Intermittent login issues on macOS 15.1.1

[Stuart_P]

Hi,

We're starting to see a number of cases being raised internally about some of our Macs (all on macOS 15.1.1) having intermittent login issues.  Our devices are bound to AD and our users have been logging on fine for some time but now we're starting to get issues.  Sometimes the logins are fine.  Sometimes they take ~10 mins and sometimes they appear to stall completely (waited over 2.5 hours in testing) even on the same device.  The login screen appears to freeze (the time doesn't change) and you eventually get the spinning beachball.  SSH is still working and you can run a "jamf policy" successfully.  "Screen Sharing" reports that the user who has attempted to log into the device is the active user when you connect.

Can anyone share some tips as to how we would start to investigate this sort of issue let alone resolve it???

Thanks

Stuart

[Stuart_P]

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"Apple haven't supported using the directory utility for binding for years now so we are lucky it works at all."

Have you got an links that confirm this?  If this is genuinely the case then we can create a project to look into different authentication methods.  The fact that it still exists in the OS suggests to me that it is supported.

[Kevm]

Hi here is just one link. At the last macadamias conference there were talks on platform SSO. I am going to see if I can get that working.

https://www.kandji.io/blog/binding-to-active-directory-alternatives#:~:text=Again%2C%20clever%20Appl...

There is a lot more out there about this.

However I found a lot on the macadmins slack channel about our issue on Friday . Seems it may not be an AD only issue.

According to apple 15.4 

• Resolved an intermittent issue where the Login Window failed to accept a correct password

[Kevm]

Sorry that should say Macadmins conference !

[ianatkinson]

Just to chip in on this and say that we're seeing these issues as well. It started just after Christmas after machines went to Sequoia and we thought it was just a Sequoia issue affecting certain models. I think this has gotten mixed up with another issue though (audiomxd process causing 100% CPU usage) and it took us a long while to realise that there were two different things going on.

This seems to have spread for want of a better word and is affecting more and more machines, we keep flattening them but the problem does then come back sometimes. Affects both Intel/ARM, various ages and models, both Sequoia and Sonoma. I think it's some common issue which has been introduced in an update to both OS as others have suggested.

We are AD bound and have no immediate capability to turn that off though are now looking into JAMF Connect. This has been a frustrating and high impact issue for us and as yet I don't really have any answers for the support staff other than 'hopefully they'll fix it in an update' which obviously isn't great :/

Ian

[Kevm]

Hi, I have (So Far) not seen the issue return after Sequoia 15.4. I am going to erase and install all 700 Macs this summer. I have been looking at platform SSO and it will work, but you have to actually log onto each computer for it to work for all users which is a royal PITA. Really hoping apple and Microsoft sort this out. One thing though with this loginwindow issue is the fact this affects local accounts too. If you look on the macadmins slack channel I have seen scattered about people using jams connect getting this too.

[singletary]

It also seems to have been resolved for us after 15.4, but we're doing a check of our Macs today to make sure this is still the case. Our students have all left so we have more time to focus on trying to figure out what's happening.

[Kevm]

I hope that will be the end of it. If it does turn out to be an AD binding thing I will just switch over to PSSO (even if that mens enabling manually on all the Macs once).