OS X Boot Problem, please help!

[evoluzione]

hey guys, just come across a problem with an iMac here at work (it's a 400Mhz indigo).

when i try and boot up (OS 10.2.4) after a few seconds it stops and i get this:

/etc/master.passwd:no such file or directory
/etc/master.passwd:no such file or directory
sh-2.05a#

any ideas??? I'm stumped. (I tried repairing permissions and did fsck)

thanks!!!

[brentandkelley]

My Powerbook G3 (333mhz) did almost the same thing to me today. Except I went to software updates and was updating some of my software (including OS X) and it locked up on me. I ctrl-apple-reset and it rebooted like it was starting osx and then a black screen came up (sort of like a dos screen) and said login. So I entered my computer name and then my password and it told be the last time a logged in and then it went to the next line and everything I would type it would just say bad command. I finally just hit the reset button on the back of it (the little pen push reset) and then it booted up in 9 and said "This disk is unreadable by this computer. Do you want to initialize the disk?" Then there is another message that comes up that says "The disk OS-9 appears to be damaged. Use a disk repair utiltiy to repair the disk." Then I went to control panels > startup disk and the OS-X system is not listed. I can still work in OS 9 but I can't get it to boot in OSX. I don't know what I can do to get OS-X back up and running. Does anyone have any ideas. Thanks in advance.

[brentandkelley]

Well I just got it to boot up in osx but it is back to doing the same thing with the black screen like dos again. What it says is:

Darwin/BSD (My computers name.local) (console)

Login: I entered my computer name
Password: I entered my password
Last login: Wed. Mar 26 12:24:05 on console
[My computers name:~] Myusername%

It is just a black screen that is set up sort of like DOS for windows. When I type something and hit enter it says

whatever I entered: Command not found.
[My computers name:~] Myusername%

Does anyone know how I can get past this.
Thanks.

[evoluzione]

ok, so i managed to get it fixed....someone (probably a client) must've deleted the "etc" and "var" files, so for those that are interested, here is what i did...

booted up with command-s

mount -uw /
ln -s /private/etc etc
rm -rf /var
ln -s /private/var var
reboot

and everything is toptastic again. yay. :p