MacBook Pro - very long boot time

Question

Sometimes my MacBook Pro with BigSur 11.6 (20G165) takes a very long time to boot.

I did a reinstall of MacOS, and this helped for a while.

Today I cleaned up my disk (from 20Gb free space to ~150Gb), and this helps too.

From my point of view, 20gb free space is enough for booting up my Mac.

Also, I've already enabled boot logs, and there is a photo of latest logs right before boot stucks:

What is the real problem of slow boot? Could this be related with SSD health? (I've checked already - no warnings)

You can also verify in System Preferences/Boot disk if your system volume is selected. — , Sep 30 '21 at 14:29
@JoyJin thank you for advice. Unfortunatelly - fsck_apfs reports that everything seems to be OK — Artur Eshenbrener, Sep 30 '21 at 14:57
@Jean_JD thank you for advice, I have only one system volume, and that volume already checked — Artur Eshenbrener, Sep 30 '21 at 14:57
You can create an Etrechek report and paste the text report on a Pastebin link, then add it to your initial question. — , Sep 30 '21 at 17:32
@ArturEshenbrener Output of diskutil list and diskutil apfs list? Also diskutil verifydisk disk0. — Joy Jin, Oct 03 '21 at 04:30

score 1 · Answer 1 · answered Sep 30 '21 at 16:07

1

I’ve got one hunch. Can you try the following?

Reboot into Recovery mode.
In Terminal, find the name of your normal startup volume (i.e., ls -l /Volumes); it will be "Macintosh HD" unless you’ve renamed it).
cd "YOUR_NORMAL_STARTUP_VOLUME_NAME/System/Library"
mkdir LaunchDaemonsDisabled
mv LaunchDaemons/com.apple.ionodecache.plist LaunchDaemonsDisabled
Reboot your machine and monitor it for any recurrence of the issue.

Please circle back here and let us know if this worked or not. (If it did not, you can restore your system’s previous condition by repeating the above steps, skipping Step 4, and swapping the order of LaunchDaemons and LaunchDaemonsDisabled in Step 5.)

answered Sep 30 '21 at 16:07

pion

4,827

Thank you for your answer. Unfortunatelly, the issue do not reproduces anymore, looks like because of increased disk free space. I will check this out when issue come back – Artur Eshenbrener Sep 30 '21 at 16:58
@pion doesn't safe mode boot essentially stop all launchdaemons? – AVelj Oct 31 '21 at 01:08
2

@AVelj No. Almost all Apple daemons remain active in Safe Boot, as many OS features depend on their availability. There are only a small handful that are disabled, and these are indicated by the presence of the DisabledInSafeBoot boolean property in a daemon's launchd plist file. – pion Oct 31 '21 at 02:26

score 0 · Answer 2 · answered Feb 27 '22 at 19:11

The easy fix is to set up time machine (in case you need to erase install) and do a safe boot and let the backup run till completion. Then perform another normal boot and consider clearing up a little extra space.

Snapshots should clear up in 24 to 48 hours and only one safe boot is typically needed to validate things work with the core OS running.

MacBook Pro - very long boot time

2 Answers2