How to get applejack to run in single user on 10.6.8?

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Level 1

95 points

How to get applejack to run in single user on 10.6.8?

Folks:

Had this question added onto a thread I had posted in the 10.4.11 discussion, but this is about getting applejack to run on a MBPro with 10.6.8, so Mr Hillyer suggested that some folks over here could answer this question . . . "blindfolded, and with both hands tied behind their backs . . ." he said that . . . trust me.

I've tried to install applejack 1.6 on my MBPro running 10.6.8 about three times it says, "Installed successfully" . . . but when I boot into single user (command + S) . . . there is no "type applejack" in the CLI . . . and when I type "applejack AUTO shutdown" or any variation in the yellow text shell, it just returns a, "applejack is not recognized and isn't part of anything here . . . " words to that effect. Whereas in the iMac 10.4.11 I can boot to CLI and it gives me the various options for running AJ, and I only installed it one time . . . . Any thoughts? Of course Onyx is always an option . . . but now I'm getting feedback that it isn't so good for the system????

Many thanks,

e.e.p.

MBP 15 2.53 GHz, Mac OS X (10.6.8), iBook G4, 14, 933 MHz (10.4.11), iMac G4, 15, 800MHz,

Posted on Dec 6, 2012 6:19 PM

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Answer 1

este.el.paz Author

Level 1

95 points

Dec 10, 2012 8:33 AM in response to Neville Hillyer

@Neville:

Thanks for your comments . . . in terms of further developments, seeing other comments here on the forum about AJ being "unresponsive" on 10.6.8 I took executive command and opened a bug report on the SF Applejack page . . . doesn't look like a huge amount of current discussion there so we'll have to see if anything transpires from that end . . . .

@Linc:

Alrighty, thanks also to your additional comments, between not having internet at home over the weekend and it seems like no email notification was made for your posts . . . anyway, so indeed it may be that any time spent trying to get AJ to work in SL is a "waste" . . . but, since as I also mentioned, AJ did recently get me a working computer, when nothing else was helping or solving the issue(s), so in that sense it's not a waste of time at all . . . . But, if we were to eliminate all posts here on the forum that would be a potential waste of time . . . how many posts would be left? And, perhaps searching for how to find the full path to get AJ may again be fruitless, but it was an attempt to follow the advice given by the first respondee to the post . . . I'm still interested in getting AJ to work in 10.6.8, it seems to be a handy utility to have available, whether it needs to be used for "routine" maintenance or not . . . .

e.e.p.

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Answer 2

Dec 10, 2012 11:14 AM in response to Neville Hillyer

Thanks Neville, my response was a comment not a question. Makewhatis builds it databases from MANPATH or by default /usr/share/man. Here's a snipet from the postflight script in the applejack package--

manLoc="$mountPoint/usr/share/man/man8"

# Okay, I give up.

cp "${packageLoc}/Contents/Resources/applejack.8" "$manLoc"
/bin/chmod 0444 "${manLoc}/applejack.8";

The postflight script also includes building the .profile in the root account. IMO, bizarre. Why not just append the PATH variable? Then again, why run a script with 2000 lines of code to do what may be 4 or 5 easy commands could do? If, you ever really needed to run those commands.

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Answer 3

este.el.paz Author

Level 1

95 points

Dec 10, 2012 11:48 AM in response to Mark Jalbert

Mark Jalbert wrote:

Thanks Neville, my response was a comment not a question.

The postflight script also includes building the .profile in the root account. IMO, bizarre. Why not just append the PATH variable? Then again, why run a script with 2000 lines of code to do what may be 4 or 5 easy commands could do? If, you ever really needed to run those commands.

@Mark:

I guess it would be educational to know what those 4 or 5 easy commands would be . . . but, I think one of the design parameters of AJ is dealing with situations where the system might not boot, etc. In my case, on my iMac in 10.4.11 the computer kept crashing so much that at times I couldn't even keep the system up long enough to launch Terminal, even if I knew what to run I couldn't have . . . . I at first was thinking that problems that were happening trying to get a Linux system work-able (not stone simple in the iMac) in a partition, and that KPs there were causing the OSX partition to crash. I could boot to single user, type "applejack" and if I tried to run the "auto" part, it too would crash, so I had to type "expert" and by going that route it stayed working long enough to run through the "auto" part . . . and this was after unplugging the faulty FW port, still the system wouldn't run . . . AJ got the system able to run . . . . Looks like there are other issues with the iMac that probably spell utimate demise, but, let's say if I had needed to back up my system then AJ would have let me do it . . . somehow on not FW options . . . . Is that situation applicable to 10.6.8, that I can't yet know . . . .

e.e.p.

