From lloyd at smithrep.com Tue Feb 5 06:15:40 2008 From: lloyd at smithrep.com (Lloyd Smith) Date: Tue Feb 5 06:15:37 2008 Subject: [Ti] TiBook Will Not Boot Unless Reset Message-ID: TiBook, 400 MHz, 10.4.10, 640 MB SDRAM One morning, I pressed the power button, clicked on FireFox to open, then I moused over to the icon of one of the partitions of the internal hard drive. (I use an external Kensington optical wired mouse and the book is seldom run on battery or moved from stand in past year.) As the cursor was moving across the screen, it froze. And it will not boot full using either external FireWire drive or internal drive. Tried the emergency restart procedure. It makes the usual start-up sound, lights flicker... then nothing happens. Unless I depress the reset button, then it will boot all the way. Unless I depress the reset button, I can do / observe the following: I can restart from an external FW drive, but cannot boot from a shutdown. For boot partitions, I use one on the Ti book, two on the Newer and two on the LaCie (one each external drive is the most recent backup, rotated one week at a time.) Restart, fine. Shutdown and start, never. (Unless the PMU is depressed.) I can see the small "on" lights on the USB plugs and the power light on a Newer USB 2.0 drive flashes green - then goes out as though no signal is reaching the drive through the PCMCIA slot. I CAN use Target mode, but that is all. Unless the reset button is depressed, no boot. Three replaceable batteries tried. Recharging internal battery does no good. Disconnecting all USB and FW devices does nothing. I can turn the machine off (the drive is running but no signals sent to screen, or enough to do more than send a small current to the uSB ports, so the "on" light to a small hub will light, but not enough to light the optical mouse) by holding the power button for the usual 5 - 10 seconds. I have booted from FireWire drives (both Newer Technologies and LaCie Porsche Design) and run all practical tests. The SmartReporter log shows the internal drive to be in good order. I can either leave on all the time, or after I shut down, use a paper clip, depress the PMU button to level one (tried full-depress so resets of time, etc., required), press the power button, and it takes just a little longer than normal to boot, but the progress bar does appear and moves the entire width, and all features, including modem, works fine. Suggestion appreciated. N.B. It seems that Verio blocked mail for a while. Registered as lloyd@smithrep.com From rbf at psu.edu Tue Feb 5 06:45:30 2008 From: rbf at psu.edu (Bob Fowles) Date: Tue Feb 5 06:46:34 2008 Subject: [Ti] TiBook Will Not Boot Unless Reset In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: I had the same "Reset Problem" with my original 500Mhz TiBook. Not sure when it started - maybe 2004 or 2005. Every start after a shutdown first required depressing the Reset button in the back. I didn't find that a major problem because I rarely did a shutdown. When my Firewire port became non-operational in June 2006, I bought a used 500Mhz TiBook and I haven't had the "Reset Problem" with that one. Bob Fowles From by at by-online.de Tue Feb 5 10:46:37 2008 From: by at by-online.de (Michael Byczkowski) Date: Tue Feb 5 10:48:02 2008 Subject: [Ti] TiBook Will Not Boot Unless Reset In-Reply-To: Message-ID: The internal buffer battery for the PRAM has ran out of capacity, same happened with my TiBook... The only way to rectify this would be to have this changed by a service technician, as the battery is most likely soldered directly to the mainboard. Will wait for the next update to the MacBook Pro line and then buy one, 500 MHz G4 is really not that fast anymore... ;-) Best regards, Michael on 05.02.2008 15:45 Uhr, Bob Fowles at rbf@psu.edu wrote: > I had the same "Reset Problem" with my original 500Mhz TiBook. Not > sure when it started - maybe 2004 or 2005. Every start after a > shutdown first required depressing the Reset button in the back. I > didn't find that a major problem because I rarely did a shutdown. > When my Firewire port became non-operational in June 2006, I bought a > used 500Mhz TiBook and I haven't had the "Reset