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need a command line guru for help editing syslogd starup parameters

M

mortimer

macrumors newbie
Original poster
I'm dumb and late last night decided to follow the directions in this article: http://www.maciverse.com/the-case-of-the-slow-mac-and-how-to-fix-it.html.

Using Lingon, I modified the startup parameters of "syslog" from "/usr/sbin/syslogd" to "/usr/sbin/syslogd -c 3 a". Of course by fiddling around with things I shouldnt have, my computer wont boot past the gray apple screen or past "waiting for dsmos" in verbose mode. I would backup from Time Machine, but my most recent backup doesnt have several important large work files that wouldnt fit in my Dropbox. I realize it was stupid to mess around with this without backing up, but feel free to flog away!

I've run diskutil, verified/repaired, run fsck -fy from single user mode, reset pram, wont boot to safe mode, etc.

My question: is it possible to edit the startup parameters of "syslog" from the command line in single user mode? If so, how? AND Is it possible to reinstall OS X system files from the boot disc without erasing my entire disk?

Thanks for any help/insight you can provide.

EDIT: mpb intel core2duo OSX 10.6.whatever-the-lastest-is
 
Figured out a work around.

1) Install OS X on USB key
2) Boot from USB
3) Use Finder to open /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/com.apple.syslogd.plist with TextEdit
4) Delete extra parameters from the <string> value
5) Reboot using internal HD and presto-chango it works!​

I'll leave this here for google searches by other people having "D'oh!" moments.

[/facepalm]
 
Ganesha said:
I'll give it a shot...

1. cd /System/Library/LaunchDaemons
2. pico com.apple.syslogd.plist
3. compare what you see with the pristine copy of com.apple.syslogd.plist at
http://www.opensource.apple.com/source/syslog/syslog-100.0.1/syslogd.tproj/com.apple.syslogd.plist
4. carefully delete any changes lingon made. Make sure every time you delete <something> you delete the corresponding </something>. If you know something about proper xml all the better here.
5. CTRL-X to save.
Click to expand...

Just saw this after posting my reply -- thanks Ganesha, this is a much simpler way than what I eventually did. For anyone interested, I gave Ganesha's method a try from Terminal in OS X and it works just fine.
 
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