Symptom
Mac OS X startup stalls at the message "Waiting for Network Information Service", or Login Window will not accept any local or network user name and password combinations.
Solution
This occurs because incomplete information remains in the NIS pane of the Directory Access application. When deleting information from this pane, be sure to delete it all. Note that adding an NIS server entry in Directory Access may insert one or more blank lines after the NIS server address. Note the position of the cursor in Figure 1.
Figure 1 NIS pane of Directory Services
If you remove the server address without removing the blank line(s), then Login Window will be unable to authenticate local or network accounts. If you remove the server address without removing the domain name, the startup process will stop responding at the "Waiting for Network Information Service" message.
To avoid this problem, be sure to select and delete all blank line(s) in the field in addition to the NIS server IP address and domain name.
After encountering this problem, you may resolve it by logging in as root at the client computer and removing any blank lines from the NIS configuration in the Directory Access application. This solution will only work if the root account is currently enabled on the client. For more information, including how to log in as root, see technical document 106290, "Mac OS X: About the root User and How to Enable It".
If the root account is not enabled, or you cannot reach the login window, you may use the following steps to recover. In these steps, you will type a series of text commands. Each command below is preceded by the pound sign (#). After each command, press the Return key to execute it.
Warning: Misuse of the "rm" command may result in severe data loss. If you are not comfortable performing these steps, seek assistance before continuing. Even if you cannot log in to the computer, you may wish to back up data before continuing (by using Target Disk Mode, for example, or other methods).
Steps to recover:
The computer will restart normally, and you can log in using a local account.
Mac OS X startup stalls at the message "Waiting for Network Information Service", or Login Window will not accept any local or network user name and password combinations.
Solution
This occurs because incomplete information remains in the NIS pane of the Directory Access application. When deleting information from this pane, be sure to delete it all. Note that adding an NIS server entry in Directory Access may insert one or more blank lines after the NIS server address. Note the position of the cursor in Figure 1.
Figure 1 NIS pane of Directory Services
If you remove the server address without removing the blank line(s), then Login Window will be unable to authenticate local or network accounts. If you remove the server address without removing the domain name, the startup process will stop responding at the "Waiting for Network Information Service" message.
To avoid this problem, be sure to select and delete all blank line(s) in the field in addition to the NIS server IP address and domain name.
After encountering this problem, you may resolve it by logging in as root at the client computer and removing any blank lines from the NIS configuration in the Directory Access application. This solution will only work if the root account is currently enabled on the client. For more information, including how to log in as root, see technical document 106290, "Mac OS X: About the root User and How to Enable It".
If the root account is not enabled, or you cannot reach the login window, you may use the following steps to recover. In these steps, you will type a series of text commands. Each command below is preceded by the pound sign (#). After each command, press the Return key to execute it.
Warning: Misuse of the "rm" command may result in severe data loss. If you are not comfortable performing these steps, seek assistance before continuing. Even if you cannot log in to the computer, you may wish to back up data before continuing (by using Target Disk Mode, for example, or other methods).
Steps to recover:
- 1. Start up into single-user mode. For help with this step, see technical document 106388, "Mac OS X: How to Start up in Single-User or Verbose Mode".
2. Check the volume with fsck. For instructions, see technical document 106214.
3. Execute this series of commands at the text prompt:
# mount -uw /
# cd /var/yp/binding
# ls
Note: This will list the contents of the binding directory, including a file whose name is in the format:
<domain>.ypservers
In this example, "<domain>" represents the actual name of the NIS domain that was configured in Directory Access.
4. Execute this command:
# rm <domain>.ypservers
Note: You must replace "<domain>" with the name of the domain listed at the end of Step 2.
5. Enter the following command:
# more /etc/hostconfig | grep NIS
Note: The "|" character above is the "pipe," located above or below the Return key on most keyboards. This command will generate text output. If the output from is "NISDOMAIN=-NO-", then skip to Step 6.
6. Execute the following commands:
# mv /etc/hostconfig /etc/hostconfig.nis.old
# sed 's/NISDOMAIN=.*/NISDOMAIN=-NO-/g' /etc/hostconfig.nis.old > /etc/hostconfig
Note: These commands will change your hostconfig file to remove a reference to the NIS server, while also creating a backup copy of the original file. You can also use a command-line text editor such as pico to manually change the NISDOMAIN line in the hostconfig file to:
NISDOMAIN=-NO-
7. Execute this command:
# exit
The computer will restart normally, and you can log in using a local account.