Problem" with that > one. > > Bob Fowles > _______________________________________________ > Titanium mailing list > Titanium@listserver.themacintoshguy.com > http://listserver.themacintoshguy.com/mailman/listinfo/titanium From jerbuc at mac.com Tue Feb 5 10:53:02 2008 From: jerbuc at mac.com (Gerald Buc) Date: Tue Feb 5 10:54:09 2008 Subject: [Ti] TiBook Will Not Boot Unless Reset In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <7407F964-9093-4820-854E-516C56E2CF11@mac.com> On Feb 5, 2008, at 2/5/08-8:45 30AM, Bob Fowles wrote: > I had the same "Reset Problem" with my original 500Mhz TiBook. Not > sure when it started - maybe 2004 or 2005. Every start after a > shutdown first required depressing the Reset button in the back. I > didn't find that a major problem because I rarely did a shutdown. > When my Firewire port became non-operational in June 2006, I bought > a used 500Mhz TiBook and I haven't had the "Reset Problem" with > that one. > > Bob Fowles I have the same problem with my 500MHz TiBook. Would seem someone would have had an answer by now. Jerry From tfulton at olp.net Tue Feb 5 11:31:54 2008 From: tfulton at olp.net (Thomas Fulton) Date: Tue Feb 5 11:32:28 2008 Subject: [Ti] TiBook Will Not Boot Unless Reset In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <12FADE02-6294-4F4C-804B-4885BF24CE60@olp.net> just go to ifixit.com.....most likely they will have the battery and the instructions for changing it..... Tom On Feb 5, 2008, at 12:46 PM, Michael Byczkowski wrote: > The internal buffer battery for the PRAM has ran out of capacity, same > happened with my TiBook... > > The only way to rectify this would be to have this changed by a > service > technician, as the battery is most likely soldered directly to the > mainboard. > > Will wait for the next update to the MacBook Pro line and then buy > one, 500 > MHz G4 is really not that fast anymore... ;-) > > Best regards, > Michael > > > > on 05.02.2008 15:45 Uhr, Bob Fowles at rbf@psu.edu wrote: > >> I had the same "Reset Problem" with my original 500Mhz TiBook. Not >> sure when it started - maybe 2004 or 2005. Every start after a >> shutdown first required depressing the Reset button in the back. I >> didn't find that a major problem because I rarely did a shutdown. >> When my Firewire port became non-operational in June 2006, I bought a >> used 500Mhz TiBook and I haven't had the "Reset Problem" with that >> one. >> >> Bob Fowles >> _______________________________________________ >> Titanium mailing list >> Titanium@listserver.themacintoshguy.com >> http://listserver.themacintoshguy.com/mailman/listinfo/titanium > > > _______________________________________________ > Titanium mailing list > Titanium@listserver.themacintoshguy.com > http://listserver.themacintoshguy.com/mailman/listinfo/titanium From jerbuc at mac.com Tue Feb 5 11:42:27 2008 From: jerbuc at mac.com (Gerald Buc) Date: Tue Feb 5 11:43:31 2008 Subject: [Ti] TiBook Will Not Boot Unless Reset In-Reply-To: <12FADE02-6294-4F4C-804B-4885BF24CE60@olp.net> References: <12FADE02-6294-4F4C-804B-4885BF24CE60@olp.net> Message-ID: On Feb 5, 2008, at 2/5/08-1:31 54PM, Thomas Fulton wrote: > just go to ifixit.com.....most likely they will have the battery > and the instructions for changing it..... > > Tom ifixit.com says they're out of Stock. Install Difficulty : Very Difficult. Guess I'll live with resets. Jerry > On Feb 5, 2008, at 12:46 PM, Michael Byczkowski wrote: > >> The internal buffer battery for the PRAM has ran out of capacity, >> same >> happened with my TiBook... >> >> The only way to rectify this would be to have this changed by a >> service >> technician, as the battery is most likely soldered directly to the >> mainboard. >> >> Will wait for the next update to the MacBook Pro line and then buy >> one, 500 >> MHz G4 is really not that fast anymore... ;-) >> >> Best regards, >> Michael >> >> >> >> on 05.02.2008 15:45 Uhr, Bob Fowles at rbf@psu.edu wrote: >> >>> I had the same "Reset Problem" with my original 500Mhz TiBook. Not >>> sure when it started - maybe 2004 or 2005. Every start after a >>> shutdown first required depressing the Reset button in the back. I >>> didn't find that a major problem