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Answer 4

Dec 10, 2012 2:19 PM in response to Mark Jalbert

Mark Jalbert wrote:

Makewhatis builds it databases from MANPATH or by default /usr/share/man.

Thanks for that.

I don't know how to get makewhatis to list applejack.

I discovered a quarantine extended attribute on applejack (and memtest) man files so removed it with:

sudo xattr -d com.apple.quarantine /usr/share/man/man8/applejack.8

but

sudo /usr/libexec/makewhatis

still fails to list it although

man applejack

works OK.

Any thoughts?

Mark Jalbert wrote:

The postflight script also includes building the .profile in the root account. IMO, bizarre. Why not just append the PATH variable?

Perhaps because .profile has basic AJ instructions to be displayed in single user mode and it was a simple matter to include an alias to simplify user typing.

Mark Jalbert wrote:

why run a script with 2000 lines of code to do what may be 4 or 5 easy commands could do?

You may have to use AJ in various modes to see that it does quite a lot with minimal user typing. There may be extra code to cope with several versions of OS X.

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Answer 5

Dec 11, 2012 10:18 AM in response to Neville Hillyer

Any thoughts?

A problem with the man page header formatting. But let's take a step back and talk about the Standards and the design of a distribution and how the Standards are implemented. /usr/libexec is a placeholder for programs run by other programs. Since, makewhatis and the wrapper script makewhatis.local are located in this directory then the design of the distribution is to call them with another program or shell script. Your mileage may vary otherwise.

Now applejack follows its own standard and expect that everything will work. Everything won't. Look at the comment "I give up" in one of my other posts. The script contains some revealing info in its comments. They are guessing on how the operating system works. There are muliple procedures that aren't necessary in order to reach certain goals and the scripting in general is far from efficient.

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Answer 6

Dec 11, 2012 12:34 PM in response to Mark Jalbert

Mark Jalbert wrote:

A problem with the man page header formatting.

You are probably correct. I did notice that although it displayed OK its first few lines were not the same as other man pages.

My understanding is that AppleJack is the work of one person with advice from one or two others.

Notwithstanding code efficiency it has worked very reliably for me on Tiger and Leopard and, as others have said, it can correct things that Disk Utility does not and, on occasions, get a non-booting Mac to boot.

It is easy to remember to start a problem Mac in single user mode and then follow the on-screen AppleJack instructions.

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Answer 7

este.el.paz Author

Level 1

95 points

Dec 12, 2012 1:46 PM in response to Neville Hillyer

Gents:

Can it be "fixed" . . . can it be made to work in 10.6??? That is the question . . . .

e.e.p.

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Answer 8

este.el.paz Author

Level 1

95 points

Dec 15, 2012 3:00 PM in response to Neville Hillyer

@NH, et al:

Agree with Mr Hillyer that AJ can be handy to have, still no definitve answers on how to perhaps get it running. I just went to the AJ Bug Tracker site trying to see if any reply to my post there has been made by the inventer . . . But, I found another thread where Mr Widholm replied to some issues about "fsck" and asked the OP to try to run "/sbin/fsck -f -n" to see what happens when it exits, and then to try "echo $" to look to see if output is 0 or something else . . . all this in single user.

I restarted into single user and entered the recommended commands, and got "fsck is not recognized or is not a member of this association" . . . something like that . . . "resistance is futile" . . . was also mentioned . . . . I tried to add "sudo" and got the same message . . . .

One possible additional clue . . . before the "Shell" prompt there are a few lines that were run in CLI-- "blk 4--Harddisk-Alias (null) . . . probably a blk5 . . . and then "blk 6 -- Block device- Alias (null)" . . . .

Seeing the word (null) repeated perhaps raises a question? Or , no, "null" is normal in single user???

e.e.p.

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Answer 9

este.el.paz Author

Level 1

95 points

Dec 18, 2012 9:37 AM in response to este.el.paz

este.el.paz wrote:

Gents:

Can it be "fixed" . . . can it be made to work in 10.6??? That is the question . . . .

e.e.p.

Gents:

With help from some gents on another forum, the answer has been found. By using cmd + S I was booting into the EFI shell due to rEFIt, selecting the OSX window there and then pressing "F2" brought a menu with "OSX in single user" as an option . . . picking that option let me run applejack in 10.6.8 . . . needed or not I can now do it.

e.e.p.

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