Problems after 10.4.6 Update

[DJO]

Greetings from New Zealand !

Hope lm posting in the right place.

recently went to 10.4.6 using software update. Now seem to be having odd problems.

Various apps wont start-"unexpectedly quit" message , disc images won't mount, l get; "Could not complete last command because of a Mac OS error. Result code = -1" or l get; "The disk image failed to mount, reason: Too many processes"
Things in general are sluggish, like slight delay before menus open. Funny thing is, l l restart, the problems dissapear for a time.

My trusy Mac seems a little sick, l will do a archive-install at some point, but if any of these symptoms sound familiar, l would appreciate any advice, hints or tips.

Kind regards,

David 🙂 🙂

Dual G5

 

[plinden]

By any chance, does Activity Monitor show a lot of processes of one particular type, e.g. smbd? You need to view "All process" not "My processes"

 

[mad jew]

Follow plinden's excellent advice, plus sometimes point release updates can make previously-okay RAM go bad. Do you have any third party RAM? 🙂

 

[DJO]

Hello Plinden!

thank you for your reply. As it happens , Activity Monitor is one of the apps that wont open , giving me the -"unexpectedly quit" message.

Hi also Mad Jew and thank you for your input. No l don't have any 3rd party ram, would zapping the pram help perhaps? (command -option -p-r?)

Cheers,

DJO🙂 🙂

 

[plinden]

Hello Plinden!

thank you for your reply. As it happens , Activity Monitor is one of the apps that wont open , giving me the -"unexpectedly quit" message.

Ok, that's expected if you have too many rogue processes open. I guess you can't open Terminal either?

Anyway, if you shut down all other applications, you should have enough free resources to open Activity Monitor if you do it immediately.

I'm guessing you have Windows Sharing enabled? I'm pretty sure you'll have a couple of hundred smbd processes running.

As for solution ... hmm ... disable Windows sharing? Or you can try to modify "max smbd processes" in /etc/smb.conf to not be 0 (zero means unlimited, I believe). This is discussed here http://discussions.apple.com/message.jspa?messageID=2030537 but apparently doesn't always work.

But if I were you I wouldn't do anything until you can view Activity Monitor to confirm it's smbd that's causing the problem, or do a ps -A in Terminal.

This happened to me when I tried to map my OS X home directory as a network drive in a Windows XP VM in Parallels. I fixed it by killing all the smbd processes and by no longer trying to map my OS X home.

 

[DJO]

Hi again Plinden!

I just ran the 10.4.6 combo updater, which was suggested by somebody else and everything seems to be working again okay.

I can't profess to understand exactly what the problem was, but l am happy with it now.

thankyou for your thoughts, l have kept a note of them in case l get a similar problem again

Cheers,

DJO🙂 🙂