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Removal of hostconfig file will prevent OS X booting
Authored by: BraindeadMac on Feb 25, '03 11:48:28AM

Samba does not delete or replace the /etc/hostconfig file. The SMBSERVER in the /etc/hostconfig flag may be changed by the Sharing preference panel. If you enabled samba via the sharing pref panel and your /etc/hostconfig file was lost, then you should definitely report this as a bug to Apple. If you edited /etc/hostconfig yourself, then you probably screwed something up or your editor had a bug.

/etc/hostconfig is called by a number of the boot shell scripts to read configuration parameters; those scripts (e.g., /etc/rc.common) expect hostconfig to exist and will not proceed without it. I suppose they could be made more robust so that they do not hang when /etc/hostconfig doesn't exist but this is unusual.

Repeat, Samba, does not, does not, alter /etc/hostconfig--don't start myths like this!

The /etc/hostconfig file can get munged; mine did so under 10.1, probably from file corruption, and made the machine very unstable.



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Removal of hostconfig file will prevent OS X booting
Authored by: leenoble_uk on Feb 25, '03 12:05:23PM

Just to clarify...
It was identifiably SAMBA which removed the hostconfig file. As indicated it was not the default System Preference pane which caused the issue but the third party version with more sharing options which I'd had installed since 10.1. I can't find the exact distribution I was using but I believe it was at one stage connected to Xamba as found at Sourceforge. It consists of a PreferencePane called Samba Sharing and an application called Samba Sharing Config Tool. There are forum messages relating to this issue there.

I merely point out that this file *IS* written to by the system and that *POTENTIALLY* you *MIGHT* corrupt the file if power failed when you changed your settings. *SHOULD* you at any stage be greeted by the #sh prompt after a reboot you *MIGHT* want to see if your hostconfig file is missing, damaged or truncated.

Personally I wasn't aware you could do anything from that prompt and I'll be taking note of the above instructions. I just won't be storing them on my Mac. I'll keep a written copy somewhere.

[robg: you might just want to delete my submission and replace it with the above hint]



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Hint's fine...
Authored by: robg on Feb 25, '03 12:10:49PM

I think the hint and related comments make a good archive and discussion, and I see no need to replace what you sent in. I did, however, add some emphasized text around the "third party" bit in the original hint...it seemed clear to me when I read it, but apparently it's not as clear as I thought it was!

-rob.



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Removal of hostconfig file will prevent OS X booting
Authored by: BraindeadMac on Feb 25, '03 02:29:18PM

No, it was identifiably the 3rd party software, not samba, which hosed the /etc/hostconfig file. The samba software itself never reads the contents of /etc/hostconfig. Instead the value of SMBSERVER is parsed from /etc/hostconfig at boot by the startup script /System/Library/StartupItems/Samba/Samba. The point is that one shouldn't blame samba for this--let the developer of the 3rd party implementation know about it--but it's simply wrong to start blaming widely used, stable product (SAMBA) when it isn't the fault.



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While we're on the samba topic...
Authored by: tcurtin on Feb 25, '03 02:37:05PM

Does anyone know if Apple fixed the finder-hang when servers (like samba, ftp, etc) suddenly disappear due to dropped or changed network connection? While I've put off upgrading to 10.2.4, this problem continues to ruin my day on a regular basis, and if 10.2.4 fixes it, that alone will make the download worth the time.



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While we're on the samba topic...
Authored by: weird_ed on Feb 25, '03 05:21:19PM

This is still a problem in 10.2.4.



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While we're on the samba topic...
Authored by: ihafro on Feb 26, '03 07:44:26PM

Yes and no. The Finder will hand, but after 2-3 minutes, it will time out and show you an error message. You just have to wait. Now, the question is, how do you change the timeout period to something more reasonable, like 45 seconds. Or better yet, don't tie up the Finder with just the reconnect task. DUH, it's a multi-threaded, multi-tasking OS.



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