Cannot Force Quit iTunes

[jagooch]

Occasionally, perhaps 3-4 times a week, iTunes will freeze up on me. Here is what happens

• I wake up my Macbook Pro
• I check the Dock and see the "dot" underneath the iTunes icon, which means that it is running.
• I click on the Dock icon and nothing happens.
• I right-click and select "show all windows" , no windows are there.
• I click open the force quit window, select iTunes ( not responding ) and click on "Force Quit." Nothing changes.
• I got into Activities and see iTunes Helper and 3 library processes running. I force kill all 3. iTunes still shows are running.
• I try to force quit it again. Nothing happens.

If I reboot my Mac, iTunes will open as expected and works fine.

Perhaps important details -

• My library is on a SMB2 home network share hosted on a Synology NAS.
• I use the Automounter app to keep the share mounted.
• I don't have problems with iTunes until after I let my Macbook Pro sleep / wake up.
• My Macbook Pro is usually plugged into a Thunderbolt Dock that has ethernet but my Wifi is always on as well.

This is pretty annoying as it happens when I list of tasks to knock out on my Macbook Pro, and I have to wait for it reboot and re-open apps before I can get to work.

Any ideas on what the root cause might be? I suspect having my library on a network drive is the probably culprit, but it won't fit on my Macbook SSD.

 

[NoBoMac]

No idea, but seeing something similar with library local. If I do a quit from the dock, takes forever. If I unhide iTunes, exit quickly.

 

[mikzn]

Any ideas on what the root cause might be? I suspect having my library on a network drive is the probably culprit, but it won't fit on my Macbook SSD.

My guess would be it gets hung because of the network connection some how ? You could try Activity Monitor / Network to try and figure it out? Recent hangs? "Open Files and Ports" etc.

Strange that you can't "force quit"

I keep my music library (and media files) on a separate disk too but use a USB connection

 

[jagooch]

I found some threads about Mac -> SMB connectivity problems in the Synology Reddit, and I applied the known good settings someone posted there. It was using SMB2. I switched the server to use SMB3 , then I restarted the network services on the Synology and rebooted my Macbook.

The smbutil command showed the smb settings before and after, and the shares have connected with SMB3 .

1. smbutil statshares -a

It's too early to tell if that fixed anything. So far so good, but I'll give it a week to see if the problem returns.