spinning wheel won't stop goin' round

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doug-doug the mighty's picture
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spinning wheel won't stop goin' round

After resolving a few hardware issues, I rebuilt my iMac using some disk copy images I had. Doing this, I was able to boot up in 9 and restore in place the other half of my machine which was OS X.2.8. I then booted up from a x.2 disk and repaired the disk. This process has worked well for me in the past when I have hosed something up. Besides, trying to do a clean install from the CD hangs half way through EVERY time.

The machine is a Bondi Rev A, sporting a 24x10x24 CD RW, with 512MB and a 120GB fatty. The Boot partition is 7.5G and this drive setup has worked in the past. When the machine comes on, I get the white background with the grey apple, then the spinning wheel starts, and never stops. I am now over an hour and a half waiting for the other shoe to drop.

Many of you may pick on me for being lazy about rebuilding from an image like this, but bear in mind, this worked for me before (provided I immediately boot from a X disk and repair the volume).

What can I do?

-- Doug-Doug The Mighty

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Try this

Go to this thread:

http://www.applefritter.com/node/view/3013

and try my suggestions under the heading "Untrue." See if that'll do anything for ya.

doug-doug the mighty's picture
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Waiting...

Tried Command+S right off the bat.

Cool trick... Right now I am waiting to for it to allow me to type in the command(s). Last two lines on screen look bad:

devfs_kernel_mount: failed to find directory '/dev/, 2load of //sbin/mach_init, errno 2, trying /etc/mach_init
Load of /etc/mach_init failed, errno 20

This sound bad to me. I do know that that both particular folder are resident on the boot partition.

I waited awhile and then try to boot Command+V, it did the same thing...

doug-doug the mighty's picture
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Repairing permissions

I booted back up on a n X.2 disk and did a Repair Permissions. Many things are showing up that were not there before. I will try to boot after this is done and will post back with result(s).

Crossing my fingers...

doug-doug the mighty's picture
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still not booting...

The machine repaired permissions for a solid 3 and a half hours. After booting again with command+S, I am still seeing the same two lines as indicated above.

May try to rebott to OS X in morning and run through the repair steps again to dee if anything changes. Probally futile, but it is at least something...

doug-doug the mighty's picture
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Throwing in the towel...

Well, this thing has gotten the better of me. Since the drive is sliced up nicely, I will keep a partition bootable with 9.2.2. I will just try and reinstall X. The silly thing always hangs when I do, any ideas on how to avoid this?

My strategy will be to do a clean install of Jag and deselect all available options. If it does not hang, and I can then actually boot up in Jag, I will then manually apply the packages from the disk. Any advice along the way will be greatly appreciated.

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Try XPostFacto?

Being that your iMac is one of the earliest OS X-supported Macs, Ryan Rempel's XPostFacto utility (available at http://eshop.macsales.com/OSXCenter/XPostFacto/Framework.cfm) might do the trick.

I know XPostFacto is used by lots of folks to install OS X on beige G3s, which are like your iMac in that they have the 8GB partition limitation, and in that they're supposed to work with OS X but often have trouble during installation.

Good luck!

Matt

doug-doug the mighty's picture
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so cool...

Thanks! I will definetetly try this out as my attempts to install on a 4.3 G keep resulting with the screen going black and the power button to yellow part way through the process of installing. Only cure has ever been to reset and retry. This looks like a cool tool! I may actually register it too! Wink

--Dg

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Ooh! The humanity of it all...

Tried to install XPostFacto, when I open it, it says that it will not run on this version of iMac. I will continue researching if there is a way, but will like any help I recieve from those more experienced...

nudge-nudge, wink-wink.

--DDTM

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XPostFacto tech support

I decided against registering this product until I can at least get it to work on my machine. I would hate to cough up $25 just to have someone tell me that my machine won't support this at all.

Incidentally, the machine is:
Rev A (still has stock 233MHz)
512MB RAM
120GHD (boot partition set at 7.5G)
24xCD RW
6MB video RAM

Other assets:
Floppy connector soldered to motherboard (only works when booted in 8.5 or lower
stock 4.3G on hand (wiped clean, but can image with 9.2.2 if needed)
LS120 drive
2G USB drive
two other computers (and all three are networked together)

--DDTM

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still no luck...

I hate to do it, but I may have to crack'er open and pull some RAM. Only thing Ihave not tried. Got two 256MB sticks. Gotta hope for something...

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