because I rarely did a shutdown. >>> When my Firewire port became non-operational in June 2006, I >>> bought a >>> used 500Mhz TiBook and I haven't had the "Reset Problem" with that >>> one. >>> >>> Bob Fowles >>> _______________________________________________ >>> Titanium mailing list >>> Titanium@listserver.themacintoshguy.com >>> http://listserver.themacintoshguy.com/mailman/listinfo/titanium >> >> >> _______________________________________________ >> Titanium mailing list >> Titanium@listserver.themacintoshguy.com >> http://listserver.themacintoshguy.com/mailman/listinfo/titanium > > _______________________________________________ > Titanium mailing list > Titanium@listserver.themacintoshguy.com > http://listserver.themacintoshguy.com/mailman/listinfo/titanium From TrevorHutley at consultant.com Tue Feb 5 13:38:47 2008 From: TrevorHutley at consultant.com (Dr. Trevor J. Hutley) Date: Tue Feb 5 13:40:07 2008 Subject: [Ti] TiBook Will Not Boot Unless Reset In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <9307A5FF-8A69-4D50-83C3-9DB4D366643B@consultant.com> On 5 Feb 2008, at 16:15, Lloyd Smith wrote: > TiBook, 400 MHz, 10.4.10, 640 MB SDRAM > > Unless the reset button is depressed, no boot. > Suggestion appreciated. First, nice to see that there is life in the old List ! Second - I have never seen, heard or read of a situation like yours....... The only thing that I do (correction, did, as it no longer works in Leopard) in any problem situation is restart in single user mode (Apple-S on start up) and run APPLE JACK. In your case, after using your paper-clip/reset step. I do not hold out much hope of it helping you, but it does fix a few things that might possibly help you. regards, Trevor From rbf at psu.edu Tue Feb 5 14:59:24 2008 From: rbf at psu.edu (Bob Fowles) Date: Tue Feb 5 14:59:45 2008 Subject: [Ti] TiBook Will Not Boot Unless Reset In-Reply-To: <12FADE02-6294-4F4C-804B-4885BF24CE60@olp.net> References: <12FADE02-6294-4F4C-804B-4885BF24CE60@olp.net> Message-ID: In my case, I had a technician check out the reset problem and he said it was not the battery which checked out fine. Without more detailed analysis, he suspected it was the motherboard. Bob Fowles At 1:31 PM -0600 2/5/08, Thomas Fulton wrote: >just go to ifixit.com.....most likely they will have the battery and >the instructions for changing it..... > >Tom >On Feb 5, 2008, at 12:46 PM, Michael Byczkowski wrote: > >>The internal buffer battery for the PRAM has ran out of capacity, same >>happened with my TiBook... >> >>The only way to rectify this would be to have this changed by a service >>technician, as the battery is most likely soldered directly to the >>mainboard. >> >>Will wait for the next update to the MacBook Pro line and then buy one, 500 >>MHz G4 is really not that fast anymore... ;-) >> >>Best regards, >> Michael >> >> >> >>on 05.02.2008 15:45 Uhr, Bob Fowles at rbf@psu.edu wrote: >> >>>I had the same "Reset Problem" with my original 500Mhz TiBook. Not >>>sure when it started - maybe 2004 or 2005. Every start after a >>>shutdown first required depressing the Reset button in the back. I >>>didn't find that a major problem because I rarely did a shutdown. >>>When my Firewire port became non-operational in June 2006, I bought a >>>used 500Mhz TiBook and I haven't had the "Reset Problem" with that >>>one. >>> >>>Bob Fowles >>>_______________________________________________ >>>Titanium mailing list >>>Titanium@listserver.themacintoshguy.com >>>http://listserver.themacintoshguy.com/mailman/listinfo/titanium >> >> >>_______________________________________________ >>Titanium mailing list >>Titanium@listserver.themacintoshguy.com >>http://listserver.themacintoshguy.com/mailman/listinfo/titanium > >_______________________________________________ >Titanium mailing list >Titanium@listserver.themacintoshguy.com >http://listserver.themacintoshguy.com/mailman/listinfo/titanium From digital.discuss at gmail.com Tue Feb 5 17:20:09 2008 From: digital.discuss at gmail.com (MB) Date: Tue Feb 5 17:20:32 2008 Subject: [Ti] TiBook Will Not Boot Unless Reset In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <20080206012009.961912941@mail.messagingengine.com> Michael