Filed under: Analysis / Opinion, OS, How-tos, Bugs/Recalls
How To: Freeze Finder
Want to lock up OS X? Of course you do! When friends with Windows complain that Macs don't have all the features of PC's, you can whip out this little trick to show then that, yes, OS X can lock up just as tight as Windoze. How? You'll need two Macs: one can be any kind of Mac, the other has to be a laptop (also a Mac). First, mount a network volume onto the laptop any way you like. I have a Mac mini in the den we use as a file server (amongst other things). I mount one big honkin' USB drive on all our laptops (three iBooks, a Macbook Pro, and a Macbook) and use it as our Backup.app drive. Next, close the laptop. This puts it to sleep, and "freezes" the state of the machine. Step three involves driving/biking/running as far away from your home network as possible. For this to really work, you'll want to get near another WiFi network. Now here's the tricky part. Upon opening the laptop, quickly navigate to the Finder and open a new window. Anything to access the Finder, essentially, and prompt it to start looking for that (now missing) network volume. During this, the Mac will be scouring the airwaves for a new signal. Upon finding one, it'll ask to join. Say yes, and if you've got your Airport strength in your menu bar, you'll see the name of the network start to scroll across. For me, that's where the party ends.
I've tried this on all flavors of Tiger, on a G3, G4, and Intel-based laptop, and it all does the same thing: rainbow wheel and lock up. Once I left my G4 iBook on for 4 hours, and Finder never recovered. No key combos will return sanity, just a floating wheel, with no other response from the OS. Not even CPU gauges update! The only solution is to hold down the power key and reboot. Who says PC users get all the fun? You'd think with UNIX being built for networking...
![TUAW [Cafepress]](http://www.blogsmithmedia.com/www.tuaw.com/media/tuaw-cafepress-promo.png)
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 4)
Adrian said 9:13AM on 8-02-2006
Handling of network volumes isn't well implemented in OSX. It got a bit better in Tiger but it's still far from being as intuitive as you would expect it from OSX.
Best would propably be to disconnect all network volumes when the mac goes to sleep. Usually, the host will terminate the connection anyway if your mac is asleep for a couple of minutes. Keeping them mounted doesn't really make any sense and only lock up the finder. I had to reastart my PowerBook regularily because of lost network volumes.
Reply
Kevin said 9:13AM on 8-02-2006
Maybe it's just me, but it sounds like you tried REALLY hard to crash finder... it's almost like it was saying to you: "Ok, fine, I'll do it this once for you."
Reply
David said 9:15AM on 8-02-2006
This happened to me once too, it's really annoying.
Actually this has also happened in FrontRow, while looking for "Shared ...", while not having any other mac on the network. Just locked the machine up totally.
Reply
Rich said 9:16AM on 8-02-2006
Thats a pretty obscure bug. Have you raised it with Apple?
Reply
Paul said 9:23AM on 8-02-2006
I've seen this sort of behaviour as well, not usually as drastic but still rather more frequently than I would like as our IT department decided to make each wireless segment in our building a different ip network... makes wireless roaming and maintaining a connection impossible.
What I am trying to find is a way to AppleScript Finder to disconnect all network volumes (SMB and AFP), which I can then link to a Quicksilver "hotkey" combo... That would be a neat trick. So far however I con't see a way to do this.
Reply
Steve Troughton-Smith said 9:23AM on 8-02-2006
That's been a bug for a long time with Appletalk. Try samba sharing and tell me if it's as bad - in my experience it waits a minute then says server has been lost, would you like to disconnect.
Reply
HS said 9:24AM on 8-02-2006
Another way, I do this all the time;
I have a PBG4 on AirPort and a G5, mount the PB on the G5, then forget it was mounted and put the powerbook to sleep and then turn it off without re-entering the AirPort network.
Now you get a party on your G5 as it will get the spinning beachball until it can relocate the PowerBook.
Incredibly annoying, I've lost count over how many times I've had to restart my PowerBook just to get the G5 back to life.
Is this just my machines bugging or is Finder that stupid?
Reply
Moses said 9:28AM on 8-02-2006
I don't think this happens if you mount an SMB share. I frequently have SMB network shares mounted on the Windows network at my office, close my Macbook and go home. When I open it at home, it simply gives me a polite message that such and such a share is no longer available with a very helpfu "disconnect" button. No fuss, no muss.
I haven't tried this with FTP mounted shares on the public Internet or anything, but I think your bug is only reproducable under very prescribed conditions.
