Arne

As of yesterday, the main HD on my MDD G4/dual 1.25/1.5GB RAM/ 2 x 80GB HDs, OSX.4.9 won't start up properly. There's the start up chime, then the gray apple screen for about 2 seconds, then the screen goes black with "localhost:/root#" (no quotation marks) in white in the upper left corner.
What happened?
What commands do I type to continue?

I discovered the list of of over 900 possible commands to enter at this point, but I don't know which one to use to continue the Start-up. I typed "reboot", held down the "Option" key, and started up from the second internal HD (Backed up & cloned every day using SuperDuper (Paid). Thanks MacDoc and others!)

Disk Utility (Repair Permissions & Repair Disk) found nothing. I can access everything on the main HD (files, apps, System Prefs, etc.) after starting up using the 2nd HD.

Any wisdom from the remarkable EhMac community will be greatly appreciated. Thank you.
Arne

madgunde

This thread may help you out. Read the whole thing first before following any of the suggestions though.

I always suggest booting from the install disc and running Disk Utility to repair the disk and disk permissions. If you have a second Mac you can use, put the affected machine in target disk mode (hold T at boot time) and connect it to the other Mac via a FireWire cable. Then try installing the latest Mac OS X combo update to the affected machine, whose hard disk should be available on the spare Mac as an external disk.

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Arne

Thanks for the info Madgunde. Starting up from the install DVD and repairing disk and Permissions did not fix the problem. As for your second suggestion, the affected machine was already running 10.4.9 with the latest update. Too many choices and possibilities, some unclear, in the thread you sent.

I chose to reinstall the OS (Archive & Install) which solved the start up problem, but doesn't explain what caused it in the first place. Thoughts, theories, conjectures welcome.

eMacMan

I would start by replacing the PRAM battery, $10-12 at your Apple dealer. The kernel keeps track of low level settings and can become corrupt when batteries die. As most users do auto updating for time and date, batteries can get really bad before problems are noticed. This is one of the few issues that zapping the PRAM will actually solve an issue. To do that boot holding down the key combination "Command-option-p-r" and make sure you hear the start-up chimes at least 3 times.

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mguertin

It sounds like a file was corrupt or missing, which repairing permissions and repairing disk won't necessarily fix.

Carl

The PRAM battery/kernel answer was priceless.

You should invest in a copy of Diskwarrior. You damaged the directory and were unlucky enough to hit the part that boots the machine. It can happen from a force restart sometimes. One command you can try in single user is fsck -fy
It is a way to run the disk utility from the terminal. Diskwarrior rebuilds a new directory for you instead of fixing it. Archive and Install gives you a new one as well.
The PRAM battery keeps your clock running and remembers stuff like thisIt has nothing to do with the OS

mguertin

I'll also recommend applejack .. it is just scripted stuff that runs from single user mode and can save your butt in times like you just had sometimes. Oh ya, it's free too.

AppleJack Project Page