[gperks]

Sometimes when I log off, instead of the login window appearing I just get a blank blue screen. I can ssh in, but don't know what to do to fix things other than reboot.

In a similar vein, sometimes I can't fast user switch either - when the mouse is over the menulets in the upper right, it shows a beachball. Nothing is hung in the current user's desktop, they can continue working just fine - all except the menulets including user switching.

Mac mini, 10.3.7 all current patches.

Any ideas? I've turned off all menulets except wireless & the FUS.

[gperks]

My wife just had another, similar occurence. The login screen came up but clicking her name resulted in a beach ball instead of password entry field.

Any ideas on what I could check? I tried disk permissions.

[slugslugslug]

another thread somewhere 'round here said that resetting the PMU, then booting into Open Firmware and resetting the NVRAM (a superset of the PRAM one is often told to zap), work well.

I would elaborate but am about to go to sleep and probably wouldn't make much sense. But poking about these forums ought to explain what the first sentence meant.

Good luck. I'll be trying this myself tomorrow.

[Detrius]

There's a file at /var/log/system.log that keeps track of most everything that is going on in the system. Before attempting to switch users, remotely log in and type the following command:

tail -f /var/log/system.log

This will allow you to watch the changes as they happen (btw, ctrl-c to stop). This should give you more information.

Also, the process that handles the menu stuff in the upper right hand corner is SystemUIServer. You can:

ps -auxww | grep SystemUIServer

to figure out which process it is. You can then kill it from there... or use the following command:

killall -c SystemUIServer

If you are having login window problems, you can kill either the loginwindow process or the WindowServer process. Keep in mind, though, that killing the loginwindow process logs out whatever user is attached to it, and killing the WindowServer logs out all users.


BTW, resetting the PMU/PRAM/NVRAM will not affect this issue.

[slugslugslug]

Originally posted by Detrius:
...

If you are having login window problems, you can kill either the loginwindow process or the WindowServer process. Keep in mind, though, that killing the loginwindow process logs out whatever user is attached to it, and killing the WindowServer logs out all users.


BTW, resetting the PMU/PRAM/NVRAM will not affect this issue.

So if I try to get to the Login pane via FUS and I get the plain blue screen, does this mean I have no choice but to kill loginwindow or WindowServer? That's kinda crappy; hopefully I can figure out why it happens next time it pops up. Couldn't ssh in last night so I rebooted..

As to the PMU/PRAM thing, I'm gonna have to find the thread where someone mentioned that. I knew that people often make that recommendation spuriously, but whoever posted it seemed so sure of themselves, like they'd seen it documented to work for that issue..

I digress. But if anyone hears of any verified causes for the Blue Screen of Emptiness, post 'em here, eh?

[Detrius]

Originally posted by slugslugslug:
...But if anyone hears of any verified causes for the Blue Screen of Emptiness, post 'em here, eh?

corrupt preferences... corrupt OS... other weirdness.

BTW, if there is a loginwindow process owned by root, you won't be logging anyone out by killing that. Check the system.log for errors.

If you can't SSH in, the whole OS probably crashed. I only say 'probably' because you could have other network issues.

[slugslugslug]

Originally posted by Detrius:
corrupt preferences... corrupt OS... other weirdness.

BTW, if there is a loginwindow process owned by root, you won't be logging anyone out by killing that. Check the system.log for errors.

If you can't SSH in, the whole OS probably crashed. I only say 'probably' because you could have other network issues.

Good to know about the loginwindow-owned-by-root thing.

I shoulda been more specific. I couldn't ssh in because the only other computer in the house was in a room where peeps were asleep.

[gperks]

I installed the combo update for 10.3.8 a little while ago, and the problem has not shown up since. So either I corrupted something (quite possible) or 10.3.7 had an issue.

Fixed for me.

[Detrius]

Originally posted by slugslugslug:
...I couldn't ssh in because the only other computer in the house was in a room where peeps were asleep.

That counts as a network issue to me.