[cfarm-users] cfarm104 maintenance planning

[Zach van Rijn]

On Sat, 2026-04-11 at 14:24 -0500, Zach van Rijn via cfarm-users
wrote:
> On Fri, 2026-04-10 at 12:13 -0500, Zach van Rijn via cfarm-
> users
> wrote:
> > ...
> > 
> > Progress bar is around 90% but has been this way for 30
> > minutes.
> 
> Obviously it's still offline; I will check on it Monday and
> then try to fix it or do a full OS reinstall. In that case, I
> will do my best to retrieve the user data from it before doing
> so.
> 
> Updates were an issue the last time: see my email from
> January.

Current status:

* cfarm104 was in "Recovery Mode Due to Failed Update" when I
arrived Monday morning to inspect the machine

* I powered it down and took it home to investigate

* Booting and waiting an hour resulted in updates "succeeding"

* The machine boots and seems to work mostly as expected

* There's approximately 50GB free on the internal disk now

* The external disk is fine, no issues there

* The script that manages new accounts is erroring on new users,
basically claiming that new usernames don't exist on the machine
even though a home directory is present

* I will install it in the data center again tomorrow (Tuesday)

I suspect macOS is not designed to have as many users as we do.

I will attempt to troubleshoot what's happening with recent
users and what isn't working correctly during the updates,
however until then please note that some new accounts may have
difficulty accessing the secondary storage volume or experience
other strange permissions errors.

A fresh installation may or may not fix the issue; this will
only be done if existing accounts experience major problems.

You can expect the machine to be online within 24 hours or an
email with additional details for why it is not.

After that, please report any problems to me directly.


Zach