Invalid Key Length?

I'm not sure I am fully getting this all through the somewhat terse sentence structure. I assume you booted from an installer disc or another hard drive and are trying to repair the drive with Disk Utility. If you are trying to do this with DU on the same drive as the error that won't work. You have to boot from a different drive in order to repair your main hard drive. If you have indeed done that then it is quite possible you have encountered one of hte many errors Du is incabable of fixing and you will ned a stronger utility such as Diskwarrior.

Permissions you can repair on the same drive, but not drive errors.

I'd give it perhaps three tries with Disk Utility but after that you have likely reached its limits, especially if the error message isn't actually changing.

A few things you can try before Diskwarrior. Try starting in Safe Mode by holding down the shift key while starting the computer. Be patient, especially since your drive is having problems. It's remotely possible that the

drive checking and repair routine run during Safe Mode cna do something DU cannot. Then too, you can try the free utility Applejack.

SMART is just a top level drive condition checker and doesn't really look at the directory structure of the drive which is what DU does.

No problem with the questions as such, just in the reading and understanding. I'm just an old fogey who can't handle the cryptic, modern, text-messaging style of writing sentences, and reminisces on the old days of sentence structure and punctuation...

Retrorun. Are you using Retrospect for backing up? http://forums.dealmac.com/read.php?4,2633577 I don't have any experience with it nor what its settings should be.

You say, "Nothing so far." Does that mean the computer has started up? If so, what does Disk Utility now say?

On the original issue, do a web search for: osx invalid key length You'll see many results (Some on Apple Discussions). The bottom line is, if Disk Utility won't fix it, try Diskwarrior ($100). If DW won't fix it you will have to reformat the your drive and re-install the operating system. Of course some files may already be damaged so it is best to try to fix it in the hope the files get fixed too. You could just copy off files and go straight for a format&re-install but it is possible you would copy off files that are corrupt because your computer has lost track of all the bits and pieces. You have to decide if you want to chance it in terms of copying off bad files, chancing it with spending $100 on DW and it still not being able to fix the problem.

Do you have a backup of your files? A backup system can cost as little as $100 which as you can see is about what a repair utility costs, and repair utilities can't fix everything such as a drive going completely belly-up.

You can verify using the copy of DU on your internal drive. You can't run repair though. The objective is to see if starting in Safe Mode did anything to help. You could even restart normally to check that.

I don't know exactly what the error means but reading some of the links I recommended suggest it is a must-fix. I don't know the cause of it. Just having Retrospect installed probably doesn't mean it caused it. It is possible Retrospect may be causing other problems but I don't really know much about it.

The directory on your computer keeps track of all your files. It is a kind of master catalog of what is on your drive and where all the bits and pieces are located. Once it starts going bad there is danger of losing files and of the computer crashing if something critical in the system gets accidentally overwritten because the computer thinks that space is free. The thing is, your computer may already have started losing track of your files, but with the hundreds of thousands of files on modern computers it is hard to test each one. You can back up to an external drive right now and hope that not much has happened or nothing irreplaceable has been erased. A Powerbook isn't the best way to do this because the best way involves copying 100% of your files which requires an empty destination drive.

If you must use the Powerbook then start the bad computer in Target Disk Mode. Connect it to the Powerbook with the Firewire cable and copy off your data files, realizing that some may be damaged already but you won't know it unless it happens to give a copy error.

[How to use FireWire target disk mode|http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1661] - includes description of hardware and software requirements.

Once you have done that and you decide not to try Diskwarrior then the only way to repair the drive is to simply erase the whole thing. Note that all your user settings and everything will be erased. You'll need to boot to your installer disk and use Disk Utility to erase the drive, formatting it to Mac extended. It might be worth doing a secure erase with write zeros once because this does an addditional drive check (but takes longer). After erasing you can re-install the operating system, and do updates. To get straight to 10.4.11 you can use the combination updater which does it in one step.

[PowerPC-based Macs|http://www.apple.com/support/downloads/macosx10411comboupdateppc.html]

[Intel Macs|http://www.apple.com/support/downloads/macosx10411comboupdateintel.html].

[About the Mac OS X 10.4.11 Update|http://support.apple.com/kb/TA24901?viewlocale=en_US]

There will probably be a whole bunch of Java updates which you have to do one by one. You can use Software Update to see what needs to be updated.

