UNIX/Console question

[Glued]

I have firewire and USB enclosures, but they're for ATA/IDE drives. The drive in question is a SATA drive, so right now the enclosures don't do me much good (for trying to access the messed drive). I have a SATA/IDE bridge arriving tomorrow so that will atleast allow me to try to access the drive post-bootup as an external - but the more I think about it the more I think "if that was going to work, wouldn't it have worked when I tried Target Mode?"

[ztirffritz]

What tools do you have at your disposal? Backups? USB or Firewire external drives? Other Macs with Firewire?

Assuming that you can get one of the tools above, you should be able to boot from a clone or another mac in target mode, mount the drive and delete the file. In desperation, sometime desparate measures are required. You could try downloading a linux live CD and booting it. Then it may allow you a more user-friendly method to remove the file than command line.

http://www.ubuntu.com/getubuntu/download

[MacMagus]

> I understand the usage of "rm filename" to delete files and "rm -r directoryname" to delete
> directories. It's gaining the privilege to do so without mounting the drive which sends it in a kernel panic

So that means that you have already attempted to write-mount the drive from Single User Mode?

[Glued]

[quote MacMagus]> I understand the usage of "rm filename" to delete files and "rm -r directoryname" to delete
> directories. It's gaining the privilege to do so without mounting the drive which sends it in a kernel panic

So that means that you have already attempted to write-mount the drive from Single User Mode?
Yes, I have. Mounting the drive causes a kernel panic every single time.

Also, mounting the drive in target mode causes the host computer to experience the same freeze up as when mounting that drive normally (a black rectangle with a grey power icon with "You need to restart your computer" in several languages - in white type).

[Glued]

So am I correct in understanding that the only way to gain administrator access (the ability to delete a file) is to mount the drive?

Also, if someone could answer this question: If the compueter is not using MY login and password from OSX while in console mode, WHERE is it coming up with a login and password since I'm the the only owner and user of the computer?

[MacMagus]

> So am I correct in understanding that the only way to gain administrator access (the ability
> to delete a file) is to mount the drive?

So far as I know, there is no way to delete the file without first mounting the drive with write-access.



> > So that means that you have already attempted to write-mount the drive from Single User Mode?
>
> Yes, I have. Mounting the drive causes a kernel panic every single time.

We're back to the part where your best shot is to find a PC with MacDrive installed... or an Intel Mac that dual-boots and has MacDrive on the Windows partition or a G4 that can boot into OS 9 and mount the drive.


> It's my computer, but if I type my login and password at the prompts it tells me my login
> is incorrect...
...
> If the compueter is not using MY login and password from OSX while in console mode,
> WHERE is it coming up with a login and password

When you're in Single User Mode, you have root access. You shouldn't ordinarily need a password.

I'm not sure what you're doing to make it request a password, but it is presumably asking for your root password.

Even if you have enabled your root account for the GUI in the NetInfoManager, since the NetInfoManager isn't loaded in Single User Mode, I guess it's looking in the default password file. I'm not sure what the password from that file would be... it's probably an empty string... but since you're already root, you should be able to change the password to whatever you want just by mounting your startup drive with write access and using the passwd command.
http://www.hmug.org/man/1/PASSWD.php

I believe that setting the password that way from Single User Mode will not change the root password when not logged into Single User Mode. You could end up with two distinct root passwords. I'm pretty sure that you'd have to start up the NetInfoManager from the command line before changing the root password to change it both for the GUI as well as Single User Mode.

...But you're root when you're in Single User Mode anyway. Which brings me back to this question: What are you doing that it's asking for a password?

[raz]

Scroll back up to fritz's message. Burn a live Ubuntu CD and try booting with it. Their drivers might have better luck mounting the disk. If not, it's likely time to reformat it and restore from backup.

[Glued]

MacMagus - it wasn't asking for a login on it's own. I saw that 'login' was a command and thought that maybe I needed that to be able to delete a file. Sorry for the confusion.