Hi all,
In summary no matter what I do (normal boot, recovery, safe mode, internet recovery, CLI only) my mac mini hangs at a grey screen after the apple logo disappears.
There is a brief window of time (around a minute) when its networking is up and I can SSH into it. I checked disk space and itt has 36 GB free on the disk (93%). When it hangs the SSH session freezes and the machine stops responding to ping.
Any ideas ?
Thanks !
Nick
Mac mini
What model Mac?
I suspect a hardware problem.
- Try resetting the SMC and NVRAM/PRAM
Intel-based Macs: Resetting the System Management Controller (SMC)
https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201295
About NVRAM and PRAM
https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT204063
Can you run Apple hardware test?
Using Apple Hardware Test - Apple Support
If you have another Mac and appropriate cables and adopters can you boot the problem Mac in Target Disk mode and access it via another computer?
Thanks for the reply lllaass.
I've reset the SMC and NVRAM.
I did the simple and extended hardware tests - no issues found.
I managed to get it to boot into single user mode. I had it running in that mode for around 24 hours with no issues. I ran:
diskutil verifyvolume /
but I think it said "volume is read only" or such. I could reboot into single user mode and try it again or other commands.
I started it in verbose mode with:
cmd + V
and watched the output. The only errors I saw were:
jni: unknown-dev: replay_journal: from 27970048 to: 297456664 (joffset 0xe38a000)
jni: unknown-dev: journal replay done
and:
BootCacheControl: Unable to open /var/db/BootCache.playlist: 2 No such file or directory
After the output finished it jumped straight to the grey screen again.
PS I don't have another Mac to boot the problem Mac in target disk mode
PPS I don't know the exact model. It's around 2011-2012 mac mini core2 duo
I just googled:
BootCacheControl: Unable to open /var/db/BootCache.playlist
Looks like it is an issue which is known to cause a grey screen like I'm getting. I'll do some more research and try to fix it then post back here with the results.
Thanks all for looking.
I found some instructions to fix here:
http://www.hackintosh.computer/?p=67
My system (10.7.5) doesn't have the file:
/etc/launchd.conf
Not sure why this would be. I moved the folder:
/System/Library/Caches
as per the instructions but it didn't work.
This thread:
Need Advanced Help: System Bootstrapper has crashed
implies I might have a problem with the disk. The only difference is that I haven't done a reinstall because the recovery mode doesn't work.
Here is where I'm stuck due to a lack of knowledge about Mac hardware and OSX: does the recovery mode require a working disk ? What about internet recovery ? I understand how my OSX install would have problems booting if the disk is faulty but I don't understand why the recovery modes won't work.
To be clear: I could move the /System/Library/Caches (moved it to my home dir) but it didn't resolve the issue
Mac mini won't boot to desktop. Hangs
