Resolved iMac G3 Trying to rescue the OSX install through Single User Mode

[philgxxd]

Hi.
Be warned!...I have really no clue what i'm doing and could need some help from you.

Recently my OSX 10.3 install on my iMac G3 HDD stopped working and wouldn't boot anymore to the desktop.
It gets stuck just a little bit before ending the load bar.
I tried to repair permissions hooking it up to another PowerMac machine through Target Disk Mode and even run it through Diskwarrior from my early 2008 MBP4,1 but it all came out fine so maybe nothing corrupted...still i can't reach the desktop.
What i manage to do is booting into Single User Mode and running fsck from there what also shows: Everything ok!

Now i want to install AppleJack so i tried but it won't let me install it while the iMac's HDD is in TDM.
Now while in Single User Mode i managed to mount a USB stick with the AppleJack installer on it and i'm trying to install it from there.

I did this so far:

sbin/fsck -fy

mount -uw /

mkdir /drive2

mount_msdos /dev/disk1s1 /drive2

kextload: /System/Library/Extensions/msdosfs.kext loaded successfully (This is the message it returns.)

sudo installer -verbose -pkg /drive2/AppleJack.mpkg -target /

Carbon Lazy Values Total size: 11057 bytes! (This is the message it returns.)

And that's it. It just "hangs" there and leaves me without a shell(?) to input any commands.

Maybe someone can guide me what i'm doing wrong or maybe try to locate the files i would have to copy manually to the HDD of the iMac.

Thanks!

 

[philgxxd]

Ok, this is the utility i'm talking about...

AppleJack Project Page

applejack.sourceforge.io

It also gives an example of what the installer is doing in form of a script here.
That would come in handy to manually move the necessary files to the HDD but i just don't know enough yet.

 

[philgxxd]

I'm trying to read more into it...
I have the suspicion that the command 'installer' probably is not able to run in Single User mode hence the 'Carbon Lazy Values' message? (I don't know what it means, just wildly speculating, but google searches brought up the term 'lazy' in reference with programming)

So i will try to go down the route of finding a way to execute the mentioned script of the AppleJack installer.

 

[philgxxd]

Don't have time to try anything until this night but as more as i read about it it should be as simple as copying the script to the internal drive, set permissions and restart?

Yes, it should be possible, but it's not really user friendly. You would have
to download the applejack.sh file from the code repository (http://applejack.
cvs.sourceforge.net/viewvc/applejack/applejack/applejack.sh?view=log) and put it on an external drive.

Attach that drive to the Mac on which you want to run Applejack and boot into
single-user mode. You'll then need to mount the internal drive read-write
(it's mounted read-only by default) and mount the external drive (this may
require loading some of the low-level services Applejack normally handles for
you. I haven't tried it, so I don't know which ones).

Finally, you would have to issue the command to copy the applejack.sh file
from the external drive to the internal drive and reboot (back into single-
user mode). You would then use the chmod command to set the exeutable bit on
the applejack.sh file. At that point you'd be able to run Applejack by
invoking applejack.sh directly.

Like I said, possible, but non-trivial.

That quote is from here.

 

[philgxxd]

I tried to copy the applejack.sh to the directory which is mentioned in the example script but when i look at the location under /var/root/Library/Scripts i get a 'doesn't exist' message.
While there is a Script directory present as i can see when i change the directory path when i actually want to enter it it says 'doesn't exit'.

 

[DearthnVader]

Why not just reinstall OS X, should be an option to preserve user data, if that is what you are worried about.

 

[philgxxd]

(Reading Wikipedia)

What is Unix...

I guess I eventually will get there. Just give me a year or two...

@DearthnVader Don't mind. Will ultimatly just reinstall for being too lazy/dumb

 

[philgxxd]

I did manage to install Applejack...and the best...it was able to repair everything and it's booting again!

I'm too tired right now but i will include the solution here for future reference.

 

[philgxxd]

Ok. Turns out the author of AppleJack got this kinda issue addressed in a support ticket already.

What i finally did was to put the iMac again in TDM and booted up my 12" PB (this is a variation from the author's approach. He says to boot from the installation CD/DVD but i hadn't any Tiger CD at hand (only CD-RW on my iMac) and the external Firewire DVD drive didn't want to show up in the boot manager.)

I copied the downloaded AppleJack1.4.3.1.dmg (last version for Jaguar/Panther) to the iMac harddisk through Finder which i had mounted through TDM on the desktop.
I then opened Terminal and followed the instructions from the support ticket post.

hdiutil attach /Volumes/"YOUR_HARD_DRIVE"/AppleJack-1.4.3.1.dmg

(where i put hdiutil attach /Volumes/"Sistema 10.3.9"/AppleJack-1.4.3.1.dmg)

/Volumes/"YOUR_HARD_DRIVE"/usr/sbin/installer -pkg /Volumes/AppleJack-1.4.3/"AppleJack Distribution.mpkg" -target /Volumes/"YOUR_HARD_DRIVE"/

(where i put sudo /Volumes/"Sistema 10.3.9"/usr/sbin/installer -pkg /Volumes/AppleJack-1.4.3/"AppleJack Distribution.mpkg" -target /Volumes/"Sistema 10.3.9"/)

What AppleJack does are 4 things:

• disk repair in single user mode
• permissions repair in single user mode
• cache cleaning in single user mode
• preference file check in single user mode

I did the disk repair and permissions repair on another occasion through disk utilities but that didn't solve the booting issue.
I also ran DiskWarrior on it but that neither solved it.
So i guess it has to do with the last two: cache cleaning and preferences corruption what caused the bad boot behavior.
I think AppleJack is only a frontend for built-in functions/commands of Unix but for me it has proven to be a very convenient easy way to troubleshoot and repair.
It is supposed to support up to OSX 10.9 Mavericks but i think it works best on our old PowerPC machines.