High Sierra: qmasterd/opendirectoryd: Too many corpses being created

This same problem came up to me out of nowhere. I've been running OSX High Sierra for some time on my 6 year old iMac now without any problems really (haven't reinstalled once in all those years). This morning out of nowhere my iMac quit working (rc.server not found, along with the corpse process messages).

I have not updated my system anytime recently (maybe 2 weeks ago last time) so that should not be the issue. I've scrolled over dozens of topics on apple, macrumor but in my experience 90% of the people here who suppose to give "support" on Apple forums are not even close to tech savy, I myself have an extensive background in Unix/Linux systems so first thing I did was all sorts of diagnostics and tried several "fixes" which resulted in absolutly nothing. It saddens me every time when I search for some fix for a particular problem in OSX Apple support forums are the worst of any kind when it comes to these actually having understanding of the problem and the system and clogs up my google search results with worthless answers or solutions. 99% of the comments are worthless junk and mainly boils down to, put back a timemachine backup or reinstall it... and that's exactly what I'm going to do now because I've been working for more than 5 hours to fix this ***** problem which came out of nowhere with no apparent cause.

Hi, I have exactly the same problem!

Suddendly my iMac didn't boot cause is stuck with the progress bar at 100%. Starting in Verbose mode show the same error as yours (opendirectoryd too many corpses being created).

I've already reinstalled in all known ways without success :-(

We all should report this High Sierra bug to the Apple support contacts! Post a tweet to @AppleSupport (so they cannot deny anymore there's a real problem), then write a direct message to open a case number and ask them to send you the "Capture Data" software to create a full diagnostic (it can be run on another partition of the same drive which is not booting). Then submit a bug on this page: Feedback - macOS - Apple

No need to rant about the support forum! At least it provides a quick solution without data loss. Apple should be blamed for not fixing it or pubicize it on its websites.

See a solution to the issue from frankv or another similar from rew10000, also look at: http://capitoladesign.com/2018/02/10/osx-too-many-corpses-the-30-minute-fix-no-d ata-loss/

Here is probably the quickest solution from frankv:

If you want to remove all users (without removing home folders)

If you suspect that the local database which stores user accounts is damaged, follow the steps for the version of OS X you're using below. These steps remove all user accounts without removing their related Home folders, and make Setup Assistant open again.

Start up in Single-User Mode by holding Command-S when you turn on the computer. Wait until white text appears.

At the prompt, type each of these commands on single line as they appear below, and press Return at the end of each line.

mount -uw /

cd /var/db

mv dslocal dslocal.old

mkdir -p dslocal/nodes

cp -Rp /System/Library/DirectoryServices/DefaultLocalDB/Default dslocal/nodes/

rm .AppleSetupDone

reboot

Once the computer restarts, complete Setup Assistant to create the administrator user account again. When creating the account, the short name entered into the Account Name field should match the name of the user's home folder in /Users, so that the new user will use the existing home folder.

After Setup Assistant, open Terminal and type this command:

sudo chown -R username:staff /Users/username

Note: There is a space before "/Users/". Replace "username" with the user's short name that was entered in Account Name field during the previous step.

If there was more than user on the computer, use the Accounts pane of System Preferences to re-create any remaining users. When creating each account, the short name entered into the Account Name field should match the name of that user's home folder in /Users, so that the new user will use the existing home folder.

