[joeswell]

I gave my wife a G4 1.25ghz iMac for Christmas. It worked fine for two days. This morning it starts up after the "boing" with a black screen with these white letters:

/etc/master.password: No such file or directory
-sh-2.05b#

Is this the terminal? What would cause this? I have restarted the computer several times from the CD's, repaired disk, repaired permissions, chosen the correct start up disk, reset passwords, run the Apple Hardware test, and thought many rude thoughts. Everything checked out "OK" except my rude thoughts.

My next move will be to erase the disk, reformat and reinstall all the software. It was only two days old so no files were lost

[Gary Kerbaugh]

Originally posted by joeswell:
I It was only two days old so no files were lost

   I'm sorry but that's incorrect. if you count the softlink, /etc -> /private/etc a file, which UNIX does. You are in "Single User Mode", which is an emergency repair mode. It's not Apple's Terminal.app but it is pure UNIX and be careful what you do because you are root in the mode so you can hose anything you want.

   Below, "execute" means to type the line I provide verbatim and then hit the return key. You should execute the following commands, only the last of which is pertinent to the current problem. (but note the output of fsck and run it multiple times until no errors are reported)

/sbin/fsck -y
/sbin/mount -uw /
/bin/ls /etc /var /tmp

For any of the symlinks reported missing in the last command, execute the corresponding one of the following:

ln -s /etc /private/etc
ln -s /var /private/var
ln -s /tmp /private/tmp

Then execute:

/sbin/shutdown -r now

and you should be back in business.

[joeswell]

Thanks for your reply. Everything seems to "OK" for now.

I don't know anything about Unix or even why the computer started up that way. It was only two days old. The only things I "did to it" were update the System to Panther (It came with OS X 10.2.8 installed - Panther upgrade disks were included in the box) and run software update.

Thanks so much for sharing your knowledge and experience. I can't tell you how tankful I am for your help... in fact, now my wife thinks I'm a real computer genius.