On Sep 25, 2014, at 9:06 AM, Bruce Johnson <[email protected]> wrote:

> An odd one, I haven't run into before.
> 
> A 2008 27" iMac was updated to 10.9.5 yesterday, and when it came back up, no 
> user could log in.
> 
> It accepts the username and password, the little spinny gear starts right up, 
> and that's as far as it gets, never goes off the login screen.
> 
> Verbose boot shows no unusual notices.
> 
> Booted into recovery volume, Disk utility says the drive is OK, I even 
> repaired permissions, nothing unusual there. Didn't fix it.
> 
> Was able to get to the syslog via terminal in recovery, nothing unusual at 
> all, in fact, nothing after the login window appears.
> 
> Permissions look ok for the users directories.
> 
> I haven't run Diskwarrior yet, but I'm unsure that would help, because Disk 
> Utility thinks the volume has no errors. 
> 
> I'm worried that the Open Directory database may be borked. Does anyone know 
> if that can be managed from the recovery volume, or when connected to another 
> Mac in FW target mode?
> 
> 
> -- 
> Bruce Johnson

Also, go ahead and run DiskWarrior. It may not find any of the usual directory 
issues, but it may well find "volume information" issues. I deal almost 100% 
with Mac problem machines, and I frequently have found that a mysterious hang 
during boot or similar failure to complete the boot sequence is fixed by DW 
correcting a volume information issue. I don't know why this happens, but my 
experience is that it is a cumulative error problem that seems to be triggered 
by too many improper shutdowns, brownouts, etc.

Jim Scott
Eureka, CA

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