Somehow a software update managed to stop my Mac Mini from booting. It was stuck in the light gray background and dark grey apple logo screen. Rebooting didn’t help. I was worried.
You can hit ⌘V to boot in *verbose* mode. I saw something like this:
Bug: launchctl.c:3557 ... Running rack on the boot volume... Executing fsck_hfs ... launchctl: Please convert the following to launchd: /etc/mach_init.d/dashboardadvisoryd.plist
I waited for a few minutes but nothing happened.
You can hit ⌘⇧S to boot in *single user* mode. I ran `/sbin/fsck -fy` manually and got the message `The volume ... appears to be ok.`
You can hit ⇧ to boot in *safe* mode. I did that (it takes a long time to start up) and ran Disk Utility, verifying the disk. The output looked very much like the fsck output. Next, I tried repairing disk permissions and rebooted.
Wohooo… problem fixed!
Today, I was wanted to format an external hard disk in order to give it to a friend of Claudia’s. When I ran Disk Utility, I got an out of memory error while partitioning the disk. Confused, I tried the command line:
Pyrobombus:~ alex$ diskutil partitionDisk /dev/disk2 1 MBR ExFAT EXTERN R Started partitioning on disk2 Unmounting disk Error: 12: POSIX reports: Cannot allocate memory
Whaat?
#Mac
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⁂
Did you try “sudo diskutil …” on the command line?
– Harald 2011-07-12 11:48 UTC
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Yes.
– Alex Schroeder 2011-07-12 12:25 UTC
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Grrrr. iPhoto is also giving me the spinning rainbow wheel – something is seriously wrong with this box. 🙁
– Alex Schroeder 2011-07-12 12:41 UTC
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Going to backup the iPhoto libraries and then I’ll try rebuilding them. 🙁
– Alex Schroeder 2011-07-12 12:52 UTC
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Hm, my wife installed the update. My wife can now look at her iPhoto library after “repairing” it (using her account). I cannot look at her iPhoto library (using my account) → spinning wheel of rainbow death. Now I “repair” my iPhoto library (using my account) and try to open it → spinning wheel of rainbow death. `W00T` I ask myself and go back to her account. And lo and behold, I can open my iPhoto library using *her* account. I “repair” my library (using her account). Switch back to my account → spinning wheel of rainbow death.
This software update is terrible.
– Alex Schroeder 2011-07-12 20:27 UTC
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Downloading iPhoto Library Manager and setting the permission for the library to Read and Write for the owner (me), the group, and others, did not help either.
I tried “Rebuild the iPhoto Library Database from automatic backup” and got a totally borked library. iPhoto would start, but all the events had the same image, all the faces showed nothing, clicking on one of them crashed iPhoto… Bad idea!
Time passes.
Ok, I restored the borked version from backup (before any “repair” attempts) and suspecting some ownership issues, I ran the following:
rsync -av /Volumes/Backup/Extern/Pictures/Alex\ iPhoto\ Library /Volumes/Extern/Pictures/Alex\ iPhoto\ Library chown -R alex:alex /Volumes/Backup/Extern/Pictures/Alex\ iPhoto\ Library chmod -R ugo+rw /Volumes/Backup/Extern/Pictures/Alex\ iPhoto\ Library
Result: *fixed it*. I can open my iPhoto library.
My thinking is that with Claudia running the software update, and the two of us sharing the same iPhoto library resulted in some ownership issues.
– Alex Schroeder
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I am having similar problems. How can i change the permissions in just a couple of folders (my iPhoto ’11 crashes when i choose Preferences and it comes up with this error MALLOC_LARGE 00000000380b3000-0000000038208000 [ 1364K] rw-_rwx SM=PRV > **TEXT 000000008f002000-000000008f7a5000 [ 7820K] r-x**rwx SM=COW _System_Library_Extensions/GeForceGLDriver.bundle/Contents/MacOS/GeForceGLDriver
– ToddJ 2011-10-16 15:02 UTC
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It would seem that your problem is related to a graphics card an it’s driver, not the permissions of your library.
– Alex Schroeder 2011-10-16 21:32 UTC