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tayrawr

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Apr 2, 2009
1
0
I set myself as the owner on my iBook the other day. Now when I start the computer, I get a black terminal screen as a login screen. It asks me to type in my username and password. It lets me type in my username, but when I try to type my password no characters show up, and it won't let me log in due to incorrect login information. Since everyone except me, the owner, has no access, there is no other login screen and it's just blank until I restart the computer and get the black screen over again. What do I do? Why aren't characters showing up when I type in my pass? I tried plugging in a third party keyboard but it didn't make any difference.
 
In terminal, whenever the user is requested to enter the password the characters do not show but they are still processed. This is for security purposes. When you are requested for the password, type the password and press Enter.
 
Did you chown -R (your short username) / by any chance? If you did accidentally, that will cause this issue to occur - the system will no longer have access to critical files needed to start the GUI. The best fix is an Archive and Install of Mac OS X, unfortunately.
 
Doh!

wrldwzrd89

I think I just did exactly that, following the mysql reference guide for using the database as a normal user. I think I accidently hit return before specifying the whole path to mysql/datadir.
The command was:

shell> chown -R user_name /path/to/mysql/datadir

I think I typed shell> chown -R ashramsey /

And so I get a blank login terminal.

Will repairing disk permissions do anything, or is reinstalling the only option? Does it make any difference that my username is the only username (I know of) used on my computer?
 
Thanks, I tried repairing, then opened terminal, still a blank login. Then verified permissions again. the same permissions showed problems. I then rebooted the system. It didn't shut down completely, hung on the little circlular loading gif. Shut it down and restarted manually. It rebooted fine, and terminal bash now appears normal (shows last login, and username). I managed to connect to and use my MySQL server localhost as root user.

So, i'm wondering if the disk permissions are a diff. issue. And have I managed to escape needing to reinstall?
 
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