Hardware test...

I need to come back to the rivenfive post, I have focusing on my script instead, since it worked for me.

This needs to be done on the Mac that needs to run AHT, all the usual warnings apply about running scripts from strangers on the internet!

Backup first if the Mac has ANY important data, get a second opinion if you need help. Don't run it if you are concerned what it does.

It worked for me on 10.6 when I made it & I tested on 10.9 earlier.

It needs to use sudo, so login to an admin user account otherwise it will fail to work (the first user account is an admin). It will prompt for the password.

The destination needs to be a 'Macintosh Extended (journaled) format' volume.

Download the 'gist' (right hand button) https://gist.github.com/drewreece/2e5eed7dbfbd5dd7e929

Open the archive via double click & you will get an insanely named folder 'gist2e… '

Rename the folder to 'aht-my-disk', move that folder to the Desktop

Make the script executable (only needed once), in Terminal

chmod +x ~/Desktop/aht-my-disk/AHT-my-disk.sh

To run it the command in Terminal is …

~/Desktop/aht-my-disk/AHT-my-disk.sh SOURCE-AHT-DISK-IMAGE DESTINATION-DISK

The easy way to do this…

Drag & drop the AHT-My-disk.sh script into Terminal to autofill the path to it.

tap spacebar

drag & drop the source disk image

tap spacebar

drag & drop the destination disk

Hit return to run the script

It will post lots of output to the Terminal as it runs. It does the following…

• Mount the source AHT disk image
• Copy the AHT onto the destination disk
• 'bless' the diags.efi for booting <- REQUIRES SUDO - enter password at prompt.
• Unmount the source AHT disk image

Now when you reboot will be set to use this as the startup disk. Do not hold any startup keys.

If it fails to launch AHT reboot & hold alt at next startup to choose another startup disk, or remove the USB stick to allow the Mac to search for other OS's.

Let me know if it fails or if you get any errors.

The script output looks correct.

I am setting things up incorrectly on the USB - I think it is actually starting from the AHT disk you made (TestSupport.efi is part of diagnostics) 🙂

I did it wrong, let me rethink.

trebbler,

Please grab the new version from GitHub & make it executable & retry the USB stick.

trebber wrote:

A picture, as they say, is worth a thousand words, two are worth at least two thousand, I suppose:

Hurrah, finally thats good news. 🙂

It's been a while since I was so pleased to see that old Carbon UI.

Run the extended mode a few times.

I also allow the Mac to cool completely (especially in cold rooms with poor heating) and then try running AHT on extended mode for a few hours so it warms up to max temp (put the heating back on if you turned it off too). It can provoke any issues that appear because of temperature. Tiny expansion & contractions can be enough sometimes to bring a Mac down.

I hope it picks up something you can act on. Let us know how it goes.

trebber wrote:

..."Now , for the sake of repeating the tests, what would I do?"...

I misunderstood what you were asking.

The disk should now be 'blessed', so reboot holding alt to see if it is an option in the boot picker.

If that fails you can delete the USB sticks content & re run the script to set the next boot to us the USB stick

Or manually re-bless & set the 'boot' option as follows…

sudo bless --folder "/Volumes/USB-STICK-HERE/System/Library/CoreServices/.diagnostics" --setBoot --file "/Volumes/USB-STICK-HERE/System/Library/CoreServices/.diagnostics/diags.efi"

Drew, my turn now to ask for some help. I'm still trying to get the AHT for my iMac on a flash drive. Have used Carbon Copy Cloner to first create a disk image from the mounted Applications Install disc 2, from /System/Library?CoreServices/.diagnostics (before creating the disk image, I eliminated the Installation folder containing packages at 4.7 GB), and then used CCC to restore to the flash drive. Everything's there as it should be: /System/Library/CoreServices/.diagnostics. However, no matter what I try, and I've tried every variation of sudo bless I can think of, I can't get the drive blessed. Keep getting "can't find mount point" or other error messages. Maybe you will have an idea what to do.

With one variation of sudo bless it really looked like it was going to work, didn't get any failure or error message back, the cursor looked like something was happening, but then it stalled completely, and I quit. Once got a > before the cursor, and had to quit.

A few examples among many that I tried--here with and without the enclosing quotes--only tried without the quotes once or twice (I eliminated the boot option). I've mostly been getting "No mount point," or "can't find mount point." Tried cding to the drive before running bless, but that didn't help either.

$ sudo bless --folder /Volumes/iMac\ AHT/System/Library/CoreServices/.diagnostics --file /Volumes/diags/System/Library/CoreServices/.diagnostics/diags.efi

Error while getting file ID of /Volumes/diags/System/Library/CoreServices/.diagnostics/diags.efi. Ignoring...

or

$ sudo bless --folder "/Volumes/iMac\ AHT/System/Library/CoreServices/.diagnostics" --file "/Volumes/iMac\ AHT/System/Library/CoreServices/.diagnostics/diags.efi"

No mount point for /Volumes/iMac\ AHT/System/Library/CoreServices/.diagnostics
Can't determine mount point of '/Volumes/iMac\ AHT/System/Library/CoreServices/.diagnostics' and ''

You are telling bless to use 2 disks, that won't work as far as I know.

bless mucks around in the HFS disk headers to say that 'this disk can use this thing to boot' (that's the technical explanation 🙂)

You are asking it to jump across file system boundaries - I haven't read anywhere that says that is OK.

Assuming you have everything correctly on the 'diags' volume…

sudo bless --folder "/Volumes/diags/System/Library/CoreServices/.diagnostics/" --file "/Volumes/diags/System/Library/CoreServices/.diagnostics/diags.efi"

Use 'alt' to select the disk on reboot (or add the '--setBoot' option)

To check it worked…

bless --info /Volumes/diags/

Compare to your boot disk ('bless --info' won't modify & it doesn't need sudo)

bless --info /

If you go to …

https://github.com/upekkha/AppleHardwareTest

& run the commands there to work out the model you could probably try my script that trebber used to clone the download to a USB stick.

Then the command I should be using is

sudo bless --folder "/Volumes/diags/System/Library/CoreServices/.diagnostics/" --file "/Volumes/diags/System/Library/CoreServices/.diagnostics/diags.efi"

Doesn't need the name of the flash drive (volume) "iMac\ AHT" in there? That's how it's seen in /Volumes.

EDIT: tried that command, still "No mount point."

WZZZ wrote:

Doesn't need the name of the flash drive (volume) "iMac\ AHT" in there? That's how it's seen in /Volumes.

Yep, you need whatever it's called.

If you are wrapping in quotes you can't escape spaces

EITHER

/Volumes/iMac\ AHT/...

OR

"/Volumes/iMac AHT/..."

Drag & drop will sort out the escapes up to 'CoreServices' at which point you can add /.diag & use tab to confirm and complete the path.