Slight Problem that turns out to be big.

[webmastermind]

A little background Information: I lost my Mac OS X CD along with my 10.1 Upgrade, 9.1 and 9.2.1 Upgrade CDs a while ago. So now, I'm left with Mac OS 8 CD, the 9.0 CD that came with my G4 Cube, and whatever I have left on my two macintosh computers, Mac OS X.1.3, Mac OS 9.1, and Mac OS 9.2.1.

Well, I thought it would be awesome to install 8.0 back onto my hard drive. (How stupid was that?) I restarted the computer from the 8.0 CD, but I thought I shouldn't install it anyway. So I backed out, and when I restarted, the dang computer couldn't find OS X nor 9.2.1 for the startup. I tried the 9.0 CD, and the startup disk control panel couldn't find them either, since it wasn't 9.1's Startup disk control panel which can select either systems on the same partition.

By some miricle, I found out how to start up from X with a non-bootable Zip disk carrying the basic components of Mac OS 9.1 copied from my older Performa.

Now to my problem (which I'm sure I have a lot of them.) I'm now miraculously in X, but I can't load up classic. I have 9.2.1 that has been installed from the beginning, the system still can't find it. Classic Startup tells me I need 9.1 to continue. I tried that already, it still can't find a solid system folder, even though I KNOW I have everything in place, with everything I need, with X.1.3, 9.2.1 AND 9.1 installed.

If somebody, ANYBODY is smarter than me, had a similar problem, is laughing at my demise, and/or is a guru at "Unsolved Mysteries," please reach out to a geek in need!

Thanks!

[xchanyazy]

Try this:
bless -folder9 "/Volumes/Mac OS 9/System Folder"
in the terminal. If you do -setOF afterwards, it will have you boot into 9 the next time you restart.

[webmastermind]

Thanks, but it's still not working. This is the message it gives me:


ERROR(bless):Error while get directory ID of /Volumes/Mac OS 9/System Folder
ERROR(bless):No mount point for /Volumes/Mac OS 9/System Folder
ERROR(bless):Can't determine mount point of '' and '/Volumes/Mac OS 9/System Folder'


Dunno what's wrong... :confused: I'm not the best when it comes to Unix...

[xchanyazy]

Hmmm.. try this:
Type bless -folder9 , then drag the OS 9 system folder from the finder to the terminal. Then hit return.

[webmastermind]

It works! It works! MWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAAAA!

Thank you so much! Wow, dragging stuff to the terminal! I'd have never thought of that. :D And that's all it took, too.

Please upload you geniusness to my brain, would you please? Thanks again!

[williamscody]

My problem is similar to the original poster. My symptoms are:
1) Classic will not start up unless I am logged in as root
2) If I'm not root, the "You Need Mac OS 9.1.." complaint appears.

I've gone through the Startup Disk control panel boogie, checked permissions for TrueBlueEnvironment, and still no joy.

I attempted the bless -folder9 suggestion above, but I get:

ERROR(bless):Not run as root, enabling -noexec mode

I su'd to root, and the bless command executed, but still didn't solve the Classic startup problem.

Any ideas?

[hschickel]

My symptoms are:
1) Classic will not start up unless I am logged in as root
2) If I'm not root, the "You Need Mac OS 9.1.." complaint appears.

I had this very same problem on a machine yesterday. I have no idea what caused it. The fix was:

1. System Prefs > Startup Disk. Choose the 9.2.2 folder you want for Classic.
2. Boot into OS9.
3. Control Panels > Startup Disk. Choose OSX
4. Boot into OSX.
5. System Prefs > Startup Disk. Choose the 9.2.2 folder you want for Classic.
6. System Prefs > Classic. Start Classic.
7. System Prefs > Startup Disk. Choose the OSX folder.

I have no idea why this worked. I would love to see a command line way to solve this as it comes up periodically when machines are unplugged for a while with the Startup Disk set to boot them in OSX. (I'm sure there's more to this as Apple ships the machines this way.)

Hugh

[williamscody]

Hugh - thanks for the quick reply. My problems started when I physically relocated my OS X hard drive to the "master" drive position in my G4 tower. The OS X drive is divided into 3 partitions: OS X, OS 9, and general purpose. All partitions are HFS+. I also have a second HD mounted directly above the "master" HD.

All I did to solve the problem was unplug the second HD, and re-boot. I then went through the System Preferenced startup disk "bless" routine, and voila, I could start Classic.

I suspect that there's some Unix "sensing" going on that determines the drive's physical device address, and physically moving the boot HD to another location upset Unix.


Bill

[hschickel]

I suspect that there's some Unix "sensing" going on that determines the drive's physical device address, and physically moving the boot HD to another location upset Unix. That would make sense. When I see this its usually with machines that I have imaged off a master and then shipped to another location.

Hugh