I've got a friend who appears to be having a kernel panic on his machine. He's running 10.2 (I don't think he's installed any updates...) and it happend at the grey screen with the apple and the fading, rotating bar icon. It just gives the error and will not go any farther. Here is the text of the error (typical kernel panic style of white text on a black ground over the grey apple screen):
/etc/master.passwd: no such file or directory
/etc/master.passwd: no such file or directory
sh-2.05a# USBF:18.664 AppleUSBKeyboard[0x1957800]::start USB Generic Keyboard @ 5 {0x2211000}
(Noting that it said something about the keyboard I had him try starting without it attached and it gave basically the same message, stopping with sh-2.05a#)
He's a newbie (so am I when it comes to this...
and I'm trying to help him over the phone. I've already had him startup with the OSX disc and run First Aid and it said it completed successfully. Then we tried safe-mode and got the same shortened error (stopping at sh-2.05a#). He was just using the default disk partitioning scheme (one) so I can't have him do the option+startup thing and boot into OS9. I'd reinstall the OS but he doesn't have anything backed-up (like his 100+ digital images from his vacation).
If I can get him to bring it to me I might try booting into single user mode and running fsck, and/or throw his HD into my tower and copy his files before I reinstall OSX.
Anyone have any other ideas?
Thanks for any help!
bondimax
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