I have to say, ditto on everything you've stated. I have a mid 2012 MBP and have been using High Sierra for a couple of months without any problems. Just like you stated, woke up one morning, tried to boot it up and it was taking forever. Went to verbose mode and saw that it hung on "crashed: too many corpses being created". The OS was up to date and I had not installed an update in weeks - so that didn't cause the problem. I tried everything. Went to my nearest Apple Store and had their techs look at the problem. They tested the HD - no problem. They ran some other tests - no hardware problems. They tried to re-boot several times - same negative result. They did not wipe the hard drive rather tried to re-install High Sierra - no luck. Now, this doesn't sound like it took a long time, but I was in the Apple Store for literally 5 hours because everything they tried took hours. Finally, the techs, with my permission, erased the hard drive and installed a clean version of High Sierra. It finally booted up like a new computer, of course. I took my MBP home and the next day started to rebuild my accounts. I received a pop up message that there was an update to High Sierra that I should install. Thinking that I should install that update before I went too far in my rebuilding process, I installed the update. WOW! Right back where I started - failure to boot. I started to get "files missing or corrupted file" messages. I was ready to throw the MBP in the trash. Fortunately, several months before I updated to High Sierra, I made a bootable copy of my computer on an external drive. You might ask why I didn't go to this backup right away, but I had some data, since that backup was performed, that I didn't want to lose. That back up was still using El Capitan. Reinstalled from that backup and everything is working perfectly again. In conclusion, I think there are some major problems using High Sierra on older Macs at least. Makes me wonder if Apple cares about older computers. Kudos to the Apple Store techs though, no other computer company would do what they did - for free.

There is a fix if this happens without data loss. It takes about 30min. Newer Macs are affected as well. The Apple Helpdesks should know about the solution and not have to spend 5h on it an d Apple should fix the issue.

See a solution to the issue from frankv or another similar from rew10000, also look at: http://capitoladesign.com/2018/02/10/osx-too-many-corpses-the-30-minute-fix-no-d ata-loss/

Here is probably the quickest solution from frankv:

If you want to remove all users (without removing home folders)

If you suspect that the local database which stores user accounts is damaged, follow the steps for the version of OS X you're using below. These steps remove all user accounts without removing their related Home folders, and make Setup Assistant open again.

Start up in Single-User Mode by holding Command-S when you turn on the computer. Wait until white text appears.

At the prompt, type each of these commands on single line as they appear below, and press Return at the end of each line.

mount -uw /

cd /var/db

mv dslocal dslocal.old

mkdir -p dslocal/nodes

cp -Rp /System/Library/DirectoryServices/DefaultLocalDB/Default dslocal/nodes/

rm .AppleSetupDone

reboot

Once the computer restarts, complete Setup Assistant to create the administrator user account again. When creating the account, the short name entered into the Account Name field should match the name of the user's home folder in /Users, so that the new user will use the existing home folder.

After Setup Assistant, open Terminal and type this command:

sudo chown -R username:staff /Users/username

Note: There is a space before "/Users/". Replace "username" with the user's short name that was entered in Account Name field during the previous step.

If there was more than user on the computer, use the Accounts pane of System Preferences to re-create any remaining users. When creating each account, the short name entered into the Account Name field should match the name of that user's home folder in /Users, so that the new user will use the existing home folder.

Solved! Thank you so much for your instructions. I also kept the "Volumes" folder but renamed the "home" one (it was empty). I also deleted the Spotlight and PKInstallSandboxManager-SystemSoftware files. Now the Mac is booting again! I hope this bug will be solved officially by Apple, we all should open a ticket with their tech support.

How did you delete the old system folders? With the usual "sudo rm" or else? I got an error with that, do I need to boot in Recovery or is it possible to delete them in another way? TIA.

Glad it worked for you.

To delete the old system folders, I booted into Recovery and used rm in terminal. (They're protected by System Integrity Protection About System Integrity Protection on your Mac - Apple Support but this isn't enforced in Recovery mode).

Be careful! Some of the folders are actually symbolic links (e.g. /etc links to /private/etc) so you should be sure you are removing the obsolete link and not the contents of the linked folder. In this case, I believe that rm -rf /etc would just remove the link but rm -rf /etc/ [with trailing slash] would remove the contents of /private/etc as well.

Same thing here! I shut down my MacMINI last night and, when I went to boot it up this morning, the screen got stuck at white timeline at the end. Ive been trying all day to get this fixed. It Won’t start in Safe mode. Or recovery mode. No luck with DiskWarrior. Nothing.Nada. Zilch!!!

