Ticket Options

Question Details

TICKET ARCHIVE -> Os X Won't Startup

NinaD - Oct 1, 2005 - 1:50 pm

My OS X gets stuck in start up. I'm not sure what version of X I'm running.

I've tried launching in safe mode.

I hold down the restart button, after the chime I hold down the shift key and release it once the little gear starts spinning. After a while the blue screen with the spinning color wheel appears and then after another long spin session, the log in box appears and I enter my information and click Log In and then the little color wheel starts spinning and it never goes anywhere. I've also tried holding shift while I click log in and get the same result.

I'm sure I know what I did to cause the problem (I moved some system fonts). Both from the Library:Fonts folder and the System:Library:Fonts folder.

Is there anything I can do or am I doomed?


Thanks.

JFG - Oct 1, 2005 - 4:39 pm

Hello Nina,

I don't think you are doomed yet and I'll do my best to assist you.

It is very useful that you know what you did wrong. You have now discovered first hand that, contrary to vintage Mac OS, it is not a good idea to touch anything in the OS X System folder. Fortunately, there's a way out of this mess.

You will need to get your fingers dirty with some Unix commands, and you won't have easy access to a browser, so I suggest you print out my answer before starting the procedure.

Restart your computer while holding the Apple and "S" keys. Lots of gobbledygook will scroll on your screen until you see a little "#" sign at the bottom. Welcome to Unix. Now type these commands exactly as I wrote them:

/sbin/mount -uw /
cd /System/Library/Fonts
ls

You should see a list of whatever remains of your system fonts. Not counting Asian fonts, there should be at least Courier, Geneva, Helvetica, Keyboard, LastResort, LucidaGrande, Monaco, Symbol, Times and ZapfDingbats. Make a note of the missing ones, and for each of them do the following.

1) If you remember where you moved them to, execute the following commands (I will assume that you moved them to your home directory called Nina, please change the path to reflect your actual home directory name and font path):

cd /Users/Nina/
ls

Now you should see the moved fonts -- let's move them back where they belong.

mv Courier.dfont /System/Library/Fonts
mv Geneva.dfont /System/Library/Fonts
etc...

If you feel lazy, there is a faster command which moves all the fonts together:

mv *.dfont /System/Library/Fonts

But this really moves all the fonts in that directory to the system fonts directory, so if you have hundreds of fonts here, you may prefer to move the system fonts individually.

2) If you don't remember where you put those fonts, try this:

find / -name Courier.dfont -print

This will search your whole disk for the Courier font. Hopefully the other ones will be in the same place, so you can "cd" (change directory) to the appropriate folder and move the fonts as explained anove.

Finally, type "reboot" to restart the system cleanly, hold your breath but don't hold any keys this time...

To thank you for your patience reading until there, here's a trick: when you type long directory paths at the command line, you can auto-complete folder names by hitting the Tab key, e.g. to type:
cd /System/Library/Fonts
you only have to type:
cd /sylifo
If there are several matching names, the system will show them to you and let you disambiguate by typing the next characters.

Hope this helps, let me know how it goes.

JFG

JFG - Oct 1, 2005 - 4:43 pm

Hello again Nina,

Seems the text box on macosx.com ate up some of my words, so here's the change. Where I wrote:
cd /sylifo
you should read:
cd /sy<tab>li<tab>fo<tab>
How does that look now?

JFG