Lost Finder
 

When I turned on my powerbook the other day it started up normaly until it got to the point just before the finder comes up. Instead of the finder darwin comes up and asks for my login and password. I can't get to the finder. I don't know what to do.

This posting sounds like a troll - but just in case you are genuine, I'll bite.
It seems that you are used to powering up and getting to the Finder without having to supply a username & password. But now, for some reason, it is asking you for username & password. What is the problem - don't you know the username & password ? (You picked these when you created the account when you first started with OS X.)

By the way, it is generally frowned upon to post the same question in more than one section (you posted this in UNIX-General & System as well as here in UNIX-Newcomers).

A troll?? I posted in different sections because I wasn't getting any help. No, It boots in darwin/bsd...I can't get to the finder. I have tried starting up off of a os9 cd and a firewire drive with no luck, although I don't know what I would do when if I got to os9, maybe re-install osX??

more details needed
 

You're going to have to slow down and explain exactly what your system setup is and what you are expecting to happen and what you get.

E.g. when it gives you the Login dialog, what happens after you fill in your username and password?

(edited to add the following)
Okay - I just realized what you must be talking about. I guess you are saying that you get the textual "Login" prompt ("console mode") rather than the Login dialog.
If so, go ahead and enter your username and password as prompted for, and then type the command:
exit
You should then get the Login dialog.

Once you get into the Finder, bring up System Preferences and look at "Accounts". You should be able to set it up to log in automatically.
There is a possiblity that the reason you are getting into console mode is a corrupted preference file.

boot off the OS X install CD

I'm running a Pismo 400, With Jag. The computer, much like every other mac, is supposed to turn on load the system and go to the finder. Well Mine loads the osX system and right before it is supposed to go to the finder a black screen comes up and says "Darwin/BSD (My-Computer.local.) (console)" And login and password. After I type in my login and password it says "Welcome to Darwin!" and then "[My-computer:~] theweaze%" I don't know what to do after that. I have used the osx cd to repair permisions and have ran /sbin/fsck -y about 8 times. I still does to this console and I can't get to the finder.

exit
 

I added some more comments to my previous posting (above) so you might want to go back and read what I added.
The gist of it is that you should type:
exit
after you get the "Welcome to Darwin" message.

After I login I typed exit, it says loggin off. Then goes to a blue screen and thinks a minute then goes right back to welcome to darwin.

Hello,

Try typing in:

tail -40 /var/log/system.log

Or if that doesn't work:

/usr/bin/tail -40 /var/log/system.log

And see if the cause for not starting up the finder is there. Could be that for some reason loginwindow is shorting out and dying, or maybe the finder.

You could just boot off the CD and reinstall the OS though, check the logs just in case first.


v

I saw this happen...twice
 

The TheWeaze1 problem, I saw it happen in one of my friend's computer.

But, by typing exit he went back to his normal login screen. It happened twice to him. We never figured out why his computer (an iMac G4 800 MHZ) was starting straight into Darwin.

The first tail worked and it brought up a lot of text. Too much to type. Everything looks ok until it gets to notronmissedtasks could not be prebound, then a cron[376]:(eileen) ORPHAN (no pasword entry), then a config[103]: executing /usr/sbin/DirectoryService, then a Error reading directory, then a crashdump terminated by signal 11, then login authorization failed, then a authorzationRef doesn't have a username, then a :exit to console, then a loginwindow connection closed; closing server. The last line says /usr/libexec/fix_prebindind: fix_prebinding quitting for now. I don't like the error messages...

Hello,

Any chance you can type up exactly what the errors are? You don't have to worry about the ones that say prebinding, that's a normal error.

My guess is that it's on auto-login and for some reason it's failing. Was it set up to auto-login before? or did it go to the login window?

If it's auto-login maybe we can change (or delete) the prefs to see if it'll take you to the login window.


v

This is going to take a while...
OK the first sign of error is... (all of these have "My-Computer" before then)
ConsoleMessage:Starting Apple File Service
cron[396]: (eileen) ORPHAN (no password entry)
xinetd[383]: Error reading included directory: /etc/xinted.d [line=11]
xinetd[383]: 383 {init_services} no services. Exiting...
(then the norton prebinding stuff)
configd[105[: executing /usr/sbin/DirectoryService
/usr/libexec/crashreported: crashdump terminated by signal 11
loginwindow[390]: Login authorization failed (-60005)!
loginwindow[390]: AuthorizationRef doesn't have a username (<LoginAuthRefMgr: 0x3072f0>).

loginwindow[390]:exiting to console
WindowServer[176]: loginwindow connection closed; closing server.
/usr/libexec/fix_prebiding: fix_prebinding quitting for now.
theweaze%

I never had to type anything in to get to the finder before.

Hello,

If you didn't have to type i guess it was set to autologin, and for some reason that's failing. I don't understand the xinetd error, but the others may be because your pref (or whatever holds the autologin info) is corrupted.

Type in the following to check the loginwindow pref:

cat /Library/Preferences com.apple.loginwindow.plist

After "<key>lastUserName</key>" should be <string>yourusername</string> and the UID should be 501 (i'm assuming you're the first user on this box).


v

I tyoed that in and it says:
cat: /Library/Preferences: Is a directory
cat: com.apple.loginwindow.plist: No such file or directory

Should've been:all in one line, only [space] after cat

errors
 

The xinetd error would seem to be a complaint that it can't read the directory /etc/xinetd.d which is the directory containing the xinetd config files. (One of the services started up by xinet is login.)
Weazel: Could you please try doing the following command and tell us the results:
ls -l /etc/xinetd.d
There should be around 20 files, each with permissions -rw-r--r-- and owned by root wheel.

