[HM] Os X won't boot up on iMac

[John Baltutis]

On 01/16/04,  janesprando at comcast.net wrote:
>
> I have an iMac that boots up in 9 and 10. I have been using 9.2.2, but
>tried to boot up in X. The blue apple appeared and then that little clock
>with the dots started going around. It stopped and I got this message:
>
> /etc/master.password: no such file or directory
> /etc/master.password: no such file or directory (it did say it twice)
> sh-2.05a#
>
> What does this mean and how do I fix it?

I'm a bit confused. You say "it boots up in 9 and 10" and then say it
doesn't boot into 10. Did you mean that it used to boot up in 10, but now
it won't because of that error?

What OS X version? Did you recently try to clone your OS X system? If so,
what cloning application did you use? Are you try booting into single user
mode? AFAIK, that's the only time it's supposed to be read.

Try this. Boot up into OS 9 and do a find for the etc folder on your 10
installation, selecting invisible. Open that directory and duplicate the
master.passwd file and rename the copy as master.password. Then try booting
into OS X.