Deleted tmp symbolic link can cause PPP problems

Jan 20, '03 10:06:24AM

Contributed by: aroubini

Ever been using someone elses computer while you're at their house, and have something go terribly wrong, adamantly protesting that you didn't do anything? Well watch out for this culprit!

A strange bug has popped up surrounding the installation of iSync and Safari that corrupts and/or deletes the "/tmp --> /private/tmp" symbolic link, rendering a ppp connection failure upon dialup, stating that "there is an incorrectly set ppp option" or something like that. After looking at five option panels controlling the ppp dialup for three hours, and trying to find a single preference file that could be replaced from a backup, the only alternative was to give up until the morning.

Thank heavens for the discussion groups! I don't know how many people are aware of how useful the discussion groups are on Apple, but they are invaluable!

Navigating to "Discussions > Mac OS X > Getting Started and General Use > Getting Online > 10.2.3: Suddeny "Incorrect PPP option"" Quickly found a common issue found by many, and after spending time reading the threads discovered that all you really had to do was recreate the symbolic link, and you're off and running. The missing symbolic link had prevented the ppp dialup from writing a file to the "/tmp/ppp.log" path. Simple yet devastating.

All the thanks in the thread went to someone under the screename of "M Compass", and they trully deserve recognition for something that could have resulted in a reinstalled system and hours of anguish and resentment.

 % sudo ln -s /private/tmp /tmp
A good example of why in the absense of any answers, always check the Apple discussion groups (assuming you can find a computer that does have an internet connection.

[Editor's note: For those of you who were bitten by the Safari/tmp bug, you've probably already found this fix, but I'm noting it here for posterity's sake ... just in case!]

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