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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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