Problems running Applejack and Terminal

Let me start by saying I’m a novice with Unix, so bear with me.

I’m wanting to run Applejack in order to try and solve some issues with a sluggish iMac, but not having any luck. I downloaded ver 1.6 of Applejack and did a normal installation. The installation completed successfully. I then re-booted in single user mode (cmd-s). I got the typical black background with white text during the boot, however when the boot was finished I got the prompt: -sh-3.2# Is this typical, and what does this prompt indicate?

I then tried to run Applejack by typing:
+applejack auto+

To this I got the response:
+-sh: applejack: command not found+
-sh-3.2#

I tried several variations on the command , but the response is always the same, “command not found”. So it appears either applejack was not installed properly, or the –sh-3.2# prompt suggests I’m in some program within single user mode and that program doesn’t recognize applejack commands.

For what it’s worth, I also can’t run Terminal. When I try to run it I get the message, “You are not authorized to run this application. The administrator has set your shell to an illegal value.”

The really strange thing is, I am the administrator and only user of this iMac. So, what the heck is going on? I hope someone out there can help me resolve this.

20" iMac 2.16 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo (late 2006), 2.5GB RAM, Mac OS X (10.6.3)

Posted on Jul 14, 2010 9:22 PM

18 replies

dbax Author

Level 1

77 points

Jul 16, 2010 1:14 PM in response to BobHarris

BobHarris wrote:
If the /etc/sudoers files is also messed up, you can most likely do the same trick you used for getting the /etc/shells files fixed up.
...
Of course the question comes up. Why are so many /etc files messed up on your system? Is it the 'Cat'?

I hear you.

After booting from the ext HD, I just finished looking at /private/etc// (on the internal HD) and and discovered there's a sudoers~orig file (which looks correct), along with an empty sudoers file. It appears doing a similar copy/paste as with the shells file may get me running applejack. Still, I'm wondering what will I find next - thinking a re-install of the OS is in order.

rccharles

Level 6

13,037 points

Jul 17, 2010 9:08 PM in response to dbax

The bad news is there’s some sort of root user/privilege issue, and, regarding this, I seem to be caught in a bit of a “catch 22”.

When I type in the string above, applejack comes up, but then quits with the following:
-User ID: 0, NAME: 0
* you are not authorized as the root user. Applejack must quit. *

You need to run applejack from single user mode. Single user mode runs as root.

You need to follow instruction printed out in Single user mode startup to access drive as r/w.

Robert

dbax Author

Level 1

77 points

Jul 18, 2010 12:02 PM in response to rccharles

rccharles wrote:
You need to run applejack from single user mode. Single user mode runs as root.

You need to follow instruction printed out in Single user mode startup to access drive as r/w.

Robert

Robert,
I'm aware of that. If you read through this topic from the beginning, you'll see that my problems stem from some modified files on my system. The first was /etc/shells, which was empty (this prevented me from running Terminal - I was not trying to run Applejack from within the Terminal program).

The next problem was with /private/etc/sudoers which was also empty. Without proper user information in sudoers, Applejack would not run. After discovering this, I concluded I should just re-install OS X since I had no idea how these file were modified and I suspected other critical files were probably also modified. I did that this morning and I'm doing more checks now to see if all of my Terminal and Applejack issues are resolved.

I'll report back later to wrap up.

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Problems running Applejack and Terminal