In verbose mode, i get the “opendirectoryd Too many dead corpses” error message. !

I need my MacMINI to be operating 100% soon. It’s beginning to look like this is some OS glitch from the recent update yesterday. Hope fully someone will find a fix long before Apple does.
Thanks in advance.

Same thing here! I shut down my MacMINI last night and, when I went to boot it up this morning, the screen got stuck at white timeline at the end. Ive been trying all day to get this fixed. It Won’t start in Safe mode. Or recovery mode. No luck with DiskWarrior. Nothing.Nada. Zilch!!!

In verbose mode, i get the “opendirectoryd Too many dead corpses” error message. !

I need my MacMINI to be operating 100% soon. It’s beginning to look like this is some OS glitch from the recent update yesterday. Hope fully someone will find a fix long before Apple does.
Thanks in advance.

I'm in the exact same predicament as kraemis, and I have not installed any anti-virus nor any software that I would qualify as "junk".

I'm currently trying moving out some of the kext files - My files are backed up, but I would really prefer to avoid losing many hours for a clean reinstall of OSX.

let's try this one on for size. the error tells us the problem is related to opendirectory(d), which appears to be cache related.

using your method of choice, let's remove the file that (hopefully) is the cause of the issues.

/StartupDisk/var/db/caches/opendirectory/mbr_cache

you could use terminal from the recovery partition, boot the problematic OS in single user mode, or do it all from a different OS if you happen to have one of those handy.

Good luck!

Yes!

Deleting the file "/StartupDisk/var/db/caches/opendirectory/mbr_cache" worked for me too, but since the file was locked in "read-only" mode, I had to re-moutnt the drive with "mount -u -w /" before using chmod 777 "mbr_cache" and then removing the file...

I'm a very experienced Mac tech support consultant, yet I've been grappling with the "too many corpses" problem since yesterday. I tried a number of approaches, but was confident that a simple solution existed. YOU MAY NOT HAVE TO ERASE YOUR HARD DRIVE, or reinstall Mac OS. I found a couple of postings that explain this surprisingly quick solution. If you're able to get into Recovery Mode utilizing CMD-R, and you're not afraid to work in the Terminal program, THIS WORKS! If you follow these steps EXACTLY, a bad file named "mbr_cache" will be rebuilt and your Mac will reboot successfully (slowly the first time as the rebuild happens, then normal speed after that). This solution worked on my 2011-vintage 21-inch iMac (iMac 12,1) with Mac OS High Sierra. Someone should tell the Apple Geniuses and Tech Support Specialists about this. Or, better yet, they should be able to find these types of solutions themselves. Good luck!

The two articles where I found this solution are:

macos - Opendirectoryd too many corpses being created - Ask Different

https://mrsystems.co.uk/blogs/news/too-many-corpses-being-created

Steps from the articles:

1. Boot and hold CMD-R to start up from macOS Recovery
2. If Filevault is on, mount the disk with Disk Utility and enter password
3. Enter these two commands in Terminal

4. cd /Volumes/Macintosh\ HD/var/db/caches/opendirectory

5. mv ./mbr_cache ./mbr_cache-old

6. Exit from Terminal
7. Restart the computer

I had the same problem. I tried all of the fixes mentioned here and none of them worked for me. I tried FirstAid and reinstalling macOS and I got a message that it couldn’t find my server. I found this solution through a google search and it worked for me. When my laptop restarted, it went to the sign-in page. I entered my password and after a few minutes, Set-up started. I went through set-up, and when it finished, all of my files were there. Nothing was lost. I hope this helps someone else.

https://mrsystems.co.uk/blogs/news/too-many-corpses-being-created

By the way, I called Apple support and they got me into Terminal but I kept getting a message saying there was no server found (or something to that effect.). They said they couldn’t do anything beyond that and set up an appointment for me at the Apple store. When I did what was suggested in the link above for my hard drive name and just typed “Ma” for Macintosh and then hit “tab”, it filled in my hard drive name. Then the commands typed into Terminal worked.