Byczkowski said: >The internal buffer battery for the PRAM has ran out of capacity, same >happened with my TiBook... What's this battery? It's not the same as a regular backup battery? Is there a Apple spare part name or number? From by at by-online.de Wed Feb 6 00:24:16 2008 From: by at by-online.de (Michael Byczkowski) Date: Wed Feb 6 00:25:35 2008 Subject: [Ti] TiBook Will Not Boot Unless Reset In-Reply-To: <20080206012009.961912941@mail.messagingengine.com> Message-ID: Hi, http://lowendmac.com/pb2/powerbook-g4-400-500-mhz.html tells us that the Apple part number is 922-4361, US$25-95. Best regards, Michael on 06.02.2008 2:20 Uhr, MB at digital.discuss@gmail.com wrote: > Michael Byczkowski said: > >> The internal buffer battery for the PRAM has ran out of capacity, same >> happened with my TiBook... > > What's this battery? It's not the same as a regular backup battery? Is > there a Apple spare part name or number? > > > > _______________________________________________ > Titanium mailing list > Titanium@listserver.themacintoshguy.com > http://listserver.themacintoshguy.com/mailman/listinfo/titanium From digital.discuss at gmail.com Wed Feb 6 03:24:28 2008 From: digital.discuss at gmail.com (MB) Date: Wed Feb 6 03:25:25 2008 Subject: [Ti] TiBook Will Not Boot Unless Reset In-Reply-To: References: <20080206012009.961912941@mail.messagingengine.com> Message-ID: <20080206112428.1019210213@mail.messagingengine.com> Michael Byczkowski told: >http://lowendmac.com/pb2/powerbook-g4-400-500-mhz.html tells us that the >Ap Thank you Michael. However AFAICT, this battery is not on the motherboard (though it is connected to it) and is quite easy to exchange, if you know how take apart a titanium powerbook. Something I'd expect many on this list know how to. If not there are manuals, as have been suggested already. From macdan at comcast.net Wed Feb 13 17:40:50 2008 From: macdan at comcast.net (Dan K) Date: Wed Feb 13 17:41:07 2008 Subject: [Ti] Re: TiBook Will Not Boot Unless Reset Message-ID: <20080214014059.DC41CD39A27@listserver.themacintoshguy.com> Lloyd Smith wrote: >And it will not boot full using either external >FireWire drive or internal drive. Tried the emergency restart procedure. It >makes the usual start-up sound, lights flicker... then nothing happens. > >Unless I depress the reset button, then it will boot all the way. Some ideas: Try swapping out RAM. RAM does occasionaly fail. Try doing a Power Manager reset: Try resetting the NVRAM from OpenFirmware: Disconnect the internal hard drive's data cable and see if it cold-boots properly. dan k (on list digest) ................................. macdan at comcast dot net http://macdan.n3.net/ carracho://dankephoto.dhs.org hotline://dankephoto.dhs.org:9500 ................................. From TrevorHutley at consultant.com Thu Feb 21 11:06:20 2008 From: TrevorHutley at consultant.com (Dr. Trevor J. Hutley) Date: Thu Feb 21 23:06:56 2008 Subject: [Ti] Cocktail under Leopard Message-ID: <3404F318-03F8-4CE3-AEB1-B8729C6A0514@consultant.com> As we all know AppleJack is "broken" under Leopard. Is the same true for Cocktail [4.0.3] under 10.5.2 ? Whenever I start Cocktail, it asks for the Administrator's Passsword, which I enter, and it always says that it is the wrong name or password...... I have re-installed; deleted all the plists, all the Cocktail system files, etc and re-installed, but cannot get past this point...... Did anyone else see this? regards, Trevor From TrevorHutley at consultant.com Thu Feb 21 10:18:35 2008 From: TrevorHutley at consultant.com (Dr. Trevor J. Hutley) Date: Thu Feb 21 23:07:00 2008 Subject: [Ti] Virtual Memory in Leopard 10.5.2 Message-ID: <0A1B9D06-C91C-469C-849B-5FB48186F109@consultant.com> I have just installed a new 160 Gb disk in my Rev 1 (September 2003) aluminium G4 Powerbook. 