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Repair broken symbolic links after Norton Utilities problem System

I know, I should have read the web discussions first, but we "expert users" tend to think we know everything better anyway, and so I just ran Norton DiskDoctor to clean up my OS X start volume. The result: After the next reboot, a black screen with a messy error instead of my crisp "Panther" desktop.

I quickly found out what went wrong: Mr. Norton did not actually "repair" the BSD (U*ix) flags of the symbolic links in the boot partition's root directory, but changed them to files. As a result, my Mac could't find it's settings in the /etc/ directory any more, simply because there was no directory any more. Although the boot process ends in a shell prompt, you can't do much there, because the file system is still mounted as "Read-Only" - and no way to go to the Finder. Now what to do?

Simple: Boot the installation CD. Select Terminal from the Apple menu, and type a few simple commands. First, since now the CD is your boot disk, you need to navigate to the right disk. Type:

% cd /Volumes/BOOTDISKNAME

If you are unsure about the name of your boot disk, you can just type cd /Volumes/ and the first few letters of the disk name, and then press Tab. This should usually give you the right result. Alternatively, you can do:

% cd /Volumes
% ls
to get a list of all the partitions and disks which are mounted at this time. Next, you need to delete the broken links:
% rm etc
% rm tmp
% rm var
And finally, you just create them again:
% ln -s private/etc etc
% ln -s private/tmp tmp
% ln -s private/tmp tmp
Voilá, the system boots again!
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Repair broken symbolic links after Norton Utilities problem | 8 comments | Create New Account
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Disk Warrior
Authored by: paulio on Jan 19, '04 12:13:52PM
I recommend Disk Warrior. I use it in my work all the time and I've never had it mess up a disk. http://www.alsoft.com/DiskWarrior/

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Disk Warrior
Authored by: _merlin on Jan 19, '04 07:55:15PM

DiskWarrior does mess up disks when it comes across file names that don't fit a MacOS encoding that it knows. I have had it mess up names in the following languages (it renames all the files to Untitled):

Vietnamese
Hindi
Kanada
Inuttitut

I know it works with the following languages:

English and other western European
Russian, Serb and possibly other Cyrillic
Chinese (both traditional and simplified)
Japanese

So be careful if you have a disk with file names in some other language!



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Repair broken symbolic links after Norton Utilities problem
Authored by: DavidRavenMoon on Jan 19, '04 04:45:30PM

What version of Norton did you use? I use it weekly and have never had a problem like this. In fact the one time I couldn't boot from my OS X partition, NDD found my system folder was not blessed, and fixed it. :)



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Repair broken symbolic links after Norton Utilities problem
Authored by: TigerKR on Jan 20, '04 03:31:41AM

Another vote for no problems in US-English with many computers (some very odd and hacked configurations) and versions of Norton Utilities over the years (including through 10.3.2 and NortonUtilities8.x).



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Repair broken symbolic links after Norton Utilities problem
Authored by: RobertStroud on Feb 16, '04 12:30:48PM

The same thing happened to me just a couple of days ago. However, I was running an old version of Norton Utilities (6.0.3), and I later discovered that Symantec's web site specifically warns against this...

Document ID:2004011414522811
Last Modified:01/26/2004

Do not run Norton Utilities 7.0.x or earlier on Mac OS X 10.3.x (code named Panther)



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How did you get to Terminal to effect repairs???
Authored by: fabrice002 on Mar 01, '04 01:51:48PM

Well, I read this about 2 hours too late. :>( Was running OS 9 and made the mistake of running Norton Disk Doctor 6.0.3, with exactly the result you described.

But your solution didn't work (for me) since10.3 and 10.1.5 Installer discs don't give access to Terminal - or anything else in the Apple menu.

Where did you find Terminal??? Is there any workaround that could be done while booted in OS 9?

Thanks for any more info!

---
-fabrice



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Repairs after Norton screws with Panther
Authored by: Martin Williams on Apr 10, '04 10:48:10PM

Have a look at this Apple document:
http://), docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=106908
- here, can restart in single user mode, ie not from disc

I tried this, got computer going again.
But couldn't print/update software, as evident permissions problem with private/tmp

Found this hint (thanks!) - and I decided I'd try the Apple instructions, adding line about deleting/creating tmp [I hoped! - only my second foray into Terminal type stuff; but followed the way the Apple lines re two other files written]
so, before the last line (with "grep" - if you read document, you'll understand), I added lines to delete then create tmp, following the way Apple's lines about deleting and creating var and temp were written: added tmp after seeing it listed above.
Seems to be working so far. But I should warn my only "programming" is cut n paste, so be leery lest I'm wrong. (The fact I'm writing this, just printed something and updated some software suggests not too bad.)

Oh, and an apparent slowdown I had - due to fragmentation or directory trouble - seems to be solved; but maybe should get something in place of Norton now!



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Repair broken symbolic links after Norton Utilities problem
Authored by: amedico on May 04, '04 09:26:23AM
mount -o remount,rw /path


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