Reply
Brutal said 9:29AM on 8-02-2006
When I connect my k800i to my Mac, 2 drives pop up on my desktop. One is the phone itself, and the other one is the 512mb memorystick.
Now, if I accidentally eject the Phone-drive before the Memorystick-drive, my Mac freezes up. Nothing works - not even the mousepointer.
Only solution is a hard reset. VERY annoying.
Reply
icerabbit said 9:33AM on 8-02-2006
I'll second HS that you don't need to go through those lengths to make your Mac unusable.
This is one of things that really infuriates me as it has plagued OS X since it first came out, and Apple simply has not fixed it yet. Connect to another system's hard drive and have that system go to sleep or shut down ... and you're stuck.
Doesn't matter what flavor of OSX. Two Tiger machines will do it in no time flat.
Reply
Justini said 9:34AM on 8-02-2006
That's not an obscure bug at all! Using an external drive in one location, then taking the laptop somewhere without unmounting the external drive? That's how people USE their laptops everyday! It's a terrible bug, and probably my main pet peeve with OSX
Reply
David Cohen said 9:38AM on 8-02-2006
If you really want props for crashing OS X, you have to generate a Kernel Panic! Spinning beachball for hours doesn't really count, because you never know if you leave it just a little bit longer..
Kernel panic - when you have to be sure you crashed it.
Reply
ZipperSeven said 9:50AM on 8-02-2006
I've kernel panic'd my laptop by closing the lid before the shutdown was finished. Basically it went to sleep while shutting down. Upon opening it back up, it tried to wake up before I had a chance to hit the power button, and barely noticed the panic screen (the backlight didnt come back on.) I had to pull the battery to restart.
Reply
Damien said 9:54AM on 8-02-2006
Number 6 said, "that's been a bug for a long time with Appletalk."
I think you probably meant to say Apple Filing Protocol (AFP), not AppleTalk. I doubt that Victor is mounting his volumes via AppleTalk, which is barely supported in Mac OS X anymore. It's almost certainly AFP over TCP/IP, not AppleTalk.
But yes, the Finder sucks at handling connecting and disconnecting of mounted AFP network volumes. Failing to unmount a network volume should not, under any circumstances, cause the machine to lock up.
Reply
Chris said 9:56AM on 8-02-2006
AMEN!
Nearly identical situation happens to me whenever I connect my Powerbook over wireless to my G4 to backup data and the G4 falls asleep. It probably happens 2x a month. Highly annoying.
Reply
Aaron Adams said 10:00AM on 8-02-2006
I have a simpler version of this Finder crash:
1. Connect to a network
2. Mount a network share
3. Disconnect / turn off the network.
Bingo, the Finder is now completely locked up and the only way to recover, as in the article, is with a hard restart.
I refuse to believe nobody at Apple is aware of this problem, and it aggravates me that it isn't fixed after all this time. It's completely unacceptable that any single application can hang and make the entire machine useless.
Reply
Carl Trimble said 10:00AM on 8-02-2006
I have this same issue and it pisses me off so badly since I never shut my machine down. I always have a couple of projects going in photoshop or dreamweaver and BOOM its gone or at least some of my work is lost.
Reply
michel said 10:07AM on 8-02-2006
you can use ssh from a second computer to log on the mac and KILL finder
ssh login@my-macintosh-IP
killall Finder
and you regain a working Finder.
and yeah, management of AFP volume really sucks. of course os X is not "freezed" but the main software is freezing : the Finder
worst! when afp volume is not available, in fact it's ALL software using disks which will freeze
waiting for years for the missing volumes
all the os is perfectly working, just it puts in wait all software accessing Volumes, all volumes, waiting the missing afp volumes. technically it's not an error of programmation, it's the way os X is working and apple should REALLY change that ! (soft mount, dishes afp or whatever, I don't care)
so sad.
Reply
Tournesol said 10:12AM on 8-02-2006
This is not a crash. I have it a lot of time. All you have to do is to wait... Sometimes it takes up to 3 minutes with the rainbow wheel and no app responding but the Finder ALWAYS responds back at a time. When the Fnder is back it displays a "Disonnect form network" window. If you do click on "disconnect" all works right otherwise, let's take a second "three minutes time trip"...
;))
Reply
drivebybiped said 10:18AM on 8-02-2006
In general I've noticed that Macs have severe issues with using any sort of attached storage device. Troubles reading them, constant crashing, its so annoying.
Reply