45 minutes. It is an Hitachi drive. Unfortunately only 5400 rpm, as it replaced a Momentus 100 Gb drive which was 7200 rpm.... I used CCC to move my files over, which gave a disk with loads of free space (almost 50 Gb) After a few days, I got a message that my start-up disk was full !!! And it was, in that the free space was zero. It seems that the virtual memory is occupying 49 Gb of disk space. I can hardly believe it. In the old (pre 10.5.2) days, re-starting seemed to clear all the old swap files. Not any more. I am stuck with only 7 Gb free after re-starting. Any ideas of a way forward on this ? Has anyone else found this issue ? If I could get rid of the files, and regain my 45_ Gb, I would use Drive Genius to make a 20 Gb partition and use that for my virtual memory files. Any ideas or suggestions would be appreciated. regards, Trevor PS: the only benefit I have noticed from the massive 10.5.2 update is that my keyboard backlighting now works..... which is indeed useful when walking around my garden at midnight looking for a 3G signal to send my email..... From ejstevens at earthlink.net Fri Feb 22 05:22:27 2008 From: ejstevens at earthlink.net (Ed Stevens) Date: Fri Feb 22 05:22:40 2008 Subject: [Ti] Cocktail under Leopard In-Reply-To: <3404F318-03F8-4CE3-AEB1-B8729C6A0514@consultant.com> References: <3404F318-03F8-4CE3-AEB1-B8729C6A0514@consultant.com> Message-ID: <73E20567-FEBD-41C5-8227-009C742EEE98@earthlink.net> 4.0.3 is working fine for me under 10.5.2. I store it in the Applications>Utilities folder Make sure it is in the Applications folder. I'll let you know if I do have any problems with it. ------- Sincerely, Ed Stevens On Feb 21, 2008, at 2:06 PM, Dr. Trevor J. Hutley wrote: > > As we all know AppleJack is "broken" under Leopard. > > Is the same true for Cocktail [4.0.3] under 10.5.2 ? > > Whenever I start Cocktail, it asks for the Administrator's > Passsword, which I enter, and it always says that it is the wrong > name or password...... > > I have re-installed; deleted all the plists, all the Cocktail system > files, etc and re-installed, but cannot get past this point...... > > Did anyone else see this? From rbf at psu.edu Fri Feb 22 05:43:48 2008 From: rbf at psu.edu (Bob Fowles) Date: Fri Feb 22 05:44:24 2008 Subject: [Ti] Virtual Memory in Leopard 10.5.2 In-Reply-To: <0A1B9D06-C91C-469C-849B-5FB48186F109@consultant.com> References: <0A1B9D06-C91C-469C-849B-5FB48186F109@consultant.com> Message-ID: This forum article (and others) found by searching with "disk space increase vm" may be of use: http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?messageID=6428346� . By rebooting and not permitting any apps to start (I forget the key you press during restart), and starting your apps one at a time, you can use Terminal or Activity Monitor to see what app is causing such a large VM or swap space. If VM space is 49G at startup with no apps running, that is a different sort of problem. Bob Fowles At 6:18 PM +0000 2/21/08, Dr. Trevor J. Hutley wrote: >I have just installed a new 160 Gb disk in my Rev 1 (September 2003) >aluminium G4 Powerbook. 45 minutes. >It is an Hitachi drive. Unfortunately only 5400 rpm, as it replaced >a Momentus 100 Gb drive which was 7200 rpm.... > >I used CCC to move my files over, which gave a disk with loads of >free space (almost 50 Gb) > >After a few days, I got a message that my start-up disk was full !!! > >And it was, in that the free space was zero. > >It seems that the virtual memory is occupying 49 Gb of disk space. >I can hardly believe it. > >In the old (pre 10.5.2) days, re-starting seemed to clear all the >old swap files. Not any more. >I am stuck with only 7 Gb free after re-starting. > >Any ideas of a way forward on this ? > >Has anyone else found this issue ? > >If I could get rid of the files, and regain my 45_ Gb, I would use >Drive Genius to make a 20 Gb partition and use that for my virtual >memory files. > >Any ideas or suggestions would be appreciated. > >regards, Trevor > >PS: the only benefit I have noticed from the massive 10.5.2 update >is that my keyboard backlighting now works..... which is indeed >useful when walking around my garden at midnight looking for a 3G >signal to send my email..... > > >_______________________________________________ >Titanium mailing list >Titanium@listserver.themacintoshguy.com >http://listserver.themacintoshguy.com/mailman/listinfo/titanium From fred at mindstate.com Fri Feb 22 08:25:33 2008 From: fred at mindstate.com (Fred) Date: Fri Feb 22 08:26:04 2008 Subject: [Ti] Cocktail under Leopard