achinoam01: 10.7: Fix issues with startup items accessing encrypted disks

Friday, August 19, 2011

10.7: Fix issues with startup items accessing encrypted disks

When logging in to an account on Lion the login items as well as any applications being resumed get launched right away; in my case, this happens before the system has had a chance to unlock the external encrypted disk that some of these programs need access to, resulting in various issues from unwanted dialog boxes to enter my passphrase to unlock the disk to the programs terminating. For the apps that are launched as a startup item at least there is a work around.

I'm running Lion on a machine with a small internal SSD drive for the OS and applications and a large external drive that holds data such as the iPhoto and iTunes libraries as well as my Dropbox folder. I chose to encrypt the external drive and have my keychain remember the password so that it is always available to me, however I've run into a real annoyance: When I first log in Dropbox is launched (it is a startup item) before the system has had a chance to unlock the external disk housing the dropbox ...