You can then go back into Target Disk Mode and copy your data files back on, keeping your fingers crossed they are intact.

Well, you have to fix/repair the disk one way or another besides any other problems, doing anything with it, even just booting it up could feasibly destroy your data, Invalid key Length is a serious error in the directory of the disk.

As mentioned by Limnos, your best bet is DiskWarrior, the other option is erasing the disk.

https://discussions.apple.com/thread/713292?start=0&tstart=0

Very first thing, backup your User data, next, not a good idea to even delete or save anything when there is directory damage, the directory is like a street map of a city, but damage is like somebody switched a bunch of street signs and house addresses, now you wouldn't want to send a house wrecking crew out to an address only to find somebody switched the signs & house number, and the wrong house got torn down! ℹ

Normally DU & AJ won't fix this error, it won't hurt to try once you're certain your User data is safe somewhere else.

worst case I'm buying DiskWarrior or opting to wipe the drive & start over, yes?

Yep.

Well, some Apps keep info in places other than the User's folder, I wouldn't feel safe myself without a complete clone of the whole drive, but not likely you could do that without another drive.

Never the less, did you copy your whole Home Folder over, or just selected parts?

Also ran the Apple Hardware test but all passed (I had just installed 4x512's of memory recently, says ok)...does that mean my HD's likely ok, just a directory problem?

The 2 aren't connected, so impossible to tell, right now it looks like your drive may be OK, but how old is it?

Since the PB is a new addition, can I use DU to clone/backup the desktop to it? (like here? http://nerdvittles.com/?p=55 ) I have less than 20G on the desktop used out of 60G.

The point of doing a clone is to copy everything of intact, along with hidden files and files that a normal drag and drop won't copy. To do it that way you have to erase everything on the volume to which you are copying. If you have a lot of space on the PCB drive you could partition it into two volumes - but in order to do that you first end up losing everything that's on the drive during partitioning.

Or will a clone also transfer all the bad directory stuff w/it to the PB.

Possibly. It isn't so matter orf truly bad stuff, it's a matter of your present drive doesn't know where all the bits and pieces of the files are. I rip up several books, put the sections on a shelf in your room and then leave you a note telling you to move the books to another room. With the note are cards telling you where the sections are on the shelf so you can find them for moving, but unknown to you I destroy one card. You just go by what's on the cards. That section gets left behind, and when you empty the room it gets tossed out forever. Maybe 3 years from now you try to read your books. Most are okay but suddenly discover that one it isn't complete and is essentially unreadable. That's your computer files - maybe. The only thing you can do to ensure that all your books are transferred in their entirety is to run a program that checks to make sure the cards I left you really are accurate and complete, perhaps by actually doing a full inventory. Well, maybe I omitted a section, maybe I didn't. You don't know and are you willing to chance it during the move?

I could pick up a WD My Passport 250GB portable HD (Target has for $30?)...would this be the best way?

Um, BDAqua has a list but some WD external drivemodels don't work well with Macs. If I were contemplating buying a drive I would consider getting one for proper backup purposes to mitigate this kind of situation in hte future. Some day your internal drive will die and nothing will bring it back or the files on it. That said, I would make sure the new drive is at least as large as the drive inside your computer, and if you are going to continue to own a G4 that it has a Firewire connector. Most inexpensive drives only have USB. With Firewire if your internal drive dies you can always start up your computer using the external drive. These are more expensive but in my humble opinion having a computer without a decent backup system is like driving a car with no spare tire - if something goes wrong you're in a much bigger mess than you need to be.

It is pretty difficult to second guess a hard drive failing, unless you're lucky. You could run hardware test on it today and it would report fine, then tomorrow not start. However, don't confuse a hard drive failing with the keys thing. Do you remember old card catalogs? Your computer's directory is similar. The cards (directory) keep track of which books are in the library (your files on the drive) and where they are kept. Now if you drop your card catalog on the floor (directory damage which is what you have) that doesn't necessarily mean the cards are damaged or the box (your hardware) or even the books themselves (your files). You just need to sort the cards again, maybe check with your book collection to make sure they are all there, and continue to use them and the box. If there's a fire (hardware failure) then it is unlikely your cards or books will survive, and certainly the box won't and you'll need to replace everything.