'Shut Down' is sloooooooow

There seem to be several issues that may cause the OS to slow down to a crawl on shut down. I have P7 running on two of the machines experiencing this issue, since most all machines here have experienced it, it may be another issue building up.

Check your console for recurring hits of file based issues during shut down. I found several:

1. Try P-RAM (V-RAM) reset first. See if the fix sticks over use of the machine.
2. If you no longer have Parallels 7 installed, you may have to go back and do an uninstall from their installer to completely, easily eliminate ALL relevant files (except the Virtual machine folder/files, if you intend to run an updated version). Posted separate comment to that.

What it's not:

Rebuild permissions. Have tried without success as the problem recurs.

Feel free to add to this list!

I tried all the methods in this thread. None worked.

On verbose mode I saw httpd and mysqld popping up a lot of times. I had enabled those in MAMP PRO for system startup.

Disabling them from starting in MAMP PRO, or quitting them before shutdown solves the slow shutdown problem for me 🙂

spacerays wrote:

I tried all the methods in this thread. None worked.

On verbose mode I saw httpd and mysqld popping up a lot of times. I had enabled those in MAMP PRO for system startup.

Disabling them from starting in MAMP PRO, or quitting them before shutdown solves the slow shutdown problem for me 🙂

I deleted the old Parallels install and installed Parallels 8 instead, thinking that this would do it. Still a problem. After P-RAM reset or even after a cold startup, this problem goes away for awhile, only to re-emerge on my Mac Pro. Have not seen it show up in my MBP or my Mini. The Mini has the same version installed clean, recently.

I have no idea if 10.8.2 is simply hosed on this machine or what.

What is MAMP Pro? I will try shutting down in verbose mode or looking at console report to see what seems to stick. That's a good idea, spacerays.

MAMP Pro is an easy way to run local websites. It contains Apache, MySQL and PHP servers.

Even without MAMP one might still be running Apache (httpd) as it is inbuilt in Mac OS X.

To check if you have Apache running;

> Type localhost in your browser and press Enter

. If a page loads and says "It works!", it means Apache is running.

To stop Apache

> Open Terminal, type

sudo apachectl stop

Now shutdown and see if the time decreases. Worked for me even on another Mac without MAMP.

spacerays wrote:

MAMP Pro is an easy way to run local websites. It contains Apache, MySQL and PHP servers.

Even without MAMP one might still be running Apache (httpd) as it is inbuilt in Mac OS X.

To check if you have Apache running;

> Type localhost in your browser and press Enter

. If a page loads and says "It works!", it means Apache is running.

To stop Apache

> Open Terminal, type

sudo apachectl stop

Now shutdown and see if the time decreases. Worked for me even on another Mac without MAMP.

I could not imagine why apache would be running on this local machine (the one slowing down), did the test anyway, though. Lo! It wasn't running. So that's clearly not the case for me. Interesting suggestion though. Thanks. Wouldn't the status show up in Activity Monitor as a process?

While I was looking at Activity Monitor, however, noticed a lot of processes owned by root that run and use resources that could possibly be an issue to delaying shutdown. How do I diagnose that as a possible problem?

There may be other daemons which are timing out at 20 seconds.
You can use Console to find out which ones.

1) Perform a shutdown

2) Start again, open Console

3) Open system.log from the left pane

4) Enter "exit timeout" in the search field on the top right

5) You would get a list of daemons/agents which are timing out, they have a 20 second timer

Use the following commands to manually specify their timeout to 2 seconds:

In terminal, type the following: (example here is com.apple.coreservices.appleid.authentication.plist)

sudo launchctl unload /System/Library/LaunchAgents/com.apple.coreservices.appleid.authentication.plis t

sudo defaults write /System/Library/LaunchAgents/com.apple.coreservices.appleid.authentication ExitTimeOut -int 2

sudo launchctl load /System/Library/LaunchAgents/com.apple.coreservices.appleid.authentication.plis t

Some plists are present in the LaunchDaemons folder instead of LaunchAgents. Modify the above commands accordingly.

These commands will kill the errant agents/daemons in 2 seconds instead of the new default of 20 seconds since Lion.

Interesting. Here's what caused my slowdown during my last shutdown:

(com.apple.coreservices.appleid.authentication[109]): Exit timeout elapsed (20 seconds).

Scott Newman wrote:

Interesting. Here's what caused my slowdown during my last shutdown:

(com.apple.coreservices.appleid.authentication[109]): Exit timeout elapsed (20 seconds).

For my last shutdown which, BTW, did not seem very slow at all, it was this:

"com.apple.launchd[1] (com.apple.coreservices.appleid.authentication[127]): Exit timeout elapsed (20 seconds). Killing"

Should I try to change it to a 2 sec timeout? Apparently when it hangs noticably there may be way more of these timeouts? Cause it hangs and never restarts in 20 MINUTES! Yet CrashReporter did not report when I forced the shutdown with the power button.

