VERY interesting startup problem |
October, 31, 2002 2:04 PM |
xpostfacto283 |
Hi-- I've written a couple of posts about how I get almost all the way through the 10.2 boot process on my 7600 (G3/400), and then the system hangs indefinitely on the blue screen, with the cursor moveable, and nothing else (except eventual display and hard disk sleep). I figured that the next step, if everything worked properly, should be the Setup Assistant (SA). On the web, I found that you can skip the SA by the creating a file that the SA usually creates when it's finished, so that you don't get the SA every time you start up. The procedure is outlined at http://www.macosxhints.com/article.php? story=20020517091437875. So the good news -- IT WORKED!!! Sort of, anyway. I get to a login screen -- but of course, without the SA running, I haven't set up an account, so I don't know how to log in! Any ideas?!?!? --Mike |
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RE: VERY interesting startup problem |
November, 12, 2002 9:57 AM |
xpostfacto283 |
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Sorry it's taken a while for me to get back -- been out of town. To do the following, you'll have to boot into single-user mode -- after using XPF to select your OS X startup volume, hold down command- s while restarting. This will boot up into a text-based mode, and will finally end on a command prompt, at which you can type. After every restart in this manner, you'll have to type two commands: fsck -y (To check the startup volume) mount -uw / (To mount the startup volume, and make it writable, so you can make changes). At this point you are logged in as root. Now, as Avit suggested, you need to start NetInfo from the command line (it isn't started by default in single-user mode). Type: SystemStarter start NetInfo If the package is loaded correctly, you shouldn't get any errors here. Next, create a new account from the command line: Follow the procedure in Tip #9 of "Top Ten Mac OS X Tips for Unix Geeks", at http://www.macdevcenter.com/pub/a/mac/2002/10/22/macforunix.html. -- Replace rothman (at both places -- the beginning and end of that line) with your desired login name (your "short name"). I would suggest NOT using what you want as your final login name -- I found the following process to be a little kludgey, and wanted to create my "final" user from the GUI once I had logged in.) -- I changed the gid number (the "20" in that series of numbers and colons) to 80, per Avit's suggestion. -- Replace Ernest Rothman with the longer form of your name -- Create the password as shown, then create the user directories as shown. Now, you'll have to restart. You should get to the login screen, and there should now be a name to click on, and you can log in. When you get in, go immediately and create a new user via the System Preferences (remember to set admin privelages), and then log out and back in as that user. When you feel comfortable, you can delete your hacked-together user, and you're all set! Hope this works -- let me know if it doesn't, and I'll try to help some more. --Mike |
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RE: VERY interesting startup problem |
November, 07, 2002 1:09 AM |
drpepper968 |
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Having the same problem with 10.1.5 on my g3'd 7600. Am a complete newbie to osx/unix. Any good links can walk a no nothing through the process would be great. I am running out of account names! Thanks, drpepper PS - XPF rocks, saved me $1600 on a new box! |
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RE: VERY interesting startup problem |
November, 05, 2002 10:19 AM |
xpostfacto283 |
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That's pretty much what I did -- niload, then change group membership to 80, and set the password with passwd. The other thing is that you have to create the new user's home directory, by copying (actually, "ditto-ing") the template directory (/System/Library/User Template/English.lproj) to the new user's directory, and changing ownership to the new user. I wasn't sure I had done everything right, so after I was able to log in, I created a new user in the GUI, and subsequently deleted the hacked-together user. This process is outlined in two places: -- O'Reilly MacDevCenter (http://www.macdevcenter.com), in an article entitled "Top Ten Mac OS X Tips for Unix Geeks [Oct 22, 2002] -- The quote is from the O'Reilly book "Mac OS X for Unix Geeks," and it JUST SO HAPPENS that the sample chapter they have online is the one with the relevant information -- worth printing out if you're going to try this! Thanks again for the help. --Mike |
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RE: VERY interesting startup problem |
November, 05, 2002 5:26 AM |
avit |
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Right on, glad to hear it worked! How did you go about adding a user in single-user mode? Is it just a matter of starting netinfo and then loading it up using niutil? |
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RE: VERY interesting startup problem |
