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OSX Woes

  • 14-11-2002 2:16pm
    #1
    Dustaz
    Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 9,046 ✭✭✭


    A mate of mine got a second hand mac with osx installed. He seems to be having some problems starting it up. I have zero osx experience so ill reprint the text he sent me:

    When i start up, i get the message : /etc/master.password: No Such file

    He cant get further than that apparently.

    Anyone with Goatee Mac or Beardy Unix skills wanna help?


Comments

  • #2
    timod
    Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 430 ✭✭timod


    This is kinda wierd, coz that file is only supposed to be read when booting into single user mode.

    So i suspect that the OS install is focked, or the computer is set up to boot into single user mode which I doubt.*

    As it's a second hand machine, I suspect the original owner wiped some of the password files. (but it's pointless to delete master.passwd, as it doesn't contain any passwords anyway)
    Firstly, can he boot into OS9? If the machine has a firewire port, (i.e. newer version of firmware, he should be able to hold down the option key at boot up, and choose a system to boot into. Try that first, and I'd reinstall OSX.

    If reinstallation is not wanted, the second thing i'd do is to try to start up from the OS-X cd. (please say he has one!)
    Press and hold C at boot time.

    This will load the OSX installer. One of the option in the menu bar is to reset the password.

    This *might* create a new master password file. Doubt it though

    If that doesn't work, boot up from the CD again, in the menu bar there should be a option to launch the terminal. Try these commands:

    cd /Volumes/<Diskname>

    echo "root:*:0:0::0:0:System Administrator:/var/root:/bin/tcsh" > master.passwd

    Let us know about any progress!

    Tim



    * Tim's MacOSX hint for the day!!:
    On a side note if any of you guys would prefer to see all the *BSD stuff on bootup by default, su to root on your Mac, and type nvram boot-args="-v". Similarly, -s boots into single user mode. Same as pressing cmd-v and cmd-s. Best not to mess with that command though. Open firmware is not a nice place to be stuck


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