[butterfly182]

So, I have a PB G4 15 inch 1.67 GHz which will no longer boot up.
It kernel panics at the apple screen (before the spinning bars).
It also panics when trying to boot from an install dvd.

I've been having problems with hibernating and with the power adapter for a while, and I know that there is some filesystem corruption which can't be repaired by disk utility.

Booting in verbose mode, I can see that the panic happens after attempting to mount the hard drive, however booting in single user mode is successful and at least some files are intact.

I'd like to use target disk mode to back up my hard drive.
It will boot into target disk mode fine, but whatever computer I connect it to immediately kernel panics.
I've tried connecting to an intel mac mini and a MBP.
Does anyone know what could cause this, and how to work around it?

Any suggestions will be greatly appreciated.

[ibook_steve]

You're saying that the machines you attach the PB to in TDM kernel panic as soon as you connect it? Weird. Not sure what to tell you there. Have you had any other problems with those other machines? Attaching a Firewire drive should not cause a KP. Maybe try another power outlet or power strip. Perhaps there is a problem with the quality of your power. I can't think of anything else.

Steve

[butterfly182]

What seems to be happening is that corruption of the filesystem on the PB leads to a kernel panic whenever the volume is mounted rw.
(either by the PB itself or when it is in target disk mode and is automounted by another computer).

I've found a description by someone with a similar problem here:
http://ask.metafilter.com/mefi/25180

Right now I'm trying to figure out how to get my mac mini to mount the PB filesystem read only, which hopefully will allow me to make a backup.
If anyone knows how to do this, please let me know.
I've read that you can edit /etc/fstab to configure the behaviour of diskarbitrationd for particular volumes, but I'm at a loss as to how to find the UUID for my PB hard drive.

P.S. I've also tried booting from a Diskwarrior cd, with the same results.

[butterfly182]

so, things seem to be working now.

by hiding /usr/sbin/diskarbitrationd I was able to prevent my mini from automount the PB in target disk mode.
I was then able to use hdiutil to attach the disk readonly and make a backup.

After using pdisk to reinitialize the partition table, I was able to boot off the tiger install disk and installation seems to be proceeding normally.