distnoted CPU Runaway...

Unfortunately, this breaks the hot corner functionality I use to invoke my password protected screensaver so

Try Command-Control-Eject, or if you do not have an eject key Command-Control-Power. This should just turn your screen off, and Security should kick in requiring your password to get back in (assuming you have require password enable).

I have experienced this problem on MBP Retina 13" late 2012 29 Core i7 El Captian 10.11.4. 4 lockups today with distnote consuming 100% CPU. Very frustrating although after 5 minutes the system unfreezes. Clearly an Apple issue but since I do not have a current support contract I am contributing here in the hope that Apple will listen or a community response will come to the rescue.

...in the hope that Apple will listen...

That does not happen in this forum. This is strictly user-to-user

You can use feedback or file a bug report

BugReporter

Anyone can get a free account at:

<https://developer.apple.com/register/index.action>

Folks,

Anyone have any joy solving this issue? My story and next steps below.

I've been having the runaway disunited problem for a couple of months. I've been through all the hoops (OS reinstall, step by step OS re-install etc). After that, I slowly removed, reinstalled all major apps like Skype. I wiped and reconnected iCal and Mail too.

Nothing seemed to work.

In a last step, I've had to start contemplating using other apps like Outlook (for cal and mail), Safari or Firefox instead of Chrome etc

So far, I've migrated to Safari only and the signs are good. Running 48 hours now and not a single runaway Disnoted process. Still using Mail and iCal.

For the record, in Chrome I was using these extensions:

App Launcher for Drive (Google)

Cisco Webex

Dropbox for Gmail

Google Doc Offline

Nimbus Screenshot

Rapportive

Assuming next few days continue well, my next step is to move back to Chrome and disable the extensions one by one.

Let me know if this resonates with any of you.

I also have been having this problem in the last couple of months, including just now, running 10.11.5 on a mid-2014 Retina MacBook Pro 13".

I've been trying to identify what creates this problem, and have sometimes thought that Skype was involved, but I've just had the problem without Skype being loaded.

The symptoms are that one application (e.g. word) freezes (spinning CD), then this spreads to others (tweetbot then excel today). I was running activity monitor and distnotd had gone to 355%; I force quit it & everything went back to normal, including the force quit I'd earlier done on Excel & Tweetbot actually happening.

I have another Mac - a Mac Mini - which is also regularly crashing on its password screen, so I don't know if this is due to the same problem as I have to force restart it. One strange feature of the console log after the force re-start is that I see the line on booting up is following by the console messages from the hours earlier when (presumably) the machine was somewhat crashed. This implies that the crash is preventing the log from updating.

update, happened today, was up to 72 hours without incident. Caught it and killed "Disnoted" process.

So it's not Chrome.

Rich

Agreed. Installed update MacOS 10.11.5 and the situation is much improved. Wish I knew exactly why...

I haven't yet installed 10.11.5, but after being VERY frustrated about the same issue (MBP, Retina 13 inch, early 2015, 10.11.4), I found this webpage:

http://apple.stackexchange.com/questions/111197/runaway-distnoted-process

and, reading down the page, installed a shell script and a crontab entry which checks every minute to see is the distnoted process is running amok, and then kills the distnoted process when it is using >100% CPU time. It is a shame that no one from Apple has noted this bug. I will upgrade to 10.11.5 and see what happens...

I'm having the same issue and installing 10.11.5 did not fix the issue.

Hi and good day,

Same annoying problem here since OS 10.11.4 and also with ~ .5

Apple support can't help. Happens when you least need it. I agree with most of the folks' observations. Thanks for the sudo killall disunited trick.

Others have written a script to kill it regularly. (http://apple.stackexchange.com/questions/111197/runaway-distnoted-process/133165 #133165)

The way it looks here on this machine:

liv-isl.in/_osx100

Really hope Apple can fix this soon!

/

with best regards,

Omar K N

Stockholm, Sweden

I'm having the same issue since the last update. I've had to use the power button 3 or 4 times as the UI becomes completely unresponsive. As others have noted, sometimes the situation recovers after a few minutes. I've now found that I can SSH to my MBAir from another host (or my phone) and request a reboot - which at least makes the shutdown somewhat cleaner.

I can confirm, that I'm still getting this problem - to an extent - with the latest 10.11.6 Beta (15G24b).

There may be a change though, in that I got the spinning pizza when right clicking with one app (e.g. Things), force quit it from activity monitor, then noticed that it had spread to tweetbot. I then searched for distnoted & force-quite the process that had the longer overall cpu time (which was the one for my user), even though it was hardly using any CPU %. Immediately tweetbot re-activated & Things re-opened.

My conclusion: distnoted may be jamming up your machine even if it isn't using a lot of CPU time. It's also possible that the latest 10.11.6 beta reduces processor usage by distnoted without resolving its ability to crash your machine

Hi,

MacBook Pro 2015, El Capitan 10.11.5 + Latest updates.

Sympton is distnoted running +700% CPU load. GUI unresponsive. (Normally, Lync for Mac, Outlook 2016, Safari, Word 2016, Calendar.app and Acrobat reader running.

How do i get around this:

1. From device that can run ssh terminal connection to my MacBook run top command:

top -o cpu -O +rsize -s 5 -n 20

2. And wait top to list cpu hogs

3. Remember PID number for distnoted

4. Press ctrl+C

5. Run command (Replace PID with distnoted PID number from top)

sudo kill -9 PID

6. distnoted has been stopped

To update on my previous post, I'm still getting slow-downs every day or two, which can be cured by force-quitting my user's distnotd process, even if it is using v little CPU %. I'm still using 10.11.6 Beta (15G24b)

Two tips for dealing with distnoted problems, which I am experiencing on 2 different machines (MacBook Pro & Mac Mini), both running 10.11.6 Beta (15G26a - which may have slightly reduced the chance of a full lock-up):

1) Keep an eye on activity monitor, not just %CPU but also CPU Time - if distnoted is in top few on CPU time, even if not at that moment in %CPU, then force-quitting it or restarting the machine is probably a good idea. When I do this force-quit on my Mac mini the activity monitor list goes a bit mad, but quitting & re-opening EyeTV fixes this (I have EyeTV on all the time on this machine, but not on the MacBook)

2) It seems that distnoted can slow down your machine without using lots of CPU. If your machine is acting strangely, trying force quitting it in activity monitor - I'm having to do this every few days on my MacBook, and it works even if distnoted in only using 0.2% CPU when it is force-quit.

On the Mac Mini I am also finding that lock-ups on the log in window can sometimes be resolved by unplugging the monitor, pausing a few seconds, then plugging it back in.