i need some help with terminal commands...

[pmsquillace]

My macbook 2006 recently would not boot properly. By that i mean it takes about a good 5 minutes to boot to a messed up looking desktop.

Before i restore the system i need to get some files off of the machine. (The gui side freezes when i try to drag and drop).

I can boot into single use mode and use terminal but i do not know how to do the command mv /documents...etc but i don't know what drive my usb stick is or that it is mounted.

Can someone offer some gvuidence on this?

Thanks

Paul on vacation and stuck......

 

[robbieduncan]

The mount command will list what's mounted where. Look for something starting with /dev that's not on /. On my system with nothing beyond the main harddrive I see this:

/dev/disk0s2 on / (hfs, local, journaled)
devfs on /dev (devfs, local, nobrowse)
map -hosts on /net (autofs, nosuid, automounted, nobrowse)
map auto_home on /home (autofs, automounted, nobrowse)



Or cd to /Volumes and to an ls. Most likely your USB drive will be mounted there.

 

[pmsquillace]

Thanks ronnie, when i cd to Volumes and do ls, it only lists Mac HD as a volume. Does that mean its not mounted?

 

[robbieduncan]

Probably unless single user mode has some quirks I am not aware of. What is the output of the mount command?

 

[pmsquillace]

When i type mount... it says root_device on / (hsf, local, read-only, journaled)
debts on/ dev (debts, local, nobrowse)

Also, if u could tell me the command on how to get to a directory with a space in it.

I cd to volumes but cannot get to a directory called MAC HD.

The space in that is giving me grief.

I was able to get where i need to via my username. I just need figure out what drive this usb is...

Any thoughts from what i pasted above?

 

[robbieduncan]

From the above (that I don't think was pasted as debts should be devfs) your USB stick is not mounted.

 

[wjlafrance]

To find out the directory you're currently in, type pwd. To get into a directory with a space, you need to "escape" the space with a forward slash, the escape character. cd Macintosh\ HD.