UPDATE - Computer help request...

"RallyDarkstrike - Fan of 2-cyl FIATs, Eastern Bloc & Kei cars" (rallydarkstrike) 06/20/2020 at 13:57 • Filed to: Apple, OSX

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UPDATE - Fixed it! Dumb error on my part! I was using Caja (Linux Mint MATE’s File Manager) to access the OSX drive as SuperUser, which was fine, but the window I had open for PASTING the copied files to my external drive was running as the NORMAL user, so it gave the ‘no permission error’! Ran Caja as SuperUser for both windows and all is copying now! Thanks for all the help guys! :D

Usually I am doing the helping as I do computer repair on the side, but this has me stumped...

First off, I’m not usually an Apple guy. Lady gave me an older iMac that fails to boot that she needs fixed. I’ve !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! and no dice. I don’t want to reinstall the OS using that option in the Recovery Menu as I don’t want it overwriting her files, so I am using a Linux Live USB to back up her files first...

....thing is, I can see and access them through my USB Linux boot, but if I try to copy them off the Mac’s hard drive onto my external hard drive, I just get a permission denied error. I AM trying to do the copy as Root through the file manager, so I would’ve thought that would do the trick....but no.....

Anybody have any idea how I can get her stuff off of here safely before I try the wipe.....

....OR....I thought I read somewhere that the Recovery Option for reinstalling OSX DOESN’T overwrite files or programs...can somebody confirm that, because if that’s the case, I wouldn’t even need to back anything up?

Thanks Oppo! :)

facw > RallyDarkstrike - Fan of 2-cyl FIATs, Eastern Bloc & Kei cars 06/20/2020 at 12:59

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Hmm weird...

Does the file copy work if you do a chmod and/or chown?

Any possibility of doing the OS X install to a different drive, then connecting up the old drive as well and copying from within OS X?

SBA Thanks You For All The Fish > RallyDarkstrike - Fan of 2-cyl FIATs, Eastern Bloc & Kei cars 06/20/2020 at 13:10

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I’d do a raw sector copy FIRST, so you have a clone of her drive no matter what happens.

something like... with her drive on sda1 and your target destination as sdb1

sudo dd if=/dev/sda1 of=/dev/sdb1 bs=4096

How does it enumerate if you do an fdisk on it?

sudo fdisk -l

Chariotoflove > RallyDarkstrike - Fan of 2-cyl FIATs, Eastern Bloc & Kei cars 06/20/2020 at 13:13

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Doing a reinstall of the OS from recovery mode shouldn’t hurt the data on the disk. I would still backup, as you’ve tried to do, but since you can’t, you should still be okay.

I’m not entirely sure how you’ve been doing this so far (I read your post to Apple support), so forgive me . The system can’t boot itself, so you’re booting with a Linux USB stick and accessing the Disk Utility options that way? I would first try booting in recovery mode, and if that didn’t work, I would boot from a MacOS USB volume and reinstall.

PyroHoltz f@h Oppo 261120 > RallyDarkstrike - Fan of 2-cyl FIATs, Eastern Bloc & Kei cars 06/20/2020 at 13:14

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Full disclosure, I’m not at ALL a Mac guy.

Pull the drive   and put it in another computer, shouldn’t be any permissions issues at that point, unless the drive is encrypted...r ight?

SBA Thanks You For All The Fish > RallyDarkstrike - Fan of 2-cyl FIATs, Eastern Bloc & Kei cars 06/20/2020 at 13:15

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BTW, remember that “dd” is a very powerful command. It will just brute force read and write sectors... so the destination drive should be CLEAN and “expendable”. But, assuming you have privileges by invoking SUDO you could get around any privilege bits set on the source drive.

Anyway, that’s the form I always use for a clone-a-drive situation.

RallyDarkstrike - Fan of 2-cyl FIATs, Eastern Bloc & Kei cars > facw 06/20/2020 at 13:20

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I know some iMacs require proprietary screwdrivers and such to get into, so I can’t get the old drive out I don’t think as I don’t have the right tools.

