Re: How do I run an ??????????????????

AV3 <arvimide@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

David Empson wrote:
AV3 <arvimide@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

In the interest of full disclosure, I am doing this because my hard
disk, which contains three OS's (OSX, Vista, and Ubuntu), displayed
"Invalid node structure" after I tried to repair the disk with Disk
Utility; DiskWarrior also failed to repair it but without a specified
reason. I took the computer to a nearby Apple store and the "genius"
recommended replacing the hard disk as it had already proved
unrepairable by Disk Utility and DiskWarrior. When I took it back backed
up and ready for a week's absence, a second "genius" suggested a clean
install (erasing the entire disk and reinstalling each OS clean), having
noted that there was some indication of a healthy disk without the
non-Apple OS's. He said a preliminary run of "fsck -y" (sic!) might
repair the disk. That done, followed by the above googling and further
file checks, I arrive at this point. Is it possible that the damaged
"node structure" is preventing the various "fsck"'s from running?

Very likely. If the directory is seriously corrupted (which it is, as
implied by the errors from Disk Utility and DiskWarrior), you might not
have access to the /sbin directory at all, or that directory could be
damaged sufficiently to not allow access to fsck.

Try doing the following (in single user mode):

ls -ld /sbin

You should see sbin listed, and it should look something like this:

drwxr-xr-x@ 67 root wheel 2278 16 Nov 19:31 /sbin

All I got was "ls/dir: unknown flag = '-ld'"

Hm. I don't think we're in Kansas any more, Toto.

In another message in this thread, you said:

The precise wording is: " fsck is not recognized as an internal or
external command, operable program, or batch file" and the wording is
the same in all cases, with "fsck" replaced appropriately.

That is the exact wording used by Windows XP cmd.exe when I try to type
fsck (and presumably Vista has the same message). You aren't booted into
Mac OS X at all, certainly not in single user mode. You have booted from
a Windows partition and are in some kind of console/command mode.

To get into Mac OS X single user mode and run the commands we have been
describing, you must do the following.

Boot from your Mac OS X partition, while holding down Command-S.

If you have multiple OSes on your hard drive, use the option key startup
disk selector and select the Mac OS X partition, then hold down
Command-S while you click on the "forward" button.

You should see the grey Apple logo screen with spinning pinwheel. Keep
holding down Command-S until this screen disappears. It will be replaced
by a black screen with white text.

The text fills about half the screen, describing the boot process. It
ends with instructions on how to run fsck and mount the hard drive, and
gives you a command prompt.

You can then proceed to run fsck and everything else we have been
talking about.

I expect there is nothing wrong with your /sbin directory, but fsck
won't get any further than Disk Utility or DiskWarrior because part of
your file system is seriously damaged.

Given the degree of damage, I doubt that you'll get anywhere. The
thought occurs to me that you may be able to run fsck while booted from
the Mac OS X DVD, but doing this for a non-startup volume could be
tricky.

Beyond my capacities.

Mine too. I know how to get into Terminal on a Mac OS X DVD, which would
probably result in the hard drive being mounted, but that isn't the best
point at which to run fsck.

Booting the DVD into single user mode will only give you access to the
DVD. You would have to locate the correct volume on the hard drive,
mount it with the mount command and then run fsck over it.

DiskWarrior's scavenge mode might also achieve something. Hold down the
Option key while selecting the volume to repair, if I remember right.

While I am glad to learn of this previously unknown way to use
DiskWarrior, in the present case it brought about the same result as
before: DiskWarrior started rebuilding directories (Step 5) but was
slowed by malfunctions (eventually 7 different malfunctions noted). The
preview of a repaired disk was prepared but couldn't replace the
previous.

That isn't surprising. If your volume is nearly full or doesn't have a
reasonable amount of contiguous free space then DiskWarrior can't write
the optimized and repaired directory.

My normal solution is to run DiskWarrior from another computer, with the
computer with the damaged hard drive in target mode connected via
Firewire.

Once DiskWarrior has completed its repair you can mount the preview as a
read only volume, and copy everything you want to keep to another hard
drive. Then erase the damaged drive rather than trying to replace the
directory in DiskWarrior (delaying this step until you've had a chance
to test your recovered data is as good as it will get).

--
David Empson
dempson@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
.