Mac

Roxio Toast Titanium on Mac OS X opening / running very slow – hello DTrace!

/ Christopher Paquin / Leave a comment

ToastIf you find Toast is running very slow on your Mac and you've tried all the other fixes, check to make sure you don't have any mounts defined on your Mac as Toast will continue to try and mount them ad nauseum – thereby causing the slowness.  You can check Directory Utility to see if there are mounts you forgot about.

If that's not it, it is time to embrace the built-in DTrace tools Mac has for your computing pleasure.  This can help you track the calls Roxio makes when it's appears to be running dog slow.

Dtruss is very much like truss or strace – it will show you system calls made by whatever you are dtrussing.  If what you are trying to figure out is shortlived, execsnoop is also your friend as it will show you system calls for any new processes as they are spawned.

Dtruss and execsnoop show when Toast starts up that automountd is always called, thus stale NFS mounts could be causing you headaches.

Finding / Eliminating rogue NFS mounts in Mac OS X

/ Christopher Paquin / Leave a comment

LionThere is a handy utility called Directory Utility which allows you to configure connections to directory servers.  It also contains information for persistent NFS mounts across reboots.  If you ever wondered where these phantom mounts came from or you are trying to eliminate a mount that no longer exists go to /System/Library/CoreServices/Directory Utility.

From within Directory utility, click on Directory Editor and then select Mounts from the Viewing categories.  There you will find all mounts and add/remove as required.