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Level 1

14 points

Need advice on hard drive/optical drive testing software

I've been tasked to sell some of our inventory of old Macs. This include some PowerPC based PowerBooks, a few G5 dual core Power Macs, but mostly they're going to be MacBook Pro's, iMacs, and Mac Mini's. I'm paying most attention to the Intel stuff because most of the PPC stuff is just getting a little too old. NOTE: I am not on here to announce a sale. Please do not ask me where, when, and if the units will be sold. I don't want this thread turning into a spam-fest!

Most of the Intel units have CoreDuo processessors, some of the mini's I believe actually have Core Solo. These are all being upgraded to new systems, as you might guess. All units have their original software because when these are given to an employee to use we take the software and lock it in a file cabinet, which prevents them from losing it or doing something else with it. We have fairly tight control over our machines. I do not believe any of these units are capable of running Lion or later OSes due to their processors. Most systems are running Leopard or Snow Leopard.

In any case, we can do basic hardware tests on the units using AHT, but AHT seems to have little or no testing capability for doing surface scans on hard drives or optical drives. These are, ironically, the most likely things that will break. We want it verified these are in working order because we will be offering a limited warranty on them.

What's available for testing hard drives and optical drives?

As an FYI, having Apple do this testing is out of the question due to cost.

Posted on Sep 28, 2013 6:29 PM

169 replies

ZV137

Level 1

54 points

Sep 2, 2015 8:23 PM in response to ThomasB2010

Such as??????????

Seriously. Most applications don't put stuff into /bin, /sbin, or for that matter even /usr/bin, and they certainly don't put stuff in /. I doubt they'd directly manipulate any Apple specific directories, so…..what are you talking about?

Sep 3, 2015 11:10 AM in response to ZV137

I'm thinking in terms of stuff that's often open source, like Apache web server, Tomcat, etc. I seem to remember they needed to have some stuff put in system folders.

Sep 5, 2015 2:00 AM in response to ThomasB2010

Most of that stuff can be setup without needing to be in root/super-user level directories. The only way they're setup that way is because that's the way older Unix systems typically set things up years ago.

Sep 5, 2015 11:51 AM in response to MrJavaDeveloper

Some databases require that a raw partition be allowed to be created and accessed. I don't see how that can be done without super user permissions.

Sep 9, 2015 11:30 AM in response to ThomasB2010

A raw partition is as far as a Mac is concerned just going to be another volume on a drive. Any non-bootable volume can be set to have a wide range of permissions, so even that isn't necessarily a "root user only" operation.

CaptH

Level 1

59 points

Sep 14, 2015 10:59 AM in response to ThomasB2010

How many people use software like that? 1 in 1000? Most security options can be overridden.

Sep 30, 2015 11:01 AM in response to CaptH

We'll start finding out shortly, I believe.😉

R.K.Orion Author

Level 1

14 points

Oct 2, 2015 12:33 PM in response to ThomasB2010

I assume that you're talking about El Capitan's security features, right?

One trick that might work, although I haven't tried it would be to boot from another earlier OS like Mavericks or Yosemite and then put into place anything you wanted their. I don't know if the OS would catch it but it might be worth a try. An older OS will just see an El Capitan partition as yet another drive. FYI Mountain Lion and earlier cannot fully access some files on Yosemite and later because of changes in the resource fork compression (you'll get I/O errors and think something is wrong with the drive).

Oct 5, 2015 11:57 AM in response to R.K.Orion

Yes, that's what I've been referring to. I couldn't say it before because it was still in beta. FYI if an application uses setuid to attempt root authorization for an application it appears it won't work unless rootless is disabled.

ZV137

Level 1

54 points

Oct 6, 2015 10:41 AM in response to ThomasB2010

How did you figure out that stuff about setuid? Is there a way to test it?

Oct 7, 2015 11:09 AM in response to ZV137

A message shows up in the log files. One thing you might try, or at least it used to work before release was to try the "ps" command with rootless mode enabled and disabled. It reported OK when disabled, but put out nonsense stats for disabled.

Oct 12, 2015 11:26 AM in response to ThomasB2010

Have you tried doing this with rootless disabled?

Oct 12, 2015 3:32 PM in response to HuntsMan75

Yes, with rootless disabled the application I'm thinking of works fine. What does this have to do with hard disks? When the failure occurs it appears like the drive has problems. Another side note, the resource forks in Yosemite and El Capitan are not compatible with Mountain Lion and earlier. If you attempt to access a file on a Yosemite or El Capitan volume from a system running Mountain Lion or earlier you will see I/O errors appearing in the log files. Here's an example:

cp zsh /tmp

cp: zsh: Input/output error

That was done by navigating to /bin on a Yosemite volume while booted from a Mountain Lion system. The I/O error is not a disk error, but people could be deluded into thinking it was one. Here's clarification of the error in the log file:

kernel[0]: decmpfs.c:250:_decmp_get_func: tried to access a compressed file of unregistered type 8

R.K.Orion Author

Level 1

14 points

Oct 13, 2015 1:56 AM in response to ThomasB2010

You might find this link interesting:

http://www.infoworld.com/article/2988096/mac-os-x/sorry-unix-fans-os-x-el-capita n-kills-root.html

Apple needs to understand that the majority of people using computers are more than likely doing fairly serious work. Trying to idiot-proof everything might be perfectly acceptable for an iOS environment where it's not only possible, but likely, that a user may be using a system in a high risk environment, but I really don't think the same applies to computers.

CaptH

Level 1

59 points

Oct 30, 2015 10:59 AM in response to R.K.Orion

This is appearing to be a fairly serious problem with people using specialized audio, video, and camera equipment.

Need advice on hard drive/optical drive testing software