Those commands might work...? But my issue is, if I run those commands, does that mean if I use the Recovery Menu’s ‘Reinstall OSX’ function, are the permissions for those files going to be screwed up to access them from the renewed OSX the same way they are screwed for me in Linux atm because I changed the permissions...?

Also, I AM Linux guy, but do very little through Terminal so you’d need to remind me how to use those commands again...

RallyDarkstrike - Fan of 2-cyl FIATs, Eastern Bloc & Kei cars > Chariotoflove 06/20/2020 at 13:22

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I had tried everything I could do in the Apple Recovery Menu at boot....none of those options worked to fix the system, so I booted from a Linux Mint LiveUSB I have in order to access the MacOS hard drive in the computer to copy the files to an external backup drive before I did the LAST remaining option I had left in the Recovery Menu, i.e. a ‘reinstall’ but I didn’t want to try that as I was worried it would overwrite her data...

BUT...as you say, it SHOULDN’T affect the data...though does that mean email accounts in Mail should work fine too? She has a POP account setup in the Mail app, she tells me, that she would really rather not lose as she uses a lot of saved emails for reference apparently...

RallyDarkstrike - Fan of 2-cyl FIATs, Eastern Bloc & Kei cars > PyroHoltz f@h Oppo 261120 06/20/2020 at 13:25

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Oh, I would love to do that but....but I am leery because Ap ple makes everything proprietary and the last iMac I worked on required special tools just to get to the drive (it was a previous-gen iMac to this one).

Drive is not encrypted AFAIK. Also, I don’t think putting it in another computer would work. Windows can’t read MacOS filesystems natively....Linux CAN, but removing the drive from it and plugging it into one of my Linux computers would be the exact same as the way I am booting from a LiveUSB on the same iMac right now.

RallyDarkstrike - Fan of 2-cyl FIATs, Eastern Bloc & Kei cars > SBA Thanks You For All The Fish 06/20/2020 at 13:25

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TBH, I’ve almost never used DD (I don’t do Terminal stuff much at all) as I mostly use CloneZilla via liveUSB boots when I want to do disk cloning.

RallyDarkstrike - Fan of 2-cyl FIATs, Eastern Bloc & Kei cars > SBA Thanks You For All The Fish 06/20/2020 at 13:29

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The MacOS hard drive in the iMac isn’t failing, it checks out fine (I checked via GSmartControl)

results of that command:

T he 3.8GB sdb is my Linux LiveUSB, and 320GB sdd is my backup drive....I wasn’t going to be trying to clone the disk, but merely copy the user folders off the MacOSX disk.

PyroHoltz f@h Oppo 261120 > RallyDarkstrike - Fan of 2-cyl FIATs, Eastern Bloc & Kei cars 06/20/2020 at 13:38

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Yeah, proprietary fasteners are a PITA.

As for booting through a LinuxUSB, while that is likely the same as using a separate computer, isn’t it possible that the Mac BIOS is restricting access to the onboard SATA ports? Pulling the drive and booting through another system could give different access.

Good luck, however you decide to proceed!

ttyymmnn > RallyDarkstrike - Fan of 2-cyl FIATs, Eastern Bloc & Kei cars 06/20/2020 at 13:39

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ttyymmnn > RallyDarkstrike - Fan of 2-cyl FIATs, Eastern Bloc & Kei cars 06/20/2020 at 13:40

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Getting to the HD of an i Mac is a PIA.

tpw_rules > RallyDarkstrike - Fan of 2-cyl FIATs, Eastern Bloc & Kei cars 06/20/2020 at 13:44

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Try booting the iMac into single user mode. It will come up with a console instead of a pretty apple logo and you may get more detailed hints as to why it’s failing to boot.

You can launch a terminal from recovery mode too and copy files that way if Linux’s HFS+ driver is being cranky.

The most exotic thing you need to get into an iMac is some suction cups to pull the display glass off its magnetic mounts. From there it’s just a few sizes of Torx bit . Check the iFixit guide for your particular model and see if you feel confident.

