Installing BSD on mac os x 10.4.11
 

Hello, I am trying to set up internet sharing on my mac. I have no idea why BSD wouldn't have been installed upon my main installation but it wasn't. That means i cannot set up sharing in the system preferences menu. I have tried putting in my mac os x 10.4 install disc, manually finding BSD.pkg and doing the install but afterwards i still get the same problem and the BSD.pkg is not in library/receipts/ where it should be.

Any help would be greatly appreciated as i have been trying to fix this problem for a long time now.
Thanks,
Heath M

Maybe just do an "archive and install" from the Install CD/DVD being sure to select the option to preserve users.
(See this Apple doc: http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=107120)
This will keep all your user files and just replace the OS X system files and applications. You should run Software Update afterwards to get your system up to date again.
It would be best if you did a backup of your user files first - just in case something goes wrong (even though this isn't very likely).

hmm, i am actually hoping it wont come to that for some very complicated reasons i have. I may end up having to however. Does anyone else have any other ideas first?

anyone have any ideas?

What are your complicated reasons? Perhaps we can help.

Can you be a LOT more explicit about the problem (use a lot of words to describe what you do, and then exactly precisely what you see).

Trevor

Ok. I am running Mac OS X 10.4.11. I have a wifi max wireless Ethernet adapter. I am trying to set up wireless internet from my computer through it. From experience with another mac i have found that in order to do this I need to go into system preferences, click the sharing icon (under internet and network), and click the internet tab in there and choose the adapter i want to share internet through then push start. However, i cannot choose the adapter or push start as it is all shaded out. The reason is stated above it: "Internet Sharing is not installed on this computer. To install internet sharing, install the BSD packages using the Mac OS X Installer."

After searching on the internet i found that the place to find the BSD packages is on the install disc i used to install Mac OS X. I put that disc into the computer and searched through all the folders on the disc until i found BSD.pkg. I double clicked this in order to install. The Mac OS X installer started up and i began the installation process. The installation completed successfully and i quit Installer. Now I again tried starting the internet sharing in system preferences in the same way as i mentioned above. The same problem happened. (also on the internet i saw that if BSD.pkg is installed there will be BSD.pkg under library/receipts/. I checked this and it is not in there)

So there's my problem. I don't know what to try from here. As stated above, for complicated reasons, i am very hesitant to wanting to do the archive and install from the disc.

Any help would be much appreciated.
Heath

here's a wacky theory: your install DVD is flawed. i've NEVER seen BSD fail to install automatically, and your subsequent attempts should've taken care of it. how could one tiny package on an entire dvd be damaged - when everything else is ok? i speculate that there could be other files and features that are corrupt or incompletely installed or similarly missing. hey... it's a big OS.

easy enough to troubleshoot: install Tiger on another disk or partition using the same DVD and compare. or get the BSD pkg from a known good install DVD.

lastly, you shouldn't fear the Archive & Reinstall. just preserve users and it's quick and painless. if that's what you do, i suggest you use the same DVD. if i'm right then the problem will repeat itself.

ok - let the attacks on my brain dead theory begin!

how do i install it on another disk or partition? Do i somehow make a partition on the hdd? I have an external hdd i use also. Should i install it on that? please help, thanks

Thank you very much for the additional information. That should be enough for us to get started.

OK, let's get an independent verification whether or not you actually have BSD installed:

Open up your Terminal (it's in /Applications/Utilities) and copy/paste the following commands in order, hitting Return at the end of each one:

echo "ls -al /usr/bin" > ~/Desktop/MacOSXHintsStuff.txt
ls -al /usr/bin >> ~/Desktop/MacOSXHintsStuff.txt
echo "ls -al /usr/sbin" >> ~/Desktop/MacOSXHintsStuff.txt
ls -al /usr/sbin >> ~/Desktop/MacOSXHintsStuff.txt
echo "echo PATH" >> ~/Desktop/MacOSXHintsStuff.txt
echo $PATH >> ~/Desktop/MacOSXHintsStuff.txt
echo "done" >> ~/Desktop/MacOSXHintsStuff.txt

Now, you should have a text file on your desktop named "MacOSXHintsStuff.txt". Please attach that file to this thread for us to see.

By the way, there's nothing personally identifying in the file, you can open it in your preferred text editor (say, TextEdit) to check if you'd like. It's just showing us the files found in some directories that have a bunch of the apps that the BSD package installs.

Trevor

Ok, here's the txt file.

Once again, thanks for your help.

OK, well good news. You've got the BSD subsystem installed.

Further confirmation, you've got httpd (which is the daemon that provides "Web Sharing") installed.

Hmmm. The bad news is that my theory as to the problem is blown. I thought that maybe your PATH was messed up, making the system unaware of the files. But you've got a valid (albeit extremely basic--the system default) PATH. So, although I can say that your BSD subsystem is installed just fine, I don't really know why your System Preferences > Sharing > Services doesn't think that it is.

Please look in your logs for further clues. You can easily view your logs using the Console app, in /Applications/Utilities. If there are any logs mentioning "Web Sharing", or "http", or "Apache", or anything similar, please attach them to this thread as text files. Otherwise, please just attach the section of your system.log that coincides with you trying to turn on Web Sharing and receiving the failure error message.

