Auto disk mount without user login causing disk mount failure

Mar 28, '05 08:48:00AM

Contributed by: murali1080

I had the OS X disk automount option enabled so that my external FireWire disks were mounted when no user was logged into the GUI. However, it created a problem of somesort in that none of my disk images would mount any more. I had set it by running the following command in the Terminal:

sudo defaults write /Library/Preferences/SystemConfiguration/\
autodiskmount AutomountDisksWithoutUserLogin -bool true
You should be able to prevent automount in the future by just changing true to false at the end of the above command. But you may also want to remove (after verifying its contents) the following file: /Library: Preferences: SystemConfiguration: autodiskmount.plist -- you'll need sudo to do so.

It's probably a problem with some of the recent updates with 10.3.8 or above, because I didn't have the problem before. Perhaps some conflict with SystemUI, or something else. Anyway, here's how to disable it if you're having issues...

[robg adds: We ran a hint on enabling this feature back in 2003; I haven't enabled it myself, so I can't confirm any issues, but this is how you'd disable it...]

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Mac OS X Hints
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