[Kurt Todoroff]

Hello, Dave.

Information 1:

I neglected to add some information, in my original posting. After each time that the scheduled morning restart (or, other manual restart) fails, due to inability to log out (thus, requiring me to perform a hard restart), I open the hard drive. It contains a file that uses the filename TEST.txt. I open the file. It contains the word Test (or, Testing; I don’t remember which one). I close this file, and then, I delete it. I check the hard drive, nearly every day. This file is not present, after I delete it. The next time that this problem occurs, and, the system won’t log out / restart, and, I perform another hard restart, this file appears on the hard drive, again. Delete it. Repeat.



Information 2:

I performed a Verbose Mode boot. Then, I opened Terminal. I typed

sudo dmesg >> ~/Desktop/kernlog.txt

I opened this file. It contained interesting information. However, it exceeds my abilities, and, I am unable to decipher its meaning.



Information 3:

I performed five consecutive Safe Mode reboots, followed by SD! scheduled backups to both a small internal volume, and, to an external encrypted USB hard drive. I have provided the results, below.

Restart 1
Shift key
Safe Mode
SD! Scheduled Backup to a small internal volume, and, to an external encrypted USB hard drive
SD! Automatically Quit

Restart 2
Shift key
Black display with visible arrow, for five minutes.
Typed Username and Password, in the blind.
Pressed Return, in the blind.
Safe Mode
SD! Scheduled Backup to a small internal volume, and, to an external encrypted USB hard drive
SD! Automatically Quit

Restart 3
Shift key
Safe Mode
SD! Scheduled Backup to a small internal volume, and, to an external encrypted USB hard drive
SD! Automatically Quit

Restart 4
Shift key
Safe Mode
SD! Scheduled Backup to a small internal volume, and, to an external encrypted USB hard drive
SD! Automatically Quit

Restart 5
Shift key
Safe Mode
SD! Scheduled Backup to a small internal volume, and, to an external encrypted USB hard drive
SD! Automatically Quit

Restart 6
Normal reboot to the system.



As shown here, I performed five Safe Mode restarts. I performed ten SD! scheduled backups (two per SM restart). The system restarted normally, every time.

I plan to leave the SD! scheduled restarts disabled for one week. Then, if no restart failures occur, I will reenable SD! scheduled restarts, and, I will monitor restart performance.

Here is something else, that I was considering. Let’s suppose that after SD! performs a scheduled backup, at 11:30 PM or 12:45 AM, sometimes OS X Spotlight does its thing on the two backup drives. I don’t remember the time that the daily / weekly / monthly maintenance scripts run. Suppose that OS X attempts to run one or more of these scripts, while Spotlight is doing its thing to the two backup drives. I’ve seen the silliest, seemingly innocent concurrent processes, bring my Quad-Core i7 right to a halt. Suppose that the combination of Spotlight and the maintenance scripts slows the system down so much, that, both processes are still running when the system attempts its 6 AM scheduled restart. What would the system do, when it attempted log out of my account (for a scheduled restart), while the Spotlight and d/w/m maintenance scripts were still running?