In-Reply-To: <3404F318-03F8-4CE3-AEB1-B8729C6A0514@consultant.com> Message-ID: > From: "Dr. Trevor J. Hutley" > Subject: [Ti] Cocktail under Leopard > Whenever I start Cocktail, it asks for the Administrator's Passsword, > which I enter, and it always says that it is the wrong name or > password...... Try using your KeyChain Access in Utilities. Run the Repair option. This might help you. I have no issues under leopard with Cocktail,. But have found this has helped others if they have had a similar problem. From TrevorHutley at consultant.com Mon Feb 25 12:40:26 2008 From: TrevorHutley at consultant.com (Dr. Trevor J. Hutley) Date: Mon Feb 25 14:12:59 2008 Subject: [Ti] Permissions Repair Message-ID: <4999EF9A-EE33-4ECE-8193-2ACFE366A380@consultant.com> I had noticed that Repair Permissions (whether I used Disk Utility or any other, 3rd party, software was always either very slow or seemed to have stalled. I have found that using this command in Terminal is an effective way or repairing permissions, with a % progress report: sudo diskutil repairPermissions / (password required) Just in case it is of help to anyone else with a laptop and Leopard. regards, Trevor -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://listserver.themacintoshguy.com/pipermail/titanium/attachments/20080225/b5bac7e1/attachment.html From TrevorHutley at consultant.com Mon Feb 25 12:36:19 2008 From: TrevorHutley at consultant.com (Dr. Trevor J. Hutley) Date: Mon Feb 25 14:13:01 2008 Subject: [Ti] PubSubAgent FIXED (again) In-Reply-To: References: <82B43626-E710-43EE-B15B-154F708875EE@consultant.com> Message-ID: > On 6 Jan 2008, at 01:32, Marc Farnum Rendino wrote: > >> At 9:13 PM +0100 on 07/12/23, Dr. Trevor J. Hutley wrote: >> >>> Under Leopard, 10.5.11 I am "plagued' with constant messages about >>> the PubSubAgent..... >> >> FWIW: It seems to be sufficient - aside from feeds (ex: RSS) - to >> have sync'ing (to dotMac) of Bookmarks turned on, to cause this >> behavior. >> >> Of course the dotMac password also must be in a keychain that is >> either locked OR configured to require entering the keychain >> password for PubSubAgent to use the dotMac password. > > Marc - thanks for your input. This problem has now been resolved. > I changed many additional things, including the unchecking of the > bookmark syncing with DotMac. > I think that this was probably the major or only factor causing > these very annoying and persistent messages, but I cannot be 100% > sure, as I was not patient enough to change one factor at a time, > nor to go back and reverse all the factors, to see if the problem > started again.... 25 February Marc - I went back to Leopard 10.5, and one consequence was that the PubSubAgent message was appearing all the time.... This time, I just un-checked the Bookmarks in dotMac sync, changed nothing else, and it seems to have fixed the problem. A more definitive report of problem resolution than last time. regards, Trevor From digital.discuss at gmail.com Wed Feb 27 09:05:19 2008 From: digital.discuss at gmail.com (MB) Date: Wed Feb 27 09:05:46 2008 Subject: [Ti] Permissions Repair In-Reply-To: <4999EF9A-EE33-4ECE-8193-2ACFE366A380@consultant.com> References: <4999EF9A-EE33-4ECE-8193-2ACFE366A380@consultant.com> Message-ID: <20080227170519.1388467974@mail.messagingengine.com> Dr. Trevor J. Hutley suggested: >sudo diskutil repairPermissions / > > (password required) Actually, you need an *admin* password in order to use the command "sudo" (superuser do). Not all users have admin priviligies, though it's common on one account machines to let the sole userhave admin status. The best way to find out is of course to try the command and your password and OS X will tell you. In case your user is not an admin and there is an admin account or an activated root account on your Mac, you do not need to change the status of your user or relogin in th GUI. To use this the diskutil you can use the "su" command and login as the privileged admin user like this: su [admin_user_name] [return] then supply your password and hit [return] again then execute the diskutil command with arguments again, this time dropping "sudo": diskutil repairPermissions / [return] then