iMac High Sierra won't boot. "Too many corpses being created"

Sorry if link wasn't clear:

1. Hold down power button to shut down

2. Boot in verbose mode (hold down ⌘V, press power)

3. Confirmed that boot gets stuck with repeated "too many corpses being created" messages

4. Hold down power button to shut down

5. Boot in recovery mode (About macOS Recovery - Apple Support)

6. [Optional] From Recovery mode, Saved a backup image of Macintosh HD to an external drive using Disk Utility

7. From Recovery mode, using terminal, renamed all folders at the root level of Macintosh HD, except those with data I wanted to preserve, i.e. "Applications" and "Users"

cd /Volumes/Macintosh\ HD

ls -al (to see what's there)

mv System _System

mv Library _Library

...

I didn't bother renaming the files at the root level.

8. From Recovery mode, selected Reinstall macOS and installed on "Macintosh HD"

9. When asked to create a user, ensured that the short name (account name) matched my existing account name so that this user "inherits" the existing files in "Users".

10. Back in business! (I guess I'll go in and delete the old OS folders using terminal).

Booted into disk utility.

Repartitioned the drive to create space for a new bootable partition - I set it at 100gb as I had the space. You only need about 10 I think.

Downloaded OS X from internet (El Capitan I think it was)

Booted from the new partition and set up Mac as new device.

Used Easeus to access data on the inaccessible partition, and saved it to a flash drive. The free version lets you restore 2GB which was enough for me.

Wiped Mac and started again by erasing the inaccessible partition, making it the boot partition and downloading OS X to it.

Booted machine up and set it up as new device.

Restored data from a combination of flash drive and old Time Machine backup.

Ran a full time machine backup!

If you have a full backup, you don’t need to go through all that - erasing the partition and setting it up as new will do the job I believe.

Hope this helps!

You will not know until you try.

Since booting got rather far, I'd say you have a very good chance of recovering your data.

-1- Safe boot may work. power off. hold down option key. power on. wait to see icon.

-2- single user mode may work power off. hold down command + s key. power on. wait to see icon.

Do you have backup? if no, and you need to recover your data. See this link:

backing up from the command line via single user mode.

https://discussions.apple.com/thread/8101803?answerId=32357328022#32357328022

You could buy an external drive. You could install macos on it. You can now look at the internal drive and copy over what you need.

Get a decent external drive. Once you sort this problem out, you should use the drive as a backup drive.

Make sure you get a firewire or usb3 connected external drive. What ever external drive you mac supports.

I'd give OWC a call. 1-815-338-8685.

I recently bought Toshiba 2.5 harddrive & OWC external drive enclosure 0gb Mercury Elite Pro USB 3.0

I previously bought an iteration of FireWire 800 + USB 3, + eSATA

or you could get the save a little money interface:

FireWire 400 + USB 2.0

This web page lists both external harddrive types. You may need to scroll to the right to see both.

http://eshop.macsales.com/shop/firewire/1394/USB/EliteAL/eSATA_FW800_FW400_USB

(2) FireWire 800/400 Ports (Up to 100MB/s / 50MB/s)

(1) USB 3.0 Port (Up to 500MB/s / 60MB/s)

(1) eSATA Port (Up to 300MB/s)

Has a combo firewire 800/400 port. Not sure what this is. Looks like you will need 400 cable.

http://eshop.macsales.com/shop/ministack

R

In the very last Discussion I linked above, there is a reply from Stephan Graf containing a link that describes a procedure that worked for a very narrow set of circumstances.

Here is the Discussion: High Sierra: qmasterd/opendirectoryd: Too many corpses being created

... and here is the link: http://robinmonks.com/2018/01/crashed-too-many-corpses-being-created-how-to-reco ver-high-sierra/

I have no way of duplicating that set of circumstances, and I have no idea whether it will work to resolve your problem, but the procedure appears to be sound and reasonably innocuous. What it lacks is sufficient justification to convince me of its effectiveness. I don't even know if it worked for Stephan Graf. Read it and decide for yourself.

I don't know the cause of that lugubrious message. The only resolution that I know of is to completely erase the drive.

Here are some relevant Discussions:

45min Boot Screen

crashed: too many corpses being created

Too many corpses being created

Update .2Supplement crashing my MacBook & Safe Mode crashing too. Help

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

Without knowing what is wrong it is very unlikely that you can fix it. The very best tool for situations such as this is a wipe and reinstall. You have left yourself in a position with very limited choices.

Good luck

(I don't have any form of backup)

Are you sure? Using Time Machine is as simple as turning it on. Didn't you do that?

Try the following. It may or may not work.

1. Boot macOS Recovery.
2. At the Mac OS Utilities screen, select "Restore From Time Machine Backup" > Continue. A Restore from Time Machine screen will appear. Read it then Continue.
3. When the Select a Restore Source screen appears, select the internal disk. Its default name is "Macintosh HD" but you may have changed it. Continue.
4. The Select a Local Snapshot screen appears next. Restore From > Local Snapshots on Macintosh HD (or whatever you named its startup disk) will appear in the dropdown menu selection.
5. If a Local Snapshot Date & Time list populates, select the most recent one. Continue.
6. A confirmation dialog will appear. Read it then Continue.
7. A Restoring screen will appear next. That operation won't take long.
8. A Success screen will appear next, and the Mac will restart.

I’m having the exact same issue with my MacBook Pro 13” mid 2012 and I’ve also tried all those resets...

I do have a recent backup but it’s on my external drive, if I use it to restore my Mac will it work? I mean I’m afraid it will erase everything on it and still not work.

I had this issue after an automatic update to 10.13.3. Googling "too many corpses being created" gives a few pointers to possible fixes. Here's how I resolved it without wiping the disk or reverting to an old Time Machine backup: Re: Re: High Sierra: qmasterd/opendirectoryd: Too many corpses being created

Thanks for linking these. I ran into what looked to be the same problem & that basic approach worked for me (modified it slightly for convenience, described it @ Re: Re: High Sierra: qmasterd/opendirectoryd: Too many corpses being created)

9. When asked to create a user, ensured that the short name (account name) matched my existing account name so that this user "inherits" the existing files in "Users".

This is problematic. Users are not matched on the character name but a numeric value. The numbers are allocated sequentially when you create a user.

You can make adjustments if needed.

Good point. I don't know if my "new" user created during OS reinstall has the same uid as my old user.

My aim was to ensure that the home directory for the new user would be set to the existing old user home directory. It seems that the home directory for a user will always be /Users/[shortname] (i.e. matched by name) and when the OS X installer goes to create a home directory for the new user, if there's already a directory at /Users/[shortname] this will be reused. Perhaps the uids won't match, but I assume the installer will set ownership so that the new user owns the directory.

Anyway, can't guarantee that this will always work, but it did for me...

YouFoundOscar wrote:

Buying an external disk and transfering data is possible?

I very much doubt it.