Dec 01, '06 07:30:00AM • Contributed by: mackyle
- The update is installed successfully but requires a restart.
- You restart successfully.
- You log in and the Finder seems to appear, but then you see the STPOD (Spinning Technicolor Pizza Of Death) and it won't go away. You can experience the STPOD in the Finder, Mail, iTunes, or any number of other applications.
/usr/sbin/automount -f -m /Network -nsl -mnt /private/var/automount
You need to kill it, or prevent it from starting, to solve the problem. It's possible that if you wait long enough (say 10-15 minutes), you will get access to your system again.To prevent this problem in the future, you need to edit the file /etc/hostconfig, and change this line...
AUTOMOUNT=-YES-
...to this instead...
AUTOMOUNT=-NO-
As for how to make this change if you're currently stalled, you can:
- Go to a Terminal window, find the automount process and sudo kill it.
- Login remotely via ssh, find the automount process and sudo kill it.
- If you can't use either of the previous solutions, forcibly shutdown the computer, restart in single user mode, and edit the hostconfig file as described above. Then restart and all will be well.
This change has side effects. The process you'll be killing and/or disabling is responsible for populating the Network listing in the Finder. (Finder Go -> Network menu item). You will still be able to connect to servers, you will just have to enter them manually using the Finder Go -> Connect to Server option.
However, once you have made this change and then successfully started up (without experiencing the STPOD), you can most likely re-enable the AUTOMOUNT option in hostconfig (just set it back to -YES-) and restart with no problems -- until you install the next Software Update that requires a restart. Thankfully, this is typically only Security Updates or System Software Updates that ever cause this problem.
I do not yet understand why some machines are almost always affected by this problem after an offending update is installed, while some others are only occasionally affected, and yet other machines never seem to have this problem. However, killing the automount process has always eliminated the stall and the applications that were stalled with the STPOD immediately begin responding again.
[robg adds: I have never experienced this issue on any of my machines, but I have heard about it before. I would recommend following the 'set it back to -YES-' option if you opt to try this fix.]
