XPost: comp.sys.mac.apps, comp.sys.mac.system

It's me again. I put the previous Mac in the other room to make room
for the other one my friend had, and I've been working on that.

All the problems below are solved, but I feel like telling you my tale
of woe. Oh, and yes, I do have one question that follows the line of **********

Started up fine at my friend's apartment, but gave one error after
another before completion of startup at my place. Each time I had to
hold down the On button to get it to turn off, and then try again.

Finally it started up and I was able to look at his files and his
email so far, but coudlnt' connect to the net (another story, largely
my mistake). But it was so hard to start, I left it on all night.

The screen stayed at full brightness all night and all day,

And when, or maybe soon after, I started to use it, the mouse stopped
moving (and I didn't know any keyboard commands to use). I tried
another mouse and another, and not only wouldnt' they move the cursor,
their lasers didn't even light up. I also tried all 3 of the USB
ports, but no change.

So I gave up and turned it off.

When I turned it on the next day, it gave

/etc/master.passwd: No such file or directory
-sh-2.05b#

6 times in a row!! Very early in startup.

Restarting a 6th time didn't seem like it would help so I googled the
error message, and a couple hits just said, Take it for repair. A
couple more gave detailed instructions for fixing it. As follows:

1. Start up in single-user mode by pressing and holding Apple S
2. Type: mount -uw /
3. Press Return
3a Type: cd /
Type: ls -la
4. Type: ln -s /private/etc/ etc
5. Press Return
6. [not needed, no complaint about var] Type: mv /var /var.delete
[not needed for etc because there was no etc, not even a bad one]
7. [not needed] Press Return
8. [not needed] Type: ln -s /private/var var
9. [not needed] Press Return
10. [not used. Other instructions gave alternate, 10a]
Type: ls -l | grep ">" note: the character before the grep is a pipe
character ("|"), which is usually located above the Return key.
10a Type ls -la
10b Examine, lines should look like this

lrwxrwxrwx-t 1 root admin (date) etc -> /private/etc
lrwxrwxrwx-t 1 root admin (date) var -> /private/var

And except for missing spaces, they did.

12. Type reboot
13. Press Return
Mostly from http://www.polk-fl.net/staff/technology/itvteachers/documents/troubleshooting/Etc-PrivateMasterPasswd.pdf
Partly from the link below. Above steps are a combination. I actually
used the link below, but they shared most steps including Step 8.

******************
Step 8 sort of amazes me: Type: ln -s /private/var var
Is that all that is needed to recreate a file that was missing, a
"symbolic link, the UNIX equivalent of a Mac alias or Windows short
cut"?????? Seems like it creates the file, but no contents for
it!!!!! If it's a link, what does it link to?

And why did it disappear? Why does this file and var disappear so
commonly that there are several webpages saying how to recreate them?


****
The link below are the instructions I used, but to be easily readable,
they require manual editing of Word characters, usually replacing them
with single quotes. Especially the hyphens are easy to ignore and
without the url above I might have missed them. http://www.it-guy.com/2007/02/etcmasterpasswd-no-such-file-or-directory/

After I did all this, it started right up. I'd fixed my wifi problem
so I was able to get all the email he had gotten since Jan 19th,
nothing very helpful but at least I tried.

I"m waiting for a friend of his to tell me where to send the files.

I also sent away for an adapter for the other Mac's bad monitor, $4,
and it came in 3 days and it fits the computer and clearly will fit
the monitor. I only have so much room on the desk, and I have to take
this Mac away and make room for another monitor. I guess I can just
move the modem and the electric and phone wires, and put it in front
of the other Mac.

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XPost: comp.sys.mac.apps, comp.sys.mac.system

On 2016-04-09, Micky <NONONObobbyburns1111@gmail.com> wrote:

It's me again. I put the previous Mac in the other room to make room
for the other one my friend had, and I've been working on that.

All the problems below are solved, but I feel like telling you my tale
of woe. Oh, and yes, I do have one question that follows the line of **********

Started up fine at my friend's apartment, but gave one error after
another before completion of startup at my place. Each time I had to
hold down the On button to get it to turn off, and then try again.