supply your password and hit [return] again The latter "/" denotes the whole OS filesystem, though not on other partitions than the boot volume. >Just in case it is of help to anyone else with a laptop and Leopard. Leopard (10.5) is not a requirement. This command have been around since 10.2 at least. Also it works on all OS X systems, not just the "books" (Powerbook, iBook, Macbook). From tarik at opalblue.com Wed Feb 27 11:26:09 2008 From: tarik at opalblue.com (Tarik Bilgin) Date: Wed Feb 27 11:26:25 2008 Subject: [Ti] Permissions Repair In-Reply-To: <20080227170519.1388467974@mail.messagingengine.com> References: <4999EF9A-EE33-4ECE-8193-2ACFE366A380@consultant.com> <20080227170519.1388467974@mail.messagingengine.com> Message-ID: <47C5B951.90303@opalblue.com> MB wrote: > > Actually, you need an *admin* password in order to use the command > "sudo" (superuser do). Not all users have admin priviligies, though it's > common on one account machines to let the sole userhave admin status. > The best way to find out is of course to try the command and your > password and OS X will tell you. > In case your user is not an admin and there is an admin account or an > activated root account on your Mac, you do not need to change the status > of your user or relogin in th GUI. To use this the diskutil you can use > the "su" command and login as the privileged admin user like this: > > It should be noted that "su" is usually considered unsafe by most UNIX administrators and should be avoided, unless there is no alternative. You can find a nice article about sudo versus su here: http://www.linuxscrew.com/2007/10/11/why-use-sudo-instead-of-su/ -- Tarik From digital.discuss at gmail.com Fri Feb 29 17:22:51 2008 From: digital.discuss at gmail.com (MB) Date: Fri Feb 29 17:23:24 2008 Subject: [Ti] Permissions Repair In-Reply-To: <47C5B951.90303@opalblue.com> References: <4999EF9A-EE33-4ECE-8193-2ACFE366A380@consultant.com> <20080227170519.1388467974@mail.messagingengine.com> <47C5B951.90303@opalblue.com> Message-ID: <20080301012251.1736422787@mail.messagingengine.com> Tarik Bilgin said: >It should be noted that "su" is usually considered unsafe by most UNIX >administrators and should be avoided, unless there is no alternative. The obvious alternative would be executing sudo as a user with admin priviligies. You know of such a way? The cited article is about Linux, not Unix-flavours like OS X. Not the same cat necessarily. None of the reason listed on the main page are really valid in the situation described, except if one forgets to log out with exit [return] (One can also just close the Terminal window) As it's obviously would be bad to leave your machine logged in as su. One could also use "sudo" when logged in with su, for whatever reason. Some commands demand this even as you are logged in as su. You have any valid reasons why a person that can log in with su as an admin user, as he/she has the username/pass, that he should avoid it? From tarik at opalblue.com Fri Feb 29 21:02:27 2008 From: tarik at opalblue.com (Tarik Bilgin) Date: Fri Feb 29 21:06:28 2008 Subject: [Ti] Permissions Repair In-Reply-To: <20080301012251.1736422787@mail.messagingengine.com> References: <4999EF9A-EE33-4ECE-8193-2ACFE366A380@consultant.com> <20080227170519.1388467974@mail.messagingengine.com> <47C5B951.90303@opalblue.com> <20080301012251.1736422787@mail.messagingengine.com> Message-ID: <89AB9410-5418-4929-8A96-7268E54D7419@opalblue.com> On 1 Mar 2008, at 01:22, MB wrote: > Tarik Bilgin said: > >> It should be noted that "su" is usually considered unsafe by most >> UNIX >> administrators and should be avoided, unless there is no alternative. > The obvious alternative would be executing sudo as a user with admin > priviligies. You know of such a way? Yes, by using sudo. I'm not sure why you asked that, or maybe I didn't understand the question. > > The cited article is about Linux, not Unix-flavours like OS X. Not the > same cat necessarily. None of the reason listed on the main page are > really valid in the situation described, except if one forgets to log > out with > exit [return] > (One can also just close the Terminal window) Not exactly the same cat perhaps, but