rhinosaur
Registered
My home folder disappeared last night. I managed to recover it, but the solution was not by any means permanent and this morning has started to show exactly why it was a bad idea.
An installer called for a restart so the restart commences and the trouble begins after I log-in (note that nothing seems strange at this point - my User picture is still on my log-in screen, the boot process up to this point has been normal). Before the desktop and finder load I get a dialogue telling me that my Wacom driver has failed to load due to an internal error. Dismiss that one then I get one about the system being unable to locate my Home folder that it may have been moved or deleted or kidnapped or something.
My desktop and dock resemble that of a new user - standard desktop pic - practically everything is missing from my dock - none of my start up items load. Column view reveals that my Users folder is intact but inaccessible - it won't even calculate the folder size, much less let me peek inside to see if my Home folder is still there.
So I go to root - but not before getting info on the Users folder and noticing that the permissions are a bit strange (Owner:System, Access:Read&Write; Group:Admin, Access:None; Other:None). Oh, I did run disk utility - the permissions side, over and over and over and over before going root. I also booted up from my second drive with my emergency OS and attempted to run Disk Utility - I could repair permissions, but not repair the disk, it kept telling me it was in use - I don't know how - I was running a seperate OS from a second drive. So standard trouble shooting aside (yes, I did run fsck as well and it said the drive appeared fine) I booted back into my main drive as my main user so I could enable root. Once logged in as root I could finally see the contents of my Users folder and the enclosed Home folder - I grabbed a few GB of work that was not backed up and promptly stuck it on my iPod, just in case. I then repaired permissions again - ran Cocktail and Panther Cache Cleaner.
Still nada - so I'm logged in as my main user now and I get info on my Users folder. In a moment of either sheer stupidiy or desperation I changed the Owner to ME (yeah the User). Log out - log back in and viola - I'm back - my desktop pic, my dock, my start up items still don't load though (mostly menubar items). But things appear to be on the up and up - so I figure if I repair permissions again it will fix things up - no? No.
Interestingly my apps seemed to work fine last night - mail and safari at least, I ran more of the same maintenance commands from Onyx (Cockail wouldn't launch - at this point maybe I've done a little too much maintenance - but it was late). This morning nothing worked - not a single app would launch, the Finder is running and on the surface everything seems functioning until I try to launch an app. It briefly appears in the dock - bounces a few times and then disappears. So I try to manually fix the permissions I fsck'd up for the Users folder - when I attempt to change the owner I get a message about the Finder being unable to locate the folder.
So at this point it would appear that this is a permissions issue with the Users folder - could that keep every app from launching? Would logging in as root and correcting the permissions for the folder be the next logical step? Why wasn't this ever fixed when running the multitude of permission repairs between Disk Utility, Cocktail and Onyx? Is this an issue for DiskWarrior at this point? Would there be any benefit of picking up TechTools? Or is this going deeper than a permissions problem?
OS X 10.3.7 (I'm scared of .8 at this point) PM G4 867, 768 MB RAM
An installer called for a restart so the restart commences and the trouble begins after I log-in (note that nothing seems strange at this point - my User picture is still on my log-in screen, the boot process up to this point has been normal). Before the desktop and finder load I get a dialogue telling me that my Wacom driver has failed to load due to an internal error. Dismiss that one then I get one about the system being unable to locate my Home folder that it may have been moved or deleted or kidnapped or something.
My desktop and dock resemble that of a new user - standard desktop pic - practically everything is missing from my dock - none of my start up items load. Column view reveals that my Users folder is intact but inaccessible - it won't even calculate the folder size, much less let me peek inside to see if my Home folder is still there.
So I go to root - but not before getting info on the Users folder and noticing that the permissions are a bit strange (Owner:System, Access:Read&Write; Group:Admin, Access:None; Other:None). Oh, I did run disk utility - the permissions side, over and over and over and over before going root. I also booted up from my second drive with my emergency OS and attempted to run Disk Utility - I could repair permissions, but not repair the disk, it kept telling me it was in use - I don't know how - I was running a seperate OS from a second drive. So standard trouble shooting aside (yes, I did run fsck as well and it said the drive appeared fine) I booted back into my main drive as my main user so I could enable root. Once logged in as root I could finally see the contents of my Users folder and the enclosed Home folder - I grabbed a few GB of work that was not backed up and promptly stuck it on my iPod, just in case. I then repaired permissions again - ran Cocktail and Panther Cache Cleaner.
Still nada - so I'm logged in as my main user now and I get info on my Users folder. In a moment of either sheer stupidiy or desperation I changed the Owner to ME (yeah the User). Log out - log back in and viola - I'm back - my desktop pic, my dock, my start up items still don't load though (mostly menubar items). But things appear to be on the up and up - so I figure if I repair permissions again it will fix things up - no? No.
Interestingly my apps seemed to work fine last night - mail and safari at least, I ran more of the same maintenance commands from Onyx (Cockail wouldn't launch - at this point maybe I've done a little too much maintenance - but it was late). This morning nothing worked - not a single app would launch, the Finder is running and on the surface everything seems functioning until I try to launch an app. It briefly appears in the dock - bounces a few times and then disappears. So I try to manually fix the permissions I fsck'd up for the Users folder - when I attempt to change the owner I get a message about the Finder being unable to locate the folder.
So at this point it would appear that this is a permissions issue with the Users folder - could that keep every app from launching? Would logging in as root and correcting the permissions for the folder be the next logical step? Why wasn't this ever fixed when running the multitude of permission repairs between Disk Utility, Cocktail and Onyx? Is this an issue for DiskWarrior at this point? Would there be any benefit of picking up TechTools? Or is this going deeper than a permissions problem?
OS X 10.3.7 (I'm scared of .8 at this point) PM G4 867, 768 MB RAM