Finally it started up and I was able to look at his files and his
email so far, but coudlnt' connect to the net (another story, largely
my mistake). But it was so hard to start, I left it on all night.

The screen stayed at full brightness all night and all day,

And when, or maybe soon after, I started to use it, the mouse stopped
moving (and I didn't know any keyboard commands to use). I tried
another mouse and another, and not only wouldnt' they move the cursor,
their lasers didn't even light up. I also tried all 3 of the USB
ports, but no change.

So I gave up and turned it off.

When I turned it on the next day, it gave

/etc/master.passwd: No such file or directory
-sh-2.05b#

If you are seeing command-line message during boot, either you started
up the computer in verbose mode manually by holding down Command-V
during startup, or the system is set to always boot in verbose mode. The
latter is done through a command-line utility called nvram that sets a
special firmware variable named boot-args to -v (for verbose mode).

Enable: sudo nvram boot-args="-v"
Disable: sudo nvram boot-args=

Anyhow, at this point, I would have checked to see if /etc/master.passwd
in fact did not exist.

Several items - including /etc - are soft links to directories in
/private.

6 times in a row!! Very early in startup.

Not a good sign.

Restarting a 6th time didn't seem like it would help so I googled the
error message, and a couple hits just said, Take it for repair. A
couple more gave detailed instructions for fixing it. As follows:

[snip]

Step 8 sort of amazes me: Type: ln -s /private/var var
Is that all that is needed to recreate a file that was missing, a
"symbolic link, the UNIX equivalent of a Mac alias or Windows short cut"?????? Seems like it creates the file, but no contents for
it!!!!! If it's a link, what does it link to?

You can think of links in Unix as roughly equivalent in function to
aliases in Mac OS. It's a file that points to some other file or
directory. If it points to a directory, then in most cases it behaves
like that directory - namely, if you cd into it or use ls to list the
contents, you see the contents of the target directory to which the link points. Note that links are not as robust or flexible as Mac OS aliases in some important ways. Anyhow, the ln command-line tool is what creates a link. Besides the -s switch that tells ln to create a *soft* link rather than
a hard one, the command takes two arguments: the target file/directory
to which you want the link to point, and then the path name of the new
link you want to create.

And why did it disappear?

Your friend somehow deleted it.

Why does this file and var disappear so commonly that there are
several webpages saying how to recreate them?

It's not common at all. My guess is those people deleted them by
accident or out of ignorance. Perhaps they deleted it while viewing
files that are normally invisible in Finder windows. Or perhaps they
deleted it accidentally while typing commands in a terminal window. The command-line in Unix systems can be extremely powerful; one wrong entry
can cause serious data loss. ; )

--
E-mail sent to this address may be devoured by my ravenous SPAM filter.
I often ignore posts from Google. Use a real news client instead.

JR

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XPost: comp.sys.mac.apps, comp.sys.mac.system

In message <kij7gbd3mv140hrta1vb3nhab0soiti054@4ax.com>
Micky <NONONObobbyburns1111@gmail.com> wrote:

******************
Step 8 sort of amazes me: Type: ln -s /private/var var
Is that all that is needed to recreate a file that was missing, a
"symbolic link, the UNIX equivalent of a Mac alias or Windows short cut"?????? Seems like it creates the file, but no contents for
it!!!!! If it's a link, what does it link to?

The standard UNIX directories /etc /tmp and /var are not used in OS X,
instead they are placed in a directory /private and then links to the
"usual" places are created.

$ ls -lsd /etc /var /tmp
8 lrwxr-xr-x@ 1 root wheel 11 Sep 30 2015 /etc -> private/etc
8 lrwxr-xr-x@ 1 root wheel 11 Sep 30 2015 /tmp -> private/tmp
8 lrwxr-xr-x@ 1 root wheel 11 Sep 30 2015 /var -> private/var

If these links do not exist, things break.

--
You have severe reading comprehension problems that I can not be held responsible for.

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