Chariotoflove > RallyDarkstrike - Fan of 2-cyl FIATs, Eastern Bloc & Kei cars 06/20/2020 at 13:44

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The mail should be fine. Of course, I’d feel better if the messages were still on the server, and you could just re-download them in the worst case scenario, but we work with what we are given.

I don’t know if there could be any issue booting with your Linux Live USB, because I’ve never used anything like that. First thing I would do is try booting with a bootable MacOS installer and see if for some reason that changes my ability to access the hard disk and save stuff. I don’t know why it should, but I would try it.

If you manage to get her out of this, make sure she understands the value of a Time Machine backup setup!

RallyDarkstrike - Fan of 2-cyl FIATs, Eastern Bloc & Kei cars > PyroHoltz f@h Oppo 261120 06/20/2020 at 13:45

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Naw, it’s permissions issue. Intel iMacs may be proprietary , but they are designed to dual-boot if you wish, so the BIOS wouldn’t block anything like that I don’t think.

RallyDarkstrike - Fan of 2-cyl FIATs, Eastern Bloc & Kei cars > ttyymmnn 06/20/2020 at 13:45

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You’re telling me...

RallyDarkstrike - Fan of 2-cyl FIATs, Eastern Bloc & Kei cars > tpw_rules 06/20/2020 at 13:46

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I didn’t try Terminal in Recovery mode, but the Disk Utility kept giving me an error when trying to mount the disk.

I was hoping I could get the copy working from a GUI File Manager so it would be FAR less of a hassle than having to do it all through Terminal...

RallyDarkstrike - Fan of 2-cyl FIATs, Eastern Bloc & Kei cars > Chariotoflove 06/20/2020 at 13:50

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Sadly that link won’t help as it’s running 10.9 Mavericks, so it’s from before the time of El Capitan, etc... I tried downloading and booting three different Mavericks ISO and DMG files that I found online using various methods to create a bootable USB and upon trying to boot from them on the Mac just get the circle with a line through it (i.e. a ‘No Parking’ style circle s ymbol) of doom that tells me it won’t boot from my bootable drive...

tpw_rules > RallyDarkstrike - Fan of 2-cyl FIATs, Eastern Bloc & Kei cars 06/20/2020 at 13:51

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More info:

The most exotic thing you need to get into an iMac is some suction cups to pull the display glass off its magnetic mounts. From there it’s just a few sizes of Torx bit. Check the iFixit guide for your particular model and see if you feel confident.

If you have a firewire or thunderbolt cable, you can start the mac up in target disk mode, plug it into another computer through one of those interfaces, and it will then appear as an external hard disk. This will let you image the disk without opening it up.

Clonezilla also works on macs IIRC and has a raw DD mode which won’t try to interpret the file system structures. Disk utility should have an option as well. I would strongly recommend imaging the disk before proceeding if Disk Utility is complaining about a corrupt file system.

What kind of error is it showing though?

SBA Thanks You For All The Fish > RallyDarkstrike - Fan of 2-cyl FIATs, Eastern Bloc & Kei cars 06/20/2020 at 13:57

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Yeah, the partitions look good. You could pull the user files off the sda2 partition, first, so those are safe... then Re-install. Either the boot sectors are scrambled.. or boot files corrupted... both of which would be fixed with a Re-Install.

I was just trying to suggest ways to defeat the “privileges” issue, get a clone of her user files, then let Apple do the heavy lifting of fixing the boot files.

RallyDarkstrike - Fan of 2-cyl FIATs, Eastern Bloc & Kei cars > tpw_rules 06/20/2020 at 13:58

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I have solved the file backup problem (see the update in my original post!)

SO I should be good now....dumb n00b error on my part...

