Accidentally deleted /var folder, now recovery utilities not responding to trackpad/keyboard!

Question

Level 1

4 points

Accidentally deleted /var folder, now recovery utilities not responding to trackpad/keyboard!

So I did something completed stupid, and now have a big problem.

I accidentally deleted /var folder and emptied the trash!!😢

Now my MBP is stuck at the grey start up screen with the apple & spinng wheel and won't start up..

The weird thing is, now when I enter recovery utilities, everything displays fine except I cannot click anything! The mouse pointer moves but won't respond to clicks! Same with the return on keyboard. Arrow keys work to move among 4 options on os x utilities (time machine/ reinstall/ online help/ disk utility) but when I hit enter, no response! The trackpad & return key works fine up until the point where the mbp asks which language to run the recovery utilities.

All my data is backed up online, and now I just want to reinstall os x and start using my mbp again!

I tried reinstall with an installation disc by holding down 'c' on start, then I hear the installation dvd spinning for 3 seconds, then it would start ticking and won't do anything else for a few minutes until I force shutdown.

Please!!! Can anyone help me?? How can I reinstall os x?? I would really appreciate!!

Thank you Thank you Thank you in advance.

-Michelle

MacBook Pro, OS X Mountain Lion (10.8.3)

Posted on Apr 10, 2013 1:48 PM

Reply

Answer 1

Eric Root

Level 10

684,039 points

Apr 10, 2013 2:11 PM in response to hyonhyon85

Apple support articles:

Startup Gray Screen

Startup Issues - Resolve

Since you obviously have access to another computer, maybe you can fix the problem using Target Disk Mode.

Target Disc Mode

Reply

Answer 2

ludov04

Level 1

0 points

Dec 30, 2014 9:32 AM in response to hyonhyon85

I know it's late but maybe it will help other people.

I ran into the same issue and none of the solutions listed by apple helped.

I booted into single-user mode and I read the log in /Volumes/Macintosh\ HD/private/var/log/system.log, it was full of errors like theses

Dec 30 18:03:28 MacBook-Air locationd[352]: libcoreservices: _dirhelper: 454: mkdir: path=/var/folders/zz/zyxvpxvq6csfxvn_n00000sm00006d/C/ modes[2]=0700: No such file or directory

Dec 30 18:03:28 MacBook-Air.local locationd[352]: could not create persistent store directory (Input/output error)

Dec 30 18:03:28 MacBook-Air locationd[352]: libcoreservices: _dirhelper: 454: mkdir: path=/var/folders/zz/zyxvpxvq6csfxvn_n00000sm00006d/C/ modes[2]=0700: No such file or directory

The system actually tried to create directories in /var/folders but the directory /var/folders did not exists, so I created it:

Under single-user mode:

mount -o update /

cd /Volumes/Macintosh\ HD/

mkdir var/folders

mkdir var/folders/zz

reboot

And it booted just fine !

Reply

Answer 3

Oct 29, 2015 2:06 PM in response to ludov04

Colleague accidentally deleted a folder /var/folders...ludov04s post helped us to run under single user and find a permission issue ...then mounted the file system for update added the perms needed and voila worked like a charm ...thanks ludov04 !!!!

Reply

Answer 4

dbp303

Level 1

4 points

Jun 21, 2016 5:51 AM in response to ludov04

I had the same problem and tried your method, but it did not work.

Then I tried to delete the var/folders folder.

And the recreated the var/folders and var/folders/zz folders

This did the trick, and it worked.

Thanks for the help.

Reply