[jay3ld]

Hello,

First.. Either I am highly unlucky or Apple just likes to do a lot of updates, but the apple discussion boards are always down whenever I have an issue.

I installed the Security update on a Leopard system (10.5.8). After which the bootup process appears to of finished and gets to the point of showing the login screen, however I don't see anything. The mouse shows up and will disappear for a second every once in a while.

Luckily I still have a firewall cable sitting around and another mac with firewall port on it still. So I was able to pull these from the log files off the system.

Does anybody have any suggestions? I found another suggestion to remove some stuff in /Library/Caches with no luck at helping my issue.
I guess I could of just used time machine to pull from a full backup though to reinstall the system, but looking into other options first (It isn't a drastic emergency that the machine is down, just an inconvenience).

system.log

Apr 15 21:50:51 MacOsX2 loginwindow[477]: Login Window Started Security Agent
Apr 15 21:50:52 MacOsX2 SecurityAgent[487]: *** -[NSCFString containsObject:]: unrecognized selector sent to instance 0x131e50
Apr 15 21:50:52 MacOsX2 SecurityAgent[487]: NSExceptionHandler has recorded the following exceptionnNSInvalidArgumentException -- *** -[NSCFString containsObject:]: unrecognized selector sent to instance 0x131e50\nStack trace: 0x39dbc 0x96ff94ec 0x91ddceb8 0x91ddb4b4 0x91ddb748 0x7e738 0x7efd0 0x66140 0x642f0 0x62fc0 0x68300 0x774a4 0xe068 0x14200 0x13f64 0xdb58 0x934988f0 0x91d4626c 0x91d68634 0x90eb4b18 0x90eb493c 0x90eb477c 0x971cb248 0x971cac00 0x971c48a0 0x11e14 0x2db0
Apr 15 21:50:52 MacOsX2 SecurityAgent[487]: NSExceptionHandler has recorded the following exceptionnNSUncaughtSystemExceptionException -- Uncaught system exception: signal 11\nStack trace: 0x39e50 0x92f6a9fc 0xb
Apr 15 21:51:00 MacOsX2 ReportCrash[466]: Formulating crash report for process SecurityAgent[487]
Apr 15 21:51:02 MacOsX2 loginwindow[477]: Login Window - Returned from Security Agent
Apr 15 21:51:02 MacOsX2 loginwindow[477]: AuthorizationRef doesn't have a username (<LoginAuthRefMgr: 0x52fa00>). Exiting.
Apr 15 21:51:02 MacOsX2 com.apple.loginwindow[477]: AuthorizationRef doesn't have a username (<LoginAuthRefMgr: 0x52fa00>). Exiting.
Apr 15 21:51:02 MacOsX2 com.apple.launchd[1] (com.apple.UserEventAgent-LoginWindow[482]): Exited: Terminated
Apr 15 21:51:02 MacOsX2 com.apple.launchd[1] (com.apple.ScreenSharing.server[481]): Exited: Terminated
Apr 15 21:51:02 MacOsX2 ManagedClient[484]: CGSShutdownServerConnections: Detaching application from window server
Apr 15 21:51:02 MacOsX2 /System/Library/CoreServices/loginwindow.app/Contents/MacOS/loginwindow[498]: Login Window Application Started -- Threaded auth
Apr 15 21:51:02 MacOsX2 ReportCrash[466]: Saved crashreport to /Library/Logs/CrashReporter/SecurityAgent_2011-04-15-215052_MacOsX2.crash using uid: 0 gid: 0, euid: 0 egid: 0

secure.log

Apr 15 21:51:02 MacOsX2 loginwindow[477]: Login Window - Returned from Security Agent
Apr 15 21:51:02 MacOsX2 loginwindow[477]: AuthorizationRef doesn't have a username (<LoginAuthRefMgr: 0x52fa00>). Exiting.
Apr 15 21:51:03 MacOsX2 loginwindow[498]: Login Window Started Security Agent
Apr 15 21:51:03 MacOsX2 SecurityAgent[507]: Showing Login Window
Apr 15 21:51:04 MacOsX2 SecurityAgent[507]: An exception occurred = *** -[NSCFString containsObject:]: unrecognized selector sent to instance 0x131ee0

[AKcrab]

You could try a safe boot and see if that gets you in. If it does, I would download and run the 10.5.8 combo update on the machine and see if that fixes anything.

You could also put it in target disk mode and see if you can repair permissions on it. (doubtful that would help)

You could also just reinstall 10.5.. No need to restore from a backup if you decide to do that, it's not going to wipe your users or anything.

[jay3ld]

Oh sorry, forgot to include I tried safe and verbose mode. Neither one works.
Ahh, I thought I would have to pull from backups if I reinstalled. That is good information

Does this look like something I should try to report to Apple? Or something that just went horribly wrong on my end.

[AKcrab]

I'm guessing you're just really unlucky. I wouldn't bother with Apple.

[Thinine]

Boot off a system disk and see if resetting the administrator password, even if it's to the same thing. Perhaps that will kick the security agent.

[jay3ld]

Originally Posted by AKcrab 

I'm guessing you're just really unlucky. I wouldn't bother with Apple.

I must be as 4 times I went to apple discussion boards when I had issues and got a notice that they are offline. Makes me wonder if they shut them off every night (you know when us owls like to be up).

Originally Posted by Thinie

Boot off a system disk and see if resetting the administrator password, even if it's to the same thing. Perhaps that will kick the security agent.

I may just have to byte the bullet and go dig up that Leopard install dvd. But I can try that.

I did try something as a risk. Using Target disk mode I renamed System to System.old and copied the other System off the backup hard drive (using proper switches on the cp command to preserve stuff). Rebooted and the system didn't like that. Instant kernel panics :o. Reverted that.

Too bad Apple doesn't provide a way to uninstall a update if you have time machine setup. Would be a great little feature.

[AKcrab]

Didn't I hear some mumblings about a similar change to Time Machine in Lion? "System Snapshots" of some sort?

edit: Nope.. It was "local snapshots". A time machine backup stored on your internal drive if for whatever reason you don't have access to your backup drive.

[jay3ld]

Well that is a good idea Although unless I physically pick up my machines and take them off site or my drive goes corrupt, I have a external hd hooked up to my airport base station that handles the backups Still that doesn't sound bad for laptop users who may be off site .

Found the disk, resetting passwords didn't work (even reset the system administrator password). So now enjoying the wonderful 2 hour long install process.. That is just to get it up and running.. The combo updater and others I don't know how long will take.

I did submit feedback to apple for including such a feature to revert a backup. /Library/Receipts used to contain recently installed stuff. Now it seems like a plist just holds the data. Too bad as if they just include a file that notes all changes in that update, it will be simple for Time Machine to process it.

[Cold Warrior]

You didn't need a full reinstall. Archive-install (since it's 10.5) would have worked.

[jay3ld]

Well a archive and install didn't work. But out of a hunch I tried pulling the /Library/Preferences/com.apple.loginwindow.plist from another computer and replaced it on this one. It worked. So I guess the file just went corrupt or something.

Oh well... Back to doing updates now that I did the archive and install