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Anyone having problems with distnoted?

A number of our machines have been affected by a runaway distnoted process after upgrading to El Capitan. We never had a problem with it under Yosemite.


Basically the machine will become unresponsive and if you are able to open Terminal or SSH into the machine and run top, you'll see the distnoted process consuming over 380% of the CPU and load averages of 300 or more. I recently had a load average of over 800 on my MacBook Air until I could kill the distnoted process. And as soon as the process is killed off, load averages start dropping immediately.


Anyone have an idea what causes this runaway process?

Posted on Apr 21, 2016 8:00 PM

Reply
15 replies

May 11, 2016 5:37 PM in response to Nancy N

I've noticed this as well in OS X 10.11.4. Seems to occur every day or so. Force quitting the DISTNOTED process (i.e. Distributed Notification Services) tied to my login account returns things to normal. Unfortunately, this breaks the hot corner functionality I use to invoke my password protected screensaver so I end up having to logout and then login (or reboot) in order to get everything working again. Outside of system updates or the once in a blue moon total system lockup this is the only reason I have to reboot my machine. Given the frequency that this occurs for no discernible rhyme or reason it's very frustrating to say the least.

May 11, 2016 5:47 PM in response to Ondray Wells Jr.

Your post at least shed some light on another vexing problem I've had...wondering why my hot corners stop working to lock the screen sometimes. Now I know killing the distnoted process can cause that issue.


Still no solution to the runaway distnoted process itself. Last week I was able to throttle it down by killing Mail from the command line. But then today when distnoted went crazy again and I tried to kill Mail from the command line, the Mail process wouldn't die off. I had to kill distnoted directly again.

May 12, 2016 4:51 AM in response to Nancy N

I have the same problem since a while. distnoted running wild. I'm on a MacBook Pro, 130inch running on 10.11.4


The only thing I can do is kill the distnoted process. I've installed htop through homebrew and use that to kill it, because the activity monitor becomes unusable too.


My very annoying sideeffect: keyboard layout switching doesn't really work anymore. Usually switching the language affects all applications - after the process is dead, it only affects the focussed one. Pretty annoying because I have different language layouts on the mac and the external keyboard.


I really hope I find the cause one day

May 15, 2016 9:05 PM in response to waxedknight

I was debating using a script that would kill distnoted once the CPU hit 100%.


We have gotten AppleCare involved in this and they asked us to pull logs on a few of the affected machines. They also asked us to pull logs from a machine that is running nothing but the OS because they feel it is related to third party software. So we are just supposed to buy Apple hardware and never install any other software on it? I'm sure the developers would love to hear that. Maybe Apple can announce that as new policy at WWDC next month.

Mind you, not one of our machines ever has had an issue with this distnoted process going crazy under Yosemite with exactly the same third party software we are still running to this day.

May 17, 2016 7:39 AM in response to Nancy N

The good news is that I am not alone!


Yes, DISTNOTD is crashing my machine at least 3-4X per week by pushing the CPU to the max and keeping it there for about 10 minutes. My Mac crashed 3-4 per YEAR previously. It is definitely new in El Capitan. And in the 10.11.3+ releases. It didn't seem to happen in 10.11.2 or below.


For Apple: Macbook Pro Retina 13". Late 2013 Release. No software has been added, save for updates, since Yosemite.

May 23, 2016 12:34 PM in response to Nancy N

Here is what I did that 'appears' to have fixed the problem. It's been a few days since I've done this fix and, to this point, no more Distnoted high CPU usage. No guarantees and I'll report back if the issue returns.


I did a full reinstall on the Mac OS X system. For those that aren't familiar with it, it is quite easy and returns the Mac to the same state that it was in except the OS X has been fully updated and replaced. (Note: This is different and more extensive that just doing a regular from within the OS.) User files and settings and other good stuff all remain the same.


Warnings in advance:

  • BACK UP!
  • You need a very good, solid internet connection and the laptop has to be plugged in to power. It needs to download about 1.5 - 2 GB or so.
  • The process can take an hour or so and you won't be able to use your mac except for this update process. More time on older macs. But the process doesn't need a lot of human attention.


To do it:

  • Google "Reinstall Mac OS X" - or - do the following:
  • Reboot the computer.
  • While rebooting, hold down COMMAND - R
  • Choose the 'Reinstall OS X" option. I think it's the second one down the list.
  • Type in your password, follow the prompts, etc and that's it.
  • Note: Only your mac's touchpad may work during the reinstall process. My bluetooth mouse didn't show up and forced me to use the touchpad.

Jun 8, 2016 12:15 PM in response to Gregorysreid

I actually reinstalled my OS with 10.11.4 at that time and the issue did not come back for two days or so but then came back...


As a temporary fix I implemented a script creating the following lines in $HOME/bin/checkdistnoted


#!/bin/sh

#

# check for runaway distnoted, kill if necessary

#


PATH=/bin:/usr/bin

export PATH


ps -reo '%cpu,uid,pid,command' |

awk -v UID=$UID '

/distnoted agent$/ && $1 >= 100.0 && $2 == UID {

# kill distnoted agent with >= 100% CPU and owned by me

system("kill -9 " $3)

}

'

And added this lines into the crontab (crontab -e):

# check for runaway distnoted every minute:

*/2 * * * * sh "$HOME/bin/checkdistnoted"

This makes sure that it checks every two minutes if the process is running with 100% CPU and if it kills the process. I spent hours to find the cause and after the kill of the process my DisplayLinkManager process spikes my CPU (only 30-40%) so I have to reboot at a certain point but at least my whole computer is frozen.

So this is still not a fix to the issue itself but at least helps to proceed to work. And I agree completely this is new since El Capitan but it is nearly impossible to troubleshoot this.

Anyone who has an idea please please comment!

Jul 26, 2016 2:45 AM in response to Guido Hagemann

Interesting. I have had this problem ever since upgrading to El Capitan but it was only this week that I managed to track it down to distnoted running at 380%. I've taken to SSHing into the iMac and killing the process - very annoying given the frequency.


I have noticed that TM is stuck at 'preparing backup' when this happens - although as the machine is unresponsive until the process is killed, I don't know if it was at that state BEFORE the ramp up or after the process was killed. It stays in this status until I select 'skip this backup'.


I haven't tried a full re-install. I've been putting that off to be honest in the hope of finding a cause. Up to now I've had no idea, it was just dumb luck that I thought to enable remote login and see if I could detect what the problem was.

Anyone having problems with distnoted?

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