On 24 May 2008, at 06:25, Eric F Crist wrote: > On May 23, 2008, at 2:49 PM, Stroller wrote: >> ... >> Last night I was converting a bunch of video files in Quicktime >> and copying them to a samba server on the LAN (so I could play >> them on my Linux-based media machine) when the Finder stopped >> responding and I got the spinning beachball of death. >> >> The beachball appeared when I clicked on one of the files in >> Finder and it tried to generate a preview in column-view. The >> media files were fairly big ones (1 gig) and .mkv format (which >> seem particularly processor-intensive to decode) and I'm pretty >> sure the file in question was on the Samba server. >> >> So ... I figured ... I'd just force-relaunch the Finder and go >> back and open the folder in a different view in order to copy it >> wherever it needed to be. >> >> After doing so, though, Finder fails to restart - I've got no >> icons on my desktop and I can't navigate to a folder of files to >> click on the one I want to view. > > I tried to post a reply earlier, but it was reject due to being >5K. If you have a copy in sent items then perhaps you could resend a copy direct to me, so I can enjoy your 5K of wisdom. > First, I would try to kill the process that's involved with > transferring or otherwise reading the file over the network. Hmmmn, I thought that WAS Finder that did this. > Second, if that fails, I'd try killing the process that's involved > with QuickLook. I don't think this is internal to Finder itself, > so there should be a separate process. Ah! No, I'm using 10.4 - the preview that it was generating was this kind: http://www.bioneural.net/wp-content/uploads/iblog/d70rawtiger.jpg (except of a movie, obviously) > reading through all of the output for your user with ps should at > least give you some clues as to what you can try to kill along the > way. Unfortunately, the only thing you can do is experiment. The > disturbing thing is that a kill -9 on Finder isn't working. > Hope this helps. Try posting a copy of a ps auxwwwww here, or at > least directly to me. Attached. Had to zip it because it was 8k alone. The most interesting process is "/sbin/umount -f /Volumes/4GIG CF" - this refers to a CFcard that was plugged into my Mac through an adaptor dongle. Maybe my memory is mistaken as to what I was doing when Finder died, because copying to this CFcard stalled at c 20% and I got a complaint about removal when I pulled it. Perhaps its this unmount process that's holding the Finder up, but that doesn't respond to `sudo kill -9 6180`either. Is there any way to force restart the disk automounting daemon? > You could try nice(ing) the processes you're interested in save to > get them the proc time so you can save your work, but I'm afraid > you may be stuck rebooting the system if all this fails. That's not the problem at all - everything else on my system is running fine. There's no problem with stuff hogging the CPU - other applications respond quickly and I can save from them. It's just that I don't want to close this particular program if I can help it, because one *can't* save its state. It's actually not that important and I guess I could reboot if I had to, but this is annoying me, now, and I'd just like to get to the bottom of the problem. Stroller.