Automount problems

automount

I have a Yosemite Mac Mini with performance problems. When looking at the disk activity with opensnoop I noticed that automount is performing tons of accesses as follows

  UID    PID COMM          FD PATH
    0   1124 automountd     4 /etc/auto_home
    0   1124 automountd     6 /etc/auto_home
    0  55536 od_user_homes   5 /System/Library/OpenDirectory/request-schema.plist
    0  55536 od_user_homes   7 /usr/libexec
    0  55536 od_user_homes   7 /usr/libexec
    0  55536 od_user_homes   7 /usr/libexec/od_user_homes
    0   1124 automountd     4 /etc/auto_home
    0   1124 automountd     6 /etc/auto_home
    0   1124 automountd     6 /usr/libexec/od_user_homes
  501    464 syncdefaultsd   4 /Users/corti/Library/SyncedPreferences/.dat01d0.559
    0   1124 automountd     6 /usr/libexec/od_user_homes
    0     58 opendirectoryd   9 /var/db/dslocal/nodes//Default/users/corti.plist
    0  55537 od_user_homes   5 /System/Library/OpenDirectory/request-schema.plist
    0  55537 od_user_homes   7 /usr/libexec
    0  55537 od_user_homes   7 /usr/libexec
    0  55537 od_user_homes   7 /usr/libexec/od_user_homes
    0     58 opendirectoryd   9 /var/db/dslocal/nodes//Default/users/corti.plist
    0  55538 od_user_homes   5 /System/Library/OpenDirectory/request-schema.plist
    0  55538 od_user_homes   7 /usr/libexec
    0  55538 od_user_homes   7 /usr/libexec/od_user_homes
    0  55539 od_user_homes   5 /System/Library/OpenDirectory/request-schema.plist
    0  55539 od_user_homes   7 /usr/libexec
    0  55539 od_user_homes   7 /usr/libexec
    0   1124 automountd     4 /etc/auto_home
    0   1124 automountd     6 /etc/auto_home
    0   1124 automountd     6 /usr/libexec/od_user_homes
    0  55540 od_user_homes   5 /System/Library/OpenDirectory/request-schema.plist
    0  55540 od_user_homes   7 /usr/libexec
    0  55540 od_user_homes   7 /usr/libexec
    0   1124 automountd     4 /etc/auto_home
    0   1124 automountd     6 /etc/auto_home
    0   1124 automountd     6 /usr/libexec/od_user_homes
    0  55541 od_user_homes   5 /System/Library/OpenDirectory/request-schema.plist
    0  55541 od_user_homes   7 /usr/libexec
    0  55541 od_user_homes   7 /usr/libexec
    0  55541 od_user_homes   7 /usr/libexec/od_user_homes

Hundreds of access per second. Is this normal? What could be wrong?

Best Answer

It seems that it was a combination of Dropbox and broken symlinks (see opendirectoryd consumes 40% of CPU and opendirectoryd taking up 1/4 of the cpu and driving fans crazy on MacBook Air).

I recently moved some old files from a Linux machine to my Mac Mini with around 10 broken symlinks to /home/.../ (in a Dropbox synchronized directory). Dropbox was causing opendirectoryd to continuously trying to mount /home/.

I removed the broken links and the machine seems now stable.

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