Trevor

Below is all i could find. One thing i found interesting is that i found a lot of logs that said:
"Plugin "BSD", Version "1.2.2", is set to load lazily." as showed in one of the txt files below. Is this a clue?
Well, hope you find something

Heath
_____________________________________________________________________________

EDIT: it wouldn't let me upload the txt files for some reason. Here's the text:

_____________________________________________________________________________
directoryservice.server.log:

2008-02-01 11:27:08 NZDT - Plugin "BSD", Version "1.2.2", is set to load lazily.

_____________________________________________________________________________

directoryservice.error.log:

2004-07-10 18:05:07 NZST - Can't unregister node ~BSD Configuration Files~Local since not registered (<---this was repeated many many times but with different dates)

2004-07-12 09:35:49 NZST - Reference 0 error = -14071
2004-07-12 09:35:49 NZST - Reference 0 error = -14071
2004-07-12 09:35:49 NZST - Reference 0 error = -14071
2004-07-12 19:32:28 NZST - Can't unregister node ~BSD Configuration Files~Local since not registered

2004-10-03 17:10:08 NZDT - Can't unregister node ~BSD Configuration Files~Local since not registered (<---- this was also repeated many times with different dates)


2007-07-30 10:41:34 NZST - ServerControl::NotifyDirNodeDeleted SCDynamicStoreCreate not yet available from System Configuration
2007-07-30 10:41:34 NZST - ServerControl::NotifyDirNodeDeleted SCDynamicStoreCreate not yet available from System Configuration
2007-08-03 10:55:26 NZST - ServerControl::NotifyDirNodeAdded SCDynamicStoreCreate not yet available from System Configuration
2007-08-03 10:55:26 NZST - ServerControl::NotifyDirNodeAdded SCDynamicStoreCreate not yet available from System Configuration
2007-12-28 00:48:05 NZDT - Can't unregister node /AppleTalk/* since not registered

_____________________________________________________________________________
Hope it helps

If you were to explain something of what these "complicated reasons" are, they might give us a clue as to what is going wrong.
I.e. if you have done something "complicated" to your system, that may well be the cause of your problems.

Well it was simply because i have A LOT of stuff backed up on my computer and i am too worried about losing it all

Did you perhaps mean that you have a lot of stuff not backed up?
The answer is of course that you should do a backup first. If you have stuff that matters to you and it isn't backed up, then that is a far more important problem than getting Internet Sharing working.

No i did mean it IS backed up on it. But im meaning stuff like home movies etc which is on the computer only.

Archive and Install will not have any effect on stuff like home movies. Perhaps you're not familiar with Archive and Install? Here's Apple's explanation: http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=107120

An Archive and Install is easy and painless, and is the fastest way back to a working system for you.

Of course, you do need to back up your hard drive no matter what you're going to do with it. Periodic backups are extremely important. Just do it.

There are two kinds of people, those who have lost important data because they didn't back up and those who are going to lose important data because they didn't back up. Back up.

Trevor

ok. So if i archive and install i will not lose any apps or anything that i have downloaded? (i will also back it up in case). Also, what about my settings? Will all my system settings be changed?

All of your apps will still be in the Applications folder--Archive and Install only touches (reinstalls) the Apple-included apps and doesn't touch anything third party.

It's slightly possible that one of your apps put something into the folder named "System", even though third party things are not supposed to. In that case, if whatever it put into "System" was required for it to work, then an Archive and Install would temporarily render that app non-working.

However, Archive and Install (as the Archive part of it's name implies) keeps an archive of your old folder named System, so if this were to happen to you, you could retrieve the files out of the Archived System and replace them into your new folder named System.

All of your user preferences are preserved. There might be a few system-wide preferences that are set to defaults, but it takes just a few seconds to fix those.

Trevor

ok, one last thing. How much space is needed to do this?

I'm not sure, but that information is probably in the Apple document that I linked to previously in this thread.

Why do you ask? Are you running short of hard drive space?

Trevor

yes i only have 5gb free at present. But i am currently backing up onto my external hdd.

Yeah, that's pretty full. Although Archive and Install will probably work with that little space, I think you'll be better off clearing some stuff off before doing it. It's always uncomfortable when you're that far down on available hard drive space, so probably try to give yourself more room.

Trevor

ok will do

hmm, problem. After finishing backing up everything i put in the install disc, clicked install Mac OS X and clicked the restart and install button. The computer restarted into the install mode and i chose English as my language and the next step is the problem. A message popped up saying "Mac OS X cannot be installed on this computer" and i was left with the option of restarting into the installer again or starting up normally. I tried again and the same problem happened. So while i was in the installer mode i opened disk utility and tried repairing the disk in case there was a problem, the repair ran and it said it said it fixed one volume. I try the install again, same problem. What is wrong?

Looking back over this thread, I don't see anywhere that you have mentioned which Mac model you have.
Please tell us which Mac model you have - be as precise as possible.
And tell us what Tiger DVD you are using - did this DVD come with this Mac? Or is it the retail DVD? Or where did you get it?

I am using a 1Ghz PPC G4 eMac. I am using the retail DVD that i bought when 10.4 was released

How much space do you currently have available on the hard drive? If you're still short of space, that might be why it won't let you install.

Also, I don't see where you're choosing "Archive and Install". Have you forgotten that? Apple's document (linked to above) tells you explicitly how to do an Archive and Install.

Trevor

I still only have 6.43gb. I'll try free up some more after work today.

I followed the document exactly. Before you can choose archive and install you have to choose a language, that's the only step i was able to do before the message came up.