[Big Mac]

I'm having a significant problem with my iBook, which is running 10.2.3; hopefully someone knows something about the issue. Here's the rundown:

1) Played Classic demo of UT(2000) days ago and received a KP. No log provided. . .

2) Fscked drive, everything seemed to perform properly for the next few days. . .

3) Burned a few CDs with my external EZQuest and iTunes. . . Then I wanted to burn a backup Broodwar CD with Charis Discribe (which my burner came with). Right before this, the Finder started complaining it couldn't mount a blank CD because the HD was full, which it wasn't. (OS X Finder noted about 750MBs free, but OS 9 Finder later showed around 630MBs)

4) Switched CD/DVD prefs to prompt user to open Discribe when a blank CD would be inserted. . . Successfully test burned and then burned a backup Broodward CD using disc to disc copy. I'm afraid this could be to blame because afterward the fit hit the san. . .

Next time I used my iBook, every application took a substantial amount of time to launch. We're talking about 30 seconds to open Terminal or iTunes. I turned top on and found that launching programs were using only as much as 10% processor time. Additionally, fix_prebinding was open but only using less than 5%.

I restarted the machine into single user mode. It took five minutes to get to the prompt, and when I fscked it took so long I finally gave up around ten minutes later.

I booted with my OS 9.2 disk warrior CD. And I was horrified when the startup 9.2 network extension beach ball took far too long and then turned into a tiny bomb icon! Frantic, I pulled out my 256 MB module and then booted from Disk Warrior again. This time it worked. Unfortunately, it turns out that tiny bomb was really caused by my CD burner, which I had turned off but left connected.

OS 9 seemed to be performing normally, so I turned my attention back to OS X. It seemed to boot ok but it took longer than expected to launch the Finder. Now applications were taking a bit more processor -- maybe as much as 30%, but that still isn't normal. I noticed that fix_prebinding was again at work, this time taking as much as 80% of the processor. The weird thing is, the fix_prebinding daemon would be utilized after multiple launches of the same application.

The upshot? Since the prebinding is failing, it seems to be my hard drive. But I do know that there was something else wrong which was seemingly cured by pulling the RAM, because at least the machine is semi-functional now. Should I reinstall OS X? Or should I nuke the entire drive? Has anyone experienced this before?

[Big Mac]

No one has any ideas?

[things]

Originally posted by Big Mac:
No one has any ideas?

Use Toast to burn

Update to 10.2.6 0r 10.2.8

Doesn't work then reinstall os

[wataru]

600-700MB is NOT enough free space for OS X to function properly. Free up some space on your disk.

By the way, OS 9 reported less free space probably because you have VM enabled.

[Big Mac]

Thank you for the replies. . . I got my new 256MB DIMM this afternoon, and now my system is running much better but still not quite normal. Fix_prebinding still constantly comes up, but at least now iTunes launches in three bounces again.

It's funny that you mentioned freeing up space, wateru. I tried running DiskWarrior (the non-native version that worked to resuce my iBook's drive just a short number of months ago), and it came up with an interesting error. It permitted rebuilding the drive, but it said that I need 66MB free to ensure there wouldn't be directory damage. I canceled the operation that took about three hours, trashed 73MBs from my drive (since I thought it asked for 66MB more than 750) and waited another three hours. It gave me the message again. So I opted not to perform the rebuild. I'm concerned that this error message is indicating there's some hidden, significant directory damage, because I've never run into problems with DiskWarrior before -- even when my disk was once FUBAR.

Now I'm going to reinstall the OS and see if that works out.

[Big Mac]

Well here's an update... After putting in a fresh 256MB module and reinstalling OS X.2.3, things are performing pretty normally. However, I'm still having problems with prebinding. Most Apple applications are fine, and that's to be expected since they're installed by Installer and are therefore properly prebounded. But most every other application I have envokes fix_prebinding every time it's launched. Can someone explain to me what this means? I've been trying to use the update_prebinding command, but I've been unable to do so.

[gmpierce]

Originally posted by Big Mac:
Well here's an update... After putting in a fresh 256MB module and reinstalling OS X.2.3, things are performing pretty normally. However, I'm still having problems with prebinding. Most Apple applications are fine, and that's to be expected since they're installed by Installer and are therefore properly prebounded. But most every other application I have envokes fix_prebinding every time it's launched. Can someone explain to me what this means? I've been trying to use the update_prebinding command, but I've been unable to do so.

Not that it'll help you, but I've been having similar prebinding problems on my iBook for the last 2 (at least ) months. In my case, its been hitting Apple apps (e.g. Finder and Mail). I enabled some of the dyld debug environment variables, and it looks like its some type of clash with the Quicktime 6.3 framework libraries.

I reinstalled Quicktime 6.3 and the 10.2.6 combo updater with no success. I've pretty much bagged it until 10.3 since I'll be doing a clean installation.

[Big Mac]

Thank you for sharing your experience, gmpierce. I bet you're probably as annoyed over it as am I. I'm wondering, though, how did you enable the dyld debug variables? It sounds like that could help me get a better understanding of what's going on with my iBook.

[gmpierce]

Originally posted by Big Mac:
Thank you for sharing your experience, gmpierce. I bet you're probably as annoyed over it as am I. I'm wondering, though, how did you enable the dyld debug variables? It sounds like that could help me get a better understanding of what's going on with my iBook.

You'll need to use the Terminal in order to set a couple of environment variables plus start the problematic apps.

In the Terminal window, do the following:

setenv DYLD_PREBIND_DEBUG yes
open /Applications/Mail.app (or other problem application)

The important info produced by the linker ends up in /var/tmp/console.log. In my case, it was identifying that the Quicktime 6.3 framework had "slid" during load.

As a side note, I've since upgraded to Quicktime 6.4 and the problem has gone away.

[Rychiar]

i personally never let my hardrives go over the 2/3s filled mark, its just bad for the system and drive. right now i jave 93 gigs free on my panther drive and 48 on the jag