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Monday, January 20, 2003

Gasp.

Well, I've just had my first really terrifying OS X problem since I've settled down into a Jaguar groove.

Earlier this afternoon, I plugged my iPod in as I do almost every day, but it didn't mount this time.

I tried it a couple of different ways (iTunes running, iTunes not running, iPod off, iPod on, etc) but nothing seemed to work. The iPod did go into "DO NOT DISCONNECT" mode, but my Mac wasn't responding at all.

I thought maybe a quick logout and login would maybe clean up something behind the scenes, so I gave that a go.

Except I couldn't log back in. I just got a plain blue screen. No login pane at all.

I blinked a few times, which is my standard response to things like this. But, alas, this is not I Dream of Jeannie, so nothing happened.

Reboot. Let fsck run in the background. Nada. Fsckity fsck.

Log on to #macintosh on IRC. They recommended something called "single user mode" which looked more like "terrifying command line stylee" to me. But I gave it a go anyway, with a little help from the ever-handy Dive Into Mark, who had a nice troubleshooting entry which I googled up on my other computer at work.

Unfortunately, Mark's hints don't seem to be working for me. I can't move the local.nidb because the filesystem is read-only in Single User Mode. So now I'm fux0red, sitting here with a PowerBook that won't let me use it.

Waaah.

Posted at 04:43 PM

Comments

001. Dan

so no extended Apple Care plan? I call apple at the drop of a hat.

Posted at 10:06PM on Monday, January 20, 2003

002. Mike Benedetto

The most useful thing you can do in cases like this is usually to reboot off of the OS 9.1 or 9.2 CD and see if you can mount the hard drive. If you can, it will more often than not come to its senses and let you log in again (or at least let you back up your files).

If you can't...well, this part is usually where I start crying.

Posted at 12:40AM on Tuesday, January 21, 2003

003. caitlin

To get the filesystem into read-write mode, look into the 'mount' command. 'mount -o rw,remount /' is what I'd suggest for a Linux system; but read the documentation first.

I talked to The Boss about the 'overlapping extent allocation' error. It is what he had on his 10.1 system, and he never managed to fix it; the next time he did a big system upgrade he backed up his data and reformatted. However, none of his corrupted files were vital ones like local.nidb, so he was able to live with the corruption for a while. You might be looking at having to do a Big Reinstall here.

Posted at 06:28AM on Tuesday, January 21, 2003

004. brian w

I don't have AppleCare, Dan, since the best help they seem to offer OS X users is "try reinstalling everything" anyway. And Mike, the drive wouldn't mount in 9 either... until I remembered the 9.1 disk I made once with DiskWarrior on it. It took all night (literally, about 7 hours) to rebuild the directory with DW but now the drive will mount and I can boot into 9. I'm in the process of burning my User folder off to several CDs, then it looks like it's time for a fresh reformat and the Big Reinstall. Wah. I appreciate your words of advice folks!

Posted at 10:48AM on Tuesday, January 21, 2003

005. brian w

Oh yeesh, I guess I still have to fix my comments template, don't I. Double wah.

Posted at 10:48AM on Tuesday, January 21, 2003

006. Tim

Yikes, that's pretty darn scary. I'd be lost in a situation like this.

Posted at 07:28PM on Monday, January 27, 2003

007. Francois

Hello,
My internal G3 internal disk is no more bootable
(crash) but is readable.
Does anyone know if I could boot on the 9.2 install CD and mount an iPod (in order to save
what I can from my almost dead internal drive) ?

Posted at 10:13AM on Monday, January 12, 2004

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