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macbook pro problem

Seaborn111Seaborn111 Registered User regular
edited January 2008 in Help / Advice Forum
I have a 15" macbook pro that when booting just goes through the normal process up to actually loading OSX login, then goes blackscreen DOS style and says

"Darwin/BSD (username.local) (console)
login:"

WTF?

</bush>
It's impossible for us to without a doubt prove the non-existence of God. We just have to take it on faith that he's imaginary..
Seaborn111 on

Posts

  • vonPoonBurGervonPoonBurGer Registered User regular
    edited January 2008
    Has it always done this, or did it just start doing it all of a sudden? If it's always been like this, I'd say it's been modified to boot to the console. Can you login as root at the console? If not, reboot and hold down command-s while booting; that should take you to the console and log you in with root privileges automatically. From there, you want to look at /etc/ttys:
    cat /etc/ttys
    You should see two lines near the top that look like this:
    console "/usr/libexec/getty std.9600" vt100 on secure
# console "/System/Library/CoreServices/loginwindow.app/loginwindow" vt100 on secure window=/System/Library/CoreServices/WindowServer onoption="/usr/libexec/getty std.9600"
    The first one is console boot, the second one is GUI boot. I'm guessing that the GUI boot option is commented out, and the console boot option is the active one. If that's the case, edit /etc/ttys, put a # character in front of the console boot line, and remove the # from the GUI boot line. You'll need to use vi or some other command line text editor to do that.

    vonPoonBurGer on
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  • Seaborn111Seaborn111 Registered User regular
    edited January 2008
    this is a new development...

    it froze up two nights ago, i reset it and now this is how it boots
    i'll try what you've said

    Seaborn111 on
    </bush>
    It's impossible for us to without a doubt prove the non-existence of God. We just have to take it on faith that he's imaginary..
  • LewishamLewisham Registered User regular
    edited January 2008
    http://www.westwind.com/reference/OS-X/commandline/single-user.html

    Sounds like it's set itself to single user mode. Yes? No?

    Lewisham on
  • Seaborn111Seaborn111 Registered User regular
    edited January 2008
    ok so, the primary delimma is that when i reach this "login:" followed by password thing, no combo of known usernames or passwords will get me into this damn thing, and when a wrong one is entered it goes through the startup loop again...wtf.

    Seaborn111 on
    </bush>
    It's impossible for us to without a doubt prove the non-existence of God. We just have to take it on faith that he's imaginary..
  • LewishamLewisham Registered User regular
    edited January 2008
    Reinstall Mac OS X.

    Lewisham on
  • Seaborn111Seaborn111 Registered User regular
    edited January 2008
    erm, will that result in losing my data? shite.

    Seaborn111 on
    </bush>
    It's impossible for us to without a doubt prove the non-existence of God. We just have to take it on faith that he's imaginary..
  • Seaborn111Seaborn111 Registered User regular
    edited January 2008
    also, i've got it in single user mode now fiddling around, and when i do a disk check it spits:

    "checking catalog file.
    disk0s2: 0xe0030005 (UNDEFINED).
    invalid node structure
    (4, 7244)
    **volume check failed"


    wtf...

    Seaborn111 on
    </bush>
    It's impossible for us to without a doubt prove the non-existence of God. We just have to take it on faith that he's imaginary..
  • EggyToastEggyToast Jersey CityRegistered User regular
    edited January 2008
    do you still have applecare? If so, call apple. Single user mode lets you edit the very guts of your OS so it can be a bit scary to just start messing about w/o some guidance.

    EggyToast on
    || Flickr — || PSN: EggyToast
  • Seaborn111Seaborn111 Registered User regular
    edited January 2008
    applecare ended six or so months ago. i'm purposefully not messing around too much under the hood, as well. just doing the diagnostics.

    Seaborn111 on
    </bush>
    It's impossible for us to without a doubt prove the non-existence of God. We just have to take it on faith that he's imaginary..
  • LewishamLewisham Registered User regular
    edited January 2008
    No, reinstalling Mac OS X won't make you lose your home folder, unless you purposefully erase your disk when you do the resintall process. However, it sounds like your drive is fucked, so I highly suggest you boot it into Target Disk Mode (Google the ky combination, I forget), get everything off it, then reformat and reinstall.

    Lewisham on
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