The Challenge
How to give Drobo time to mount before processes that need access to it begin and hence block it’s mounting by having the mount point in use.
Solution
AppleScript
Why was this an issue for me. Well I have a Drobo drive which is over 75% full. As a result it can take a while to mount and be detected by my old Mac Mini. This would mean that processes that use files from the Drobo would start before it was mounted. And a mount point is use can not be mounted.
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| set diskIsMounted to false | |
| repeat until diskIsMounted is true | |
| delay 30 | |
| tell application "Finder" | |
| if (disk "Drobo" exists) then | |
| set diskIsMounted to true | |
| end if | |
| end tell | |
| end repeat | |
| #Launch applications since Drobo is mounted | |
| tell application "Resilio Sync" to activate | |
| tell application "Dropbox" to activate | |
| tell application "Plex Media Server" to activate |
So let’s break this down a little.
- line 1 sets a boolean that is false until “Finder” indicates that “Drobo” is seen. Drobo is the name that I have given to my Drobo drive, yes not very original.
- Lines 2 through to 9 wait for the Drobo to be mounted. Checking every 30 seconds. Once it’s been found. The loop condition ends.
- Lines 12 to 14 then tell each application in turn to launch.
Installation
- Open Apple’s Script Editor and export as an Application.
- Open your “Users and Groups” manager.
- Select your user account and add the application to your “Login Items”.
- Remove any applications that you have added to the script from the “Login Items” if they are already present. You should be ok to go next time you reboot your machine.