SL 10.6.8 - Fsck fails - have "single user" r/o filesystem access

[Ak-RakRak]

Hi,

 

I have a Hackintosh running Snow Leopard (only just upgraded to 10.6.8) that has decided to go belly up when I decided to reinstall voodooHDA. I suspect that I repaired permissions just prior to running voodoohda setup without rebooting first. I tried voodooHDA as I had just updated Final Cut Pro X via software updates and had lost sound except for some crackling. The system will boot to single-user mode command line, but trying to make the disk writeable with fsck -fy only results in a kernel panic with fsck as the relevant thread. I can ls the files on the drive but am unable to copy them to a newly formatted 1Tb external USB disk because I cannot make the system writeable. Naturally, voodooHDA-uninstall runs but can't do anything to a readonly disk.

 

I have also tried to run diskutil from single user mode using launchctl load ...etc. and starting diskarbitration but that failed with a panic.

 

Has anyone any ideas on how to get the system to boot successfully once again? It has been extremely stable until now, no doubt a factor in my complacency in not having an image available to rebuild it and my original USB stick installer is not playing nice. I do have the Snow Leopard upgrade disk though and could rebuild the original USB boot installer if needed (athough it will need a 50 mile round trip). Is there a possibility of doing an OS in-place reinstall without a reformat?

 

A look at the Fsck_hfs log and the security.log seem to show system install issues as the last entries.

 

System specs;

 

GIGABYTE GA-EP45-UD3P Intel P45 ATX Intel Motherboard

Intel Core 2 Quad 3.0GHz LGA 775 95W Quad-Core Processor

Axle GeForce 9800 GTX+ 512MB 256-bit GDDR3 PCI Express 2.0 x16

Patriot Extreme Performance (2 x 2GB) DDR2 800 (PC2 6400) Dual Channel Kit Desktop Memory x 2 (8GB all up)

Western Digital Caviar Green WD10EADS 1TB SATA 3.0Gb/s 3.5" Internal Hard Drive

Asus CD/DVD Burner Black SATA Model

PCI Copper Gigabit Network Adapter

 

This runs through a KVM that controls the Hackintosh and the PC through a Viewsonic monitor and Logitech mouse and Microsoft PS/2 keyboard. I sometimes use the Apple keyboard directly connected to the Hackintosh when i need access to the special keys.

 

Whoops! On rereading the above I seem to have forgotten my manners.

 

I would appreciate any help anyone can give me on the above, please. But please be nice - I'm new here! If anyone can help please let me know what further information you need.

 

Best wishes to all for the New Year.

[Ak-RakRak]

... Well, I'm catching up on my Unix.

 

I thought maybe the 10.6.8 update might have put AppleHDA.kext back in Extensions but I've looked at my Extensions folder and have VoodooHDA.kext in there, no AppleHDA.kext, so my hopes of fixing the prob by deleting AppleHDA are dashed. Strangely, I tried a find / *.kext but must have slipped with the wildcard and the system started returning all the files on the volume, the listing failed eventually (after listing many, many files) with an error 2 and showing find as the referring thread. Isn't error 2 an addressing error?

 

I'm beginning to wonder if I have a hardware failure somewhere, next step will be to run memtest, I guess. Have arranged to rebuild a USB bootable next week and am thinking of running Applejack from that, then perhaps DiskWarrior. Those after cloning the HDD to another drive and working on the clone.

 

Any ideas anyone?? Am I missing something obvious?

[Ak-RakRak]

Ok, memtest86+ on an Ubuntu 12.04 LiveCD overnight showed no problems with RAM, so I guess I can rule RAM out of the possible hardware probs. Now I'll have to wait until I can recreate my USB boot disk before I go any further.

 

Would it encourage assistance if I uploaded the -v panic screen??

[Ak-RakRak]

All better now. Made a new bootable USB stick, with Applejack and Carbon Copy Cloner. Copied original HDD to an image file on the spare HDD. Ran Diskutil from USB stick. Repaired permissions and bingo. GUI back, fsck_hfs runs without a hitch. Permissions did not seem to show much except the usual Java stuff.

 

It was interesting to note that having saved an image of the drive and fixed the original drive, I cloned the "fixed" drive but the clone would not boot and KP's with fsck error. Once the permissions were repaired it would boot.

 

I checked the Extensions folder to ensure AppleHDA.kext hadn't appeared somehow, but Voodoohda.kext was the only HDA kext there. Reactivated azalia in the BIOS and voila, sound had returned.

 

Hopefully, this saga may help someone else .....

[Gringo Vermelho]

This is why you should always keep a separate partition, DVD or flash drive with an OS X installer on it. Sometimes you have to learn the hard way.

[Ak-RakRak]

Thanks, but I did have a flash boot USB stick, it just wouldn't work. No doubt this was because my system was so stable for so long something corrupted on the stick over the year or so - cosmic rays perhaps . The lesson is more appropriately, MAINTAIN a Hackintosh-bootable image on a stick or other partition, ie. check it now and again and have it periodically refreshed.

 

I still am not any the wiser what happened. It would seem that the GUI just would not start due to a permissions issue that was stopping fsck so the OS chucked a wobbly. Anyway, all better now and I am back to learning the ins and outs of Final Cut Pro X and have refreshed my limited knowledge of the Unix (OS X flavor) command line.

[alaskantraveler]

Stick a bootable copy on a DVD.

Or stick your bootable install DVD into your drive, let it boot, and choose utilities instead of install when you get to that point. You can repair your permission and your operating system on the harddrive, then.

 

And unless you scratch the DVD or something, it will never go bad.

 

When you go into Single Mode:

 

type /sbin/fsck -fy and let it run (twice if it comes up with fixing errors)

then type /sbin/mount/-uw / and you will have read/write acces to your harddrive.

 

With applejack, run that in Single Mode instead of fsck or after it. just type in applejack auto reboot and let it run. May go as long as 15 minutes or so. but it will fix your permissions and os.

[Ak-RakRak]

thanks Alaskantraveler (hey, I have Aussie friends who did just that recently - Fairbanks, Petersburg, Juneau, some glacier or other, hopping around by mail plane).

 

Yup, I'll make up a bootable DVD - as you say, I should have done that originally. I knew I could get r/w access to the HDD with mount -uw from the command line on the original HDD but didn't know what damage I might be doing if the filesystem was corrupted, since running fsck caused a KP.