Xsan Software Updates on macOS Monterey

12 Apr 2022

I have been seeing some weird behavior with software updates on our macOS Monterey test Xsan.  After running the software update, the Xsan volume does not mount.  Trying to see the volume with xsanctl list results in xsanctl: unable to connect to xsand: No such file or directory.  Having seeing this before I try to bootstrap the xsand launch daemon, which also fails.  The error now is service is disabled.  To resolve this, we can use the older style of launchctl. 

launchctl load -w /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/com.apple.xsan.plist

Launchd plists can contain a <Disabled> key.  The load -w tells launchd to load this plist and make the value of the Disabled key </false>, so it should load on every boot.

I’m curious if anyone else is seeing this odd behavior.  I ran into it on both our MDC and BMDC, but not the test client.