After the last slowdown, I reset the P-RAM again. This test was done today after the P-RAM reset had been done. There is clearly something building up when certain apps or other stuff happens during normal use of MacOS on my system. I'll have to remember to try this test in a week or so to see what's happened. I regularly shut down and restart my machines, usually once a week. So far the only one to noticably fail is the MacPro.

Message was edited by: HenryS

spacerays:

Thanks for the post. I was having slow shutdowns, and your solution worked for me. I had 3 processes that were taking 20 seconds to timeout. My shutdown time is now on the order of 5 seconds. Interestingly, it seems to have also improved my boot times.

Thanks spacerays:

If I list the 'exit timeot' culprits in console, I get the following results (Note that the first program happens the most frequently, with the second program happening fairly frequently and finally the last two happen the least of all):-

qtkitserver

quicklook.satellite

coreservices.appleid.authentication

coremedia.videodecoder

Interestingly though I never really had too much of a problem before with shut-down speeds since installing an SSD last year (fall of 2012) in my MacBook Pro 17" i7 early 2011 model. Its only more recently that this problem has emerged. Antother interesting thing is that sometimes the MBP can still shut down in only a few seconds even though I have a fully loaded system, but other times it just appears to hang so I just force it off with the power switch.

I noticed just prior to reading this thread that I did have the process 'mdworker' perpetually going 100% on the CPU, but when examining the open files & ports for this process it revealed that the culprit everytim for this was Britanica Ultimate Reference Suit; it showed the 'BritannicaBookmark.mdimporter' spotlight importer Power PC app/plug.. so I right-clicked on it and compressed it into a zip file (as a safety backup) and then deleted the app/plugin. Not sure if this was adding to the issue as I only done this immediately prior to reading this thread and not sure if removing it will cause problems in Britanica, but will test.

As for the exit timeout culprits, why does that situation exist in the first place. Does Apple intend for them to have occassional longer timeout allowances for a possible valid reason that we could be unaware of?

...actually the 'coreservices.appleid.authentication' is happening more often now.

(com.apple.coreservices.appleid.authentication, to be more exact and with an often different number value being associated)

This has been a pain in my *** since the first version of Mtn. Lion. What used to be routine 2 second shutdowns on my 2011 MacBook Air frequently were 30 seconds or more. There's another fairly large thread dealing with this subject....

https://discussions.apple.com/thread/4339540?answerId=20651265022#20651265022

There are several suggested workarounds discussed there. I recommend reading that thread. I did all of those but still had the problem about 50% of the time.

Earlier this week I made the change suggested above to use a 2-second timeout for com.apple.coreservices.appleid.authentication.

That did it. Since then, all of shutdowns (2 per day) are within 2-3 seconds. But that still begs the question as to why Apple hasn't fixed this yet. And why does there need to be appleid authentication when I'm shutting down? Frankly, I hate the idea of messing with anything inside my System folder, but I have to say that in this case it's been worth it.

That seemed to help some, but I still get a slow shutdown now and again.

Yes, it's pretty crappy that Apple hasn't addressed this, at the minimum in this thread!

Unless I'm doing something wrong, sadly the timeot fix didn't appear to help the problem for me but it's a useful thing to know about for future reference if a process is hanging the system. Although terminal wouldn't accept the sudo launchctl unload and sudo launchctl load terminal commands, it did however accept the command to set the timeout to 2 seconds from the default 20 seconds and I was able to confirm this afterwards when checking within console after a reboot where it did show the 2 seconds for the 'com.apple.coreservices.appleid.authentication' process.

One thing for sure is that this problem seems to be getting worse because when it does have slow shutdowns, they virtualy 'hang' by well exceeding the 20 second. In fact I have left it for 2 to 3 minutes on some occassions befor having to force shutdown by pressing the Power Button.

I have noticed within the Console that the processes hitting the 20 second exit timout limit have had the 'kill' command following them where the system tries to kill it; is this where the problem is, in that the kill procedure is not working in some instances where the system hangs instead? Problem is getting deeply frustrating now.

Also strange how on some occassions it shuts down quicker, but they are less frequent.

Even if you don't have parallels installed, you can use the same procedure by Chakravarthy Cuddapah. Instead of finding a parallels file in Launch Agents, there was a single java file. It was a shortcut, as indicated by the black arrow on the bottom left of the icon, but by deleting the file and secure emptying the trash (I always secure empty trash) I restarted in no time. I tested it a few times and each was equally quick. Hope this helps 🙂 Btw. I'm on OS X 10.8.3, mid-2010 macbook, ssd, 8gb ram