Isn't it annoying when a process is thrashing your processor for seemingly no good reason? To see something using up to 15% of your processor might not be that alarming, but if it's a service that isn't really doing anything than just being there, I frankly want my processor back. I have an iMac and I'd rather it wasn't hot for no reason.
So, after spending the last 90 minutes trying to get to the bottom of this issue I thought I would share my findings where it may benefit others and increase the chance of a frustrated Google searcher getting the answer that I was looking for.
If you launch Activity Monitor and see what DirectoryService is up to, generally it isn't doing a great deal. 0.0% is the normal state of affairs. I was getting a fairly consistent 13.6% which didn't drag my system to a halt, but that's almost 20% and dang it, that's mine. I want it back.
So, a bit of research showed lots of examples of repairing permissions, deleting folders and reinstalling Leopard as a new install (not an upgrade). After trying the first two I needed to try something else before I went down the reinstall route. I come from a Windows background and reinstalls still make me nervous.
So, knowing that DirectoryService has something to do with network controlling I started to look at all the network related software installed on my system.
Using Activity Monitor I started to quit a few services directly. This isn't elegant and not encouraged if you're nervous about killing processes virtually blind. My first suspicion was Connect360, the Xbox media sharing app. Quitting that did nothing to DirectoryService. Then I tried Logmein. Quitting this didn't work very well, so I went to the menu icon and set it to quit. Whoa! Instant satisfaction. CPU usage went down to nothing.
But curiously, I've had Logmein disabled for months. I only need it on occasion, so I just left the menu icon where it was, disabled, but ready for action should I need to re-enable it. It turns out that disabling Logmein, but leaving it running makes DirectoryService go nuts. WTF? It's doing nothing, but my system is having to use over 10% of its time dealing with it? This is the sort of behaviour I expected from Windows processes, not my Mac.
Well, all is good now. Just be warned, Logmein likes to be enabled ALL the time. If you don't, the lifespan of your Macbook/iMac/Powerbook/Mac Pro processor won't thank you.
I'm running Leopard OSX 10.5.5, but this was also happening on OSX 10.5.4 and I think 10.5.3 too. At least this isn't Apple's problem to fix.
So, after spending the last 90 minutes trying to get to the bottom of this issue I thought I would share my findings where it may benefit others and increase the chance of a frustrated Google searcher getting the answer that I was looking for.
If you launch Activity Monitor and see what DirectoryService is up to, generally it isn't doing a great deal. 0.0% is the normal state of affairs. I was getting a fairly consistent 13.6% which didn't drag my system to a halt, but that's almost 20% and dang it, that's mine. I want it back.
So, a bit of research showed lots of examples of repairing permissions, deleting folders and reinstalling Leopard as a new install (not an upgrade). After trying the first two I needed to try something else before I went down the reinstall route. I come from a Windows background and reinstalls still make me nervous.
So, knowing that DirectoryService has something to do with network controlling I started to look at all the network related software installed on my system.
Using Activity Monitor I started to quit a few services directly. This isn't elegant and not encouraged if you're nervous about killing processes virtually blind. My first suspicion was Connect360, the Xbox media sharing app. Quitting that did nothing to DirectoryService. Then I tried Logmein. Quitting this didn't work very well, so I went to the menu icon and set it to quit. Whoa! Instant satisfaction. CPU usage went down to nothing.
But curiously, I've had Logmein disabled for months. I only need it on occasion, so I just left the menu icon where it was, disabled, but ready for action should I need to re-enable it. It turns out that disabling Logmein, but leaving it running makes DirectoryService go nuts. WTF? It's doing nothing, but my system is having to use over 10% of its time dealing with it? This is the sort of behaviour I expected from Windows processes, not my Mac.
Well, all is good now. Just be warned, Logmein likes to be enabled ALL the time. If you don't, the lifespan of your Macbook/iMac/Powerbook/Mac Pro processor won't thank you.
I'm running Leopard OSX 10.5.5, but this was also happening on OSX 10.5.4 and I think 10.5.3 too. At least this isn't Apple's problem to fix.