November, 04, 2002 5:43 PM |
xpostfacto283 |
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WOO-HOO! With quite a bit of hacking, I finally got everything working! I'd be happy to tell anybody exactly what I did, but I'm not sure anybody out there is having the same problems. Here's the outline, though: -- copied the NetInfo binary from a friend's machine (THANKS for that tip, avit!) For whatever reason, the whole directory /System/Library/PrivateFrameworks/NetInfo.framework was not installed correctly during installation, and I had to reinstall it and recrete the symbolic links that are called during startup -- from the command line in single-user mode, set up an account to enable login (somewhat involved for a rookie like me, but there are good resources on the web -- let me know if you need them) -- Logged in, and created other users from the GUI!!! It sounds straightforward here, but it wasn't -- lots of screwing around in spare time over a couple of weeks. I'll be happy to help others with similar problems. Good luck to all of you, and THANKS to the community and Ryan for helping me with this!!! --Mike |
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RE: VERY interesting startup problem |
November, 01, 2002 8:54 AM |
xpostfacto283 |
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Thanks for the advice. I tried the "SystemStartup start NetInfo" command that you suggested, and I get the following error lines: dyld: nibindd can't open library: /System/Library/PrivateFrameworks/NetInfo.framework/Versions/ A/NetInfo (No such file or directory. errno = 2) /System/Library/StartupItems/NetInfo/NetInfo: line 29: 67 Trace/BPT Trap nibindd Nov 1 06:38:18 SystemStarter: NetInfo (55) did not complete successfully. It appears from this that the problem is the lack of this binary file, as was pointed out above. If it's really just a binary, I should be able to copy it over from an existing OS 10.2 machine, right? Is there a better way to install this file? It just worries me that this didn't get installed correctly, and makes me think that trying to fix this may lead to an endless goose chase where I'm always tracking down missing files... Another thing that would be helpful is if the Setup Assistant creates a log somewhere, so I might know what other things haven't been done in skipping the assistant. I looked through /var/log, and didn't see anything that looked quite right. Anybody know? Thanks!!! |
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RE: VERY interesting startup problem |
October, 31, 2002 8:46 PM |
avit |
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The Framework file that you refer to is not your NetInfo database file, but the NetInfo binary program. It should be there regardless of Setup Assistant. |
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RE: VERY interesting startup problem |
October, 31, 2002 8:42 PM |
avit |
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Since NetInfo isn't running at single user time, try typing: SystemStarter start NetInfo There are some requirements that it needs before it will start ("Portmap", "Network Configuration") and I don't know if SystemStarter will take care of that for you or not. If it doesn't then trace back the startup requirements until NetInfo is running. In theory that should allow you to do what you need, provided that your NI database already exists. If it doesn't then creating it from scratch is over my head... If your niutil and nicl commands work after that (be sure you're using them correctly: don't forget the dot to denote "this domain"), then you should be able to do: passwd root to allow you to log in as root and create your users in the GUI, or niload a passwd formatted file with your admin user into the database. Also, be sure that your username is added to NetInfo's /groups/admin (gid: 80) |
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RE: VERY interesting startup problem |
October, 31, 2002 8:12 PM |
xpostfacto283 |
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As an update-- I did see (after posting) that this workaround was mentioned in the FAQ, but there was no mention of how to work around it. It was suggested that one could try to log in as root (no password), but this didn't work. Basically, I think I need to emulate what the startup script does, using the single-user mode, then log in and set the other prefs using the control panels. Since I haven't used OS X before, I don't know exactly what is set up by the SA, and I can't find a detailed description. I know I need to set up the NetInfo database, which contains the equivalent of UNIX /etc/passwd, but I can't use niutil or nicl to create an entry -- there's a file missing (presumably, that would have been created by SA) in /System/Library/PrivateFrameworks/NetInfo.framework/Versions/A/. On my friend's OS 10.2 machine, this file is called NetInfo*, and is 192k, so it's a pretty big file. Can anybody out there give me a hand with this? Or suggest other things to try to get past the SA hangup?!?!? Thanks! --Mike |
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