RallyDarkstrike - Fan of 2-cyl FIATs, Eastern Bloc & Kei cars > SBA Thanks You For All The Fish 06/20/2020 at 13:58

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I got it...STUPID error on my part (read my upd ate in the orig post)....thanks for the help though! :D

SBA Thanks You For All The Fish > RallyDarkstrike - Fan of 2-cyl FIATs, Eastern Bloc & Kei cars 06/20/2020 at 14:00

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Oh, it’s scary powerful... but I’ve never seen it fail to copy files, no matter what the state of the file privilege s on the source drive. It really doesn’t care about any of that— it’s literally a raw sector clone.

Overall, I’d just suggest getting a backup of her files, then letting Apple do the hard work of fixing her boot files.  Restore files and you’re done.

SBA Thanks You For All The Fish > RallyDarkstrike - Fan of 2-cyl FIATs, Eastern Bloc & Kei cars 06/20/2020 at 14:02

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Sounds good... one of the things I don’t like in these Linux builds is that you DO spend a lot of time (and extra keystrokes) working around these privileges...   Glad you got it.

RallyDarkstrike - Fan of 2-cyl FIATs, Eastern Bloc & Kei cars > SBA Thanks You For All The Fish 06/20/2020 at 14:12

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Thanks, so am I! Haha!

RallyDarkstrike - Fan of 2-cyl FIATs, Eastern Bloc & Kei cars > SBA Thanks You For All The Fish 06/20/2020 at 14:14

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I should just be able to use the Recovery Menu’s own ‘Reinstall MacOS’ function after this...I just wanted to make sure her files were safe first.

If only EssExTee could be so grossly incandescent > RallyDarkstrike - Fan of 2-cyl FIATs, Eastern Bloc & Kei cars 06/20/2020 at 14:21

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Linux R dumb

Chariotoflove > RallyDarkstrike - Fan of 2-cyl FIATs, Eastern Bloc & Kei cars 06/20/2020 at 14:38

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It’s not hard to get legit files of an older os.  But fortunately you don’t need it!  I love the dumb errors. Those are the easiest to fix!

RallyDarkstrike - Fan of 2-cyl FIATs, Eastern Bloc & Kei cars > Chariotoflove 06/20/2020 at 14:42

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Only if you figure out your dumbness that caused the problem :P

RallyDarkstrike - Fan of 2-cyl FIATs, Eastern Bloc & Kei cars > If only EssExTee could be so grossly incandescent 06/20/2020 at 14:43

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Naw, I honestly should’ve noticed sooner...not Linux’s fault in this case, but my fault!

If only EssExTee could be so grossly incandescent > RallyDarkstrike - Fan of 2-cyl FIATs, Eastern Bloc & Kei cars 06/20/2020 at 14:46

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But copying files shouldn't be this complicated

Chariotoflove > RallyDarkstrike - Fan of 2-cyl FIATs, Eastern Bloc & Kei cars 06/20/2020 at 14:51

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Better than someone else pointing it out to you. 

PyroHoltz f@h Oppo 261120 > RallyDarkstrike - Fan of 2-cyl FIATs, Eastern Bloc & Kei cars 06/20/2020 at 14:54

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Thanks for posting the solution, well done!

bison78 > SBA Thanks You For All The Fish 06/20/2020 at 15:38

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sudo dd if=/dev/sda1 of=/dev/sdb1 bs=4096

That command copies a single partition, not a drive.

Use a higher value for “bs” unless you want to copy to take forever. I usually use something like bs=64M

Also, if you suspect a bad h ard drive, you probably need to throw in some options to keep going after read errors and to fill in such as “conv=noerror”.

RallyDarkstrike - Fan of 2-cyl FIATs, Eastern Bloc & Kei cars > If only EssExTee could be so grossly incandescent 06/20/2020 at 16:19

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If anything, it’s Apple’s fault. OSX is linux-based, as far as I remember, but Apple decided to use weird proprietary file permissions in their own OS, meaning that normal Linux can read from them correctly because the file permissions are different to what every other Linux distro uses. So I can easily copy things from a Windows disk on a Linux distro, and from that distro I could copy things from any other Linux distro’ s d rive...no problem. B ut because OSX is linux-based but uses that odd permission system, it just screws up the copy read write permissions from within a proper Linux distro.