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[OT] Random Errors
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[OT] Random Errors

Hi Group,

I'm pretty sure this is off-topic, but I don't know where else to post. Anyway, 90% of my work is through the X11 interface, so thats where I noticed this problem. And I sense it is a low level filesystem problem, and this group might have some expertise in that area.

It looks like my system has either been cracked (I think no), some sort of random hardware failure (possible, but very hard to diagnose) or something else (maybe/hopefully).

The symptoms are this: My scp/sftp commands stopped working. ssh continued to work.
% ssh -V
OpenSSH_3.6.1p1+CAN-2004-0175, SSH protocols 1.5/2.0, OpenSSL 0x0090702f

I looked at /usr/bin/ and there were a bunch of files of size 0, scp and sftp included. I figured I would try to run software update to see if it would do anything, and nothing happened... From the xterm, I get this:

% softwareupdate
dyld: softwareupdate truncated or malformed library: /System/Library/PrivateFrameworks/SoftwareUpdate.framework/Versions/A/SoftwareUpdate (file is empty) Trace/BPT trap

Also, some xterm commands don't work. 'xterm' does, but 'xterm -font 10x20' does not (and it did yesterday).

sftp modified makes me think 'crack', but missing font resources makes me think hardware. It makes sense I discovered it through ssh because the ssh suite is one of my frequently used commands.

So I manually downloaded and re-installed the 10.3.6 update (which I did automatically last week) and it brought sftp/scp back to life. But there are still some 0 length files in /usr/bin (like cvs), and softwareupdate still does not run at all.

I did an 'fsck -fy' in single user mode and nothing changed. I have run verify & repair disk permissions in