Empty System Preference

whyre

whyre

*nix Geek


This is interesting - I was emptying just a handful of documents (28) from my Trash and the whole system became sluggish, a dialog came up and said the trash couldn't be emptied because it was inuse, but didn't remove the empty trash bar and the system was non-responsive so I shut it down manually.

Upon reboot, three things I noticed after logging in:

  1. No clock in the upper right hand corner
  2. Spotlight won't search anything
  3. I have nothing under system preferences to look at these two settings

So I'm thinking something or several somethings in my Library is corrupt/missing. This is the first time I've had something this interesting happen to my mac so I'm more interested in learning exactly how to fix it than I am dismayed that it occured. ::ha::

Any suggestions or anything I can run on my end to give further information?

p.s.

Also noticed that while TextEdit will run, it will not actually display anything, can't create a new document or display existing ones. This should be a fun one. :D
 
Hm.. interesting.
I assume you are in 10.4.10 ..
Download the 10.4.10 Combo Intel update from Apple and install that. That would most likely fix the missing bits and pieces. (would be nice to know what caused it too).
 
Thanks. Manually downloaded and installed combo update PPC 10.4.10. No change after the reboot, System Prefences is still in its stunted form, and TextEdit is still far too shy. Any other ideas? :)
 
Aww, thats no fun - I do that with windows. I'm gonna continue to dig around and see if I can learn a thing or two. I should at least find out where the settings for the system preferences are with enough luck. I'll post if I find anything of interest. :D
 
Corrupt files. TextEdit.app and System Preferences.app.

Noticed in the console.log everytime I executed TextEdit:

Code: 
2007-08-29 21:38:02.854 TextEdit[9990] *** -[NSKeyedUnarchiver initForReadingWithData:]: incomprehensible archive (0x72, 0x65, 0x74, 0x75, 0x72, 0x6e, 0x20, 0x70)
2007-08-29 21:38:05.823 TextEdit[10388] *** -[NSKeyedUnarchiver initForReadingWithData:]: incomprehensible archive (0x72, 0x65, 0x74, 0x75, 0x72, 0x6e, 0x20, 0x70)

the pid of course changing each time - so obviously, something got borked in the innards of TextEdit.app. So, I googled about getting a replacement TextEdit and found a lovely little app Pacifist, which I used to restore my TextEdit.app. I figured I'd try it on System Preferences.app too and voila! I now have a healthy System Preferences. I'm about to run the combo updater so both applications get updated and then see where I go from here. :cool:
 
That seems to have fixed it, only issue left is a broken spotlight.

Code: 
#mdutil -E /
/:
        Error, no index found for volume.

#mdutil -i on /                      
/:
        Could not set indexing status for volume.

So I'll look around a bit and start a new thread if need be, but the case of the missing System Preferences is closed. ;)
 
Good that those other things work without A&I.

In Spotlight System Preferences, drag your main hard drive to the privacy pane, and after a few seconds remove it from there. That should force it to reindex everything.

or in terminal to force index everything

sudo mdutil -E /

Do you have Shapeshifter or anything else from Unsanity that could influence it?
 
Have you used Disk Utility to verify/repair the disk and repair permissions yet? If not, I recommend doing so ASAP. You can repair permissions from the boot volume, but to repair the boot volume itself, you'll need to boot from something else, like your installation DVD (which has Disk Utility on it for just such an occasion).
 
Aye, I've tried the mdutil command, both to erase to force a reindex and attempts to turn it on/off via -i but I get the errors listed in my previous post. I'm unable to drag or add anything into the privacy tab of spotlight preferences.

I have repaired permissions from my install DVD a few times inbetween a couple of the steps I've taken - mostly stuff dealing with /private.

I followed directions I found on MacFixIt's Spotlight Troubleshooting but didn't get anywhere. As far as I can tell, whatever process that should be running that actually does the indexing or the meat of spotlight is not running.

I also downloaded Spotless to see if that could give me any insight. It told me the Master Index Status was not running. According to their page, spotlight is really a process called mds of which I can find nothing running by that name via:

Code: 
#ps -acx | grep mds

So now I need to research mds, see where it gets launched and see if its missing/corrupt as well, or if some dependancy/launch mechanism is broken. I love learning stuff like this. :)
 
What I've found so far:

Wiki's Spotlight page - mds is launched by Launchd. Launchd can launch daemons listed in the LaunchDaemons folders underneath Library.

Code: 
# ls /System/Library/LaunchDaemons
bootps.plist
com.apple.KernelEventAgent.plist
com.apple.atrun.plist
com.apple.dashboard.advisory.fetch.plist
com.apple.dnbobserver.plist
com.apple.dnbvolunteer.plist
com.apple.mDNSResponder.plist
com.apple.nibindd.plist
com.apple.periodic-daily.plist
com.apple.periodic-monthly.plist
com.apple.periodic-weekly.plist
com.apple.portmap.plist
com.apple.syslogd.plist
com.apple.usbmuxd.plist
com.apple.xgridagentd.plist
com.apple.xgridcontrollerd.plist
com.vix.cron.plist
comsat.plist
distccd.plist
eppc.plist
exec.plist
finger.plist
ftp.plist
login.plist
nmbd.plist
ntalk.plist
org.isc.named.plist
org.postfix.master.plist
org.xinetd.xinetd.plist
printer.plist
shell.plist
smbd.plist
ssh.plist
swat.plist
telnet.plist
tftp.plist

#ls /Library/LaunchDaemons

#
So I don't see a com.apple.spotlight.plist anywhere. I'll see if I can find the original copy with Pacifist.
 
I have no com.apple.spotlight.plist (or anything else that looks like it's related to Spotlight) in that folder.

mds should be located at:
/System/Library/Frameworks/CoreServices.framework/
Frameworks/Metadata.framework/Versions/A/Support/mds
(Excuse the forced line break.)
 
Alright, I do have an mds in that folder, but sudo running it results in an instant kill.

Code: 
$  sudo ./mds
Killed

$

and it's not a "service" that service recognises.

Code: 
$ sudo service mds start
No such service mds
$

So I'll see if I can find some more info on getting mds to run - or at the least, replace this binary with an original from the Tiger DVD.
 
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