in this respect OS X has implemented su and sudo in exactly the same was as a modern UNIX like openBSD or a modern Linux like Ubuntu. Allow me to go into some more detail: When you use sudo, the OS doesn't change your user to root and leave it there (as in su) but simply uses the set UID feature of UNIX to set the user id of the process to 0, i.e. root. So when you invoke sudo you escalate your privilege to the level of root for the single command that follows the line sudo and the bounce back down again. If I type ls -ail /user/bin/sudo into my Terminal i get: 3438311 -r-s--x--x 1 root wheel 104588 Dec 20 2006 /usr/bin/sudo As you can see sudo is owned by root, and can't be written to by anyone (to prevent someone trojaning your sudo) including root. The "s" is the setUID flag, which is what gives sudo (and su) its special powers. This might seem like not a big deal, and I am in no position to judge the security needs of your system; every administrator makes there own judgements,, but there are a few more subtleties playing a part here: When you invoke sudo, the system will first check if the user is a valid sudoer (by default any member of the admin group in OS X, but this can be changed) and then check the password entered, and only then execute the command. This also means that sudo can only execute a single command, before you are bounced back down to normal privilege. > > As it's obviously would be bad to leave your machine logged in as su. > One could also use "sudo" when logged in with su, for whatever reason. > Some commands demand this even as you are logged in as su. Almost every UNIX admin I've ever worked with has at some stage left a session logged in as root via su, and either paid a heavy price or just got very embarrassed and felt thankful no one got to their keyboard during their lunch break. Again it's up to you , and there are times when it would be a total pain to be sudoing every command and yes there are times when I do su, but it's really in the minority of cases since most of the time I want to run a single command, exactly as in the example that was given regarding diskutils. sudo is also protecting you from some more subtle threats like spoofing certain environment variables related to the shell which affect how the command after sudo would be run. Basically it's possible for a hacker with an unprivileged account to force certain environment variables in your shell (which you wouldn't normally even be aware of) to then force you to execute the binary that we need to run as root in a certain way, which would then give them access to the resulting process. su doesn't have these benefits. I don't want to get too technical here as I feel I'm getting way off topic but I'm trying to illustrate that sudo is designed with security in mind, while su is not. OS X (and Ubuntu linux) come with the root account disabled by default. This is not a coincidence or Apple "dumbing down" the OS. The number one breach that I have seen into systems in recent years is hackers sshing into boxes with the root account. The beauty of that account (to the attacker) is that they already know the name of the user and (generally) that user has access to everything on the box. If you do enable your root user , disable root access to the machine via ssh as a precaution. I fail to see why the root account is needed on any OS X workstation (it is disabled on mine). sudo gets me everywhere I need to go. If you are doing a lot of work with services as in OS X Server, then yes, you will need a root account and su. sudo is not the tool for that job. But if all you need to do is run the occasional command as root, sudo is by far the safer tool. I am repeating myself but I will say it again: Everyone is free to administer their own system the way they see fit, but running a single command like the diskutils in the original post is exactly what sudo is designed for. su is designed for the root password knowing, bearded unix sysadmin to spend hours administering and tweaking the OS X Server install which runs services. It is also on the sysadmin's conscience to protect the root password and to minimise the risk of it being abused. -- Tarik Bilgin