The error from cron would seem to a complaint about a file (possibly in /tmp ?) which is owned by a user id which doesn't exist anymore on the system.
Weazel: What's the history of this machine? Were there any users that got deleted? Does "eileen" mean something to you?

The 2nd .plist worked, it says..

<key>RetriesUntilHint</key>
<integer>3</integer>,
<key>SHOWFULLNAME</key>
<true/>
<key>autoLoginUser</key>
<string>theweaze</string>
<key>lastuser</key>
<string>Restart</string>
<key>lastuserName</key>
<string>theweaze</string>
<key>lastUserUID</key>
<integer>502</integer>

then...
</dict>
</plist>

hayne: Yes, Eileen used to own my powerbook. I typed it and got 19 lines of -rw-r--r--. All saying -rw-r--r-- 1 root wheel "number" jul 14 2002 "something"
here are "number" and "something"
168 auth
145 bootps
155 chargen
158 chargen-udp
145 comsat
155 daytime
158 daytime-udp
149 echo
152 echo-udp
143 exec
166 finger
158 ftp
145 login
144 ntalk
142 shell
146 telnet
177 tftp
149 time
152 time-udp

two things to try
 

Here's two things you can try. Try first one and then the other, not both in one try. The first one will only work if you have Jaguar (OS 10.2) installed.

1) Safe Boot:
Type the command:
reboot

This will restart your Mac. But before it restarts, hold down the Shift key and keep on holding it until you (hopefully) get a message about "Safe Boot". Your computer should proceed to come up and you should get to the Finder.


2) Remove your com.apple.loginwindow.plist preferences file.
Type the command:
mv /Library/Preferences/com.apple.loginwindow.plist ~/Desktop

(The ~ is the symbol on the top left of the keyboard, to the left of the number 1 key.)
Now restart by typing the command:
reboot

The safe boot still takes me to the console.
I typed in the mv line, it says:
override rw-r--r-- root/admin for /Users/theweaze/Desktop/com.apple.loginwindow.plist?

I wasn't quite sure what to do so i typed in "y" and it says:
mv: rename /Library/Preferences/com.apple.loginwindow.plist to /Users/theweaze/Desktop/com.apple.loginwindow.plist: No such file or directory.
The reboot command doesn't work either.

Hello,

Try this:

And to move the plist file use sudo too:



v

The first one says: The privileges have been partially verified or repaired on the selected volume.
The second one says: No such file or directory

find out which file or directory doesn't exist
 

Okay, that last error mesage is rather interesting. We'd like to find out which file or directory it is referring to when it says "no such file or directory". Could you please type in the following commands and carefully copy the results here?

ls -ld /Library/Preferences
ls -l /Library/Preferences/com.apple.loginwindow.plist
ls -ld ~


And going back to the results of the repairPermissions command, look back in the output of that command to see if there are any error messages. If it says "privileges have been partially verified or repaired" then it seems that some privileges have not been fixed. We want to find out which ones and why not.
If the output of repairPermissions has scrolled off your screen, you need to do it again and be ready to copy down errors as they scroll by.

By the way, if you have a digital camera available, it would be very useful if you took photos showing the output of these various things we have been asking you to do and posted those photos to a web site we could access. We might notice something in the details that are difficult for you to type in.

When I enter the first command I get:
Verifying permissions on disk
Group differs on ./private/var/run/utmp, should be 0, group is 1
Owner and group corrected on ./private/var/run/utmp
The privileges have been partially verified or repaired on the selected volume.

When I type the command, I get:
ls -ld /Library/Preferences:
drwxrwxr-x 25 root admin 850 Feb 3 15:03 /Library/Preferences

ls -l /Library/Preferences/com.apple.loginwindow.plist:
No such file or directory (that was typed with a space before the "-l" and a space before the "/Library"

ls -ld ~:
drwxrwxrwx 19 theweaze admin 646 Jan 17 11:33 /Users/theweaze

fsck
 

Hmm, so now it seems like your ls -l com.apple.loginwindow.plist file is gone even though you got an error message "no such file or directory" when you earlier tried to move it.
Just for curiousity, please type the following:
ls -l /Library/Preferences/com.apple.loginwindow.plist.bak

But back to trying to fix your machine.
You said earlier that you had run 'fsck' several times.
Please tell us details about how you ran this and what the results were. Did you run it in single-user mode? Did you repeat it until it said that the "disk appears to be ok"?

When I typed that I got:
No such file or directory.

I don't know what single-user mode is. The /sbin/fsck -y doesn't appear to do anything in the console that I am stuck in now. I rant he /sbin/fsck -y by holding Apple+S at start-up and it works there. I ran it about 5 times and it never said that the disk appears to be ok. I gave up after a while.

Apple+S gets you into single-user mode.
If fsck is not able to repair the disk - i.e. it still finds problems after multiple passes, then you have major disk issues. There is little point in continuing to try to get anything else working (e.g. getting Finder to come up) if you have disk problems. You need to fix the disk before doing anything else. If fsck can't fix it, one option is to use commercial software like DiskWarrior (I wouldn't recommend Norton from what I've heard). Otherwise, erase the disk and start over.

Ouch, ok thanks for the help