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I left my computer decoding several yenc files overnight only to find that one of them corrupted or something and caused the creation of a 75+ gigabyte file which filled the entire hard drive (startup disk). When I checked the computer this morning there was a the black box error warning that the startup disk had been filled and the computer would need to be restarted. I tried to trash the file before I restarted, but during the trashing the system froze.
I rebooted and am greeted with the grey apple on white followed by the black box telling me "you need to restart your computer".
I removed the offending hard drive (SATA on a G5 tower) and installed a new system on one of my other internal Hard drives. It boots fine off the new system so I put in the old hard drive with hopes of booting off the new system and deleting the offending file from the old drive but the computer prefers the old drive as the boot drive and will not boot from the new system if the old system is present.
Any ideas on what I can do? Thank you.
EDIT: should also mention that this is my work computer so wiping the drive is not an option. Also, my login is password protected, I don't know if this further monkey-wrenches things.
Target-Disk Mode to my laptop brings up the same black box (with power icon) "restart" warning onto the laptop and freezes the laptop.
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start with the option key held down, then you can choose your startup disk
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While option allowed me to select the new system hard drive, once selected, I still got the "restart" black box. It seems just accessing the drive (not necessarily it's system) is causing the error.
Is there something I could type in if starting with the "s" key down? Some UNIX command line. I tried deleting the whole directory in which the offending file resides, but it says the directory doesn't exist (even thought it will list it - the directory that is, it won't list the directory's contents).
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if you hold Apple-option-shift-delete during the boot process it should force the computer to boot from a secondary system folder.
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how about booting with your DVD?
give it a minute, it takes a long time to boot with a DVD
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If you boot in single user mode (hold the 's' key?), only the startup disk should mount. Then, you can mount the problem disk with 'mount'. (The exact command will depend on your system).
That would be a good time to fsck that disk.
At that point, you should be able to cd to the drive and remove whatever you want.
Easiest thing to do might just be to boot from CD and pave over the disk, then restore from your last backup.
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I'm running 10.4.8 on a G5 tower.
I have been able to get into single user mode from the "New" sys drive. The old system drive is called "Macintosh HD". I have fscked the "New" sys drive.
If I try to cd over to the old drive, the deepest I can get is "/Volumes/Macintosh HD". If I ls at that point, all I get is ".autodiskmounted" and that's it. As though the disk actually is NOT mounted. I haven't touched UNIX in freaking twenty years and for the life of me cannot come up with the correct phrasing to mount "Macintosh HD". Any ideas?
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As a side note, all this single user mode has got the fans going full force - anything to be concerned about?
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[quote Glued]I'm running 10.4.8 on a G5 tower.
I have been able to get into single user mode from the "New" sys drive. The old system drive is called "Macintosh HD". I have fscked the "New" sys drive.
If I try to cd over to the old drive, the deepest I can get is "/Volumes/Macintosh HD". If I ls at that point, all I get is ".autodiskmounted" and that's it. As though the disk actually is NOT mounted. I haven't touched UNIX in freaking twenty years and for the life of me cannot come up with the correct phrasing to mount "Macintosh HD". Any ideas?
I suspect it will be something like
mount -t hfs -w /dev/disk2s9 /Volumes/Macintosh\ HD
but the actual device (in this case disk2s9) will depend on where in the device chain the disk actually lives. The above is (I think) ID 9 on SCSI bus 2.
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Raz, are the spaces after -w, disk2s9 and before HD intentional or should I ignore those?
