwindow 0x000000010c5bf2c9 loginwindow + 74441
6 loginwindow 0x000000010c5bf293 loginwindow + 74387
7 loginwindow 0x000000010c5bc646 loginwindow + 63046
8 CoreFoundation 0x000000010ed76a1d -[NSObject performSelector:withObject:] + 61
9 Foundation 0x000000010e0a5e44 __NSThreadPerformPerform + 214
10 CoreFoundation 0x000000010ecf5b51 __CFRUNLOOP_IS_CALLING_OUT_TO_A_SOURCE0_PERFORM_FUNCTION__ + 17
11 CoreFoundation 0x000000010ecf53bd __CFRunLoopDoSources0 + 253
12 CoreFoundation 0x000000010ed1c1a9 __CFRunLoopRun + 905
13 CoreFoundation 0x000000010ed1bae6 CFRunLoopRunSpecific + 230
14 HIToolbox 0x00000001133a93d3 RunCurrentEventLoopInMode + 277
15 HIToolbox 0x00000001133b063d ReceiveNextEventCommon + 355
16 HIToolbox 0x00000001133b04ca BlockUntilNextEventMatchingListInMode + 62
17 AppKit 0x000000010cd233f1 _DPSNextEvent + 659
18 AppKit 0x000000010cd22cf5 -[NSApplication nextEventMatchingMask:untilDate:inMode:dequeue:] + 135
19 AppKit 0x000000010cd1f62d -[NSApplication run] + 470
20 loginwindow 0x000000010c5b2142 loginwindow + 20802
21 loginwindow 0x000000010c5b1bf0 loginwindow + 19440
22 ??? 0x0000000000000002 0x0 + 2
)
Jan 19 18:55:01 Tesseract com.apple.launchd.peruser.501[453] (com.apple.launchctl.Aqua[502]): Exited with code: 1
Jan 19 18:55:01 Tesseract UserEventAgent[23]: CaptiveNetworkSupport:CNSServerRegisterUserAgent:187 new user agent port: 34987Looks like the loginwindow was crashing out.
These are the steps I tried that didn't remedy the problem:
repair Permissions
repair Disk
booted to safe mode (this caused a instant reboot at the login point)
attempted to Log in as a different user
repaired the volume with DiskWarrior
reset pram/smc/smu
emptied user and Library cache folders
emptied /Library/Internet Plug-Ins
emptied /Library/PreferencesPanes
note: to make things worse the boot volume was protected by FileVault 2.
I finally made progress when I renamed/replaced /Library/Preferences and rebooted. I could login without issue at this point.
Turns out /Library/Preferences/loginwindow.plist had a bad value.
Here is the contents of the "corrupted" plist that caused loginwindow to crash out. I verified this file was the culprit by placing it back in the Preferences folder. The symptom returned. I removed it once again, and was able to login fine.
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<!DOCTYPE plist PUBLIC "-//Apple//DTD PLIST 1.0//EN" "http://www.apple.com/DTDs/PropertyList-1.0.dtd">
<plist version="1.0">
<dict>
<key>AutoLaunchedApplicationDictionary</key>
<string></string>
</dict>
</plist>and for comparison the new loginwindow.plist generated by the system:
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<!DOCTYPE plist PUBLIC "-//Apple//DTD PLIST 1.0//EN" "http://www.apple.com/DTDs/PropertyList-1.0.dtd">
<plist version="1.0">
<dict>
<key>AutoLaunchedApplicationDictionary</key>
<array/>
</dict>
</plist>As you can see, somehow a empty string was passed to AutoLaunchApplicationDictionary in stead of a closed array.
Hopefully this post will help someone who was having the same issue I was.
lastly, you can "kick" the login window by logging in via ssh and running:
launchctl unload /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/com.apple.loginwindow.plist
launchctl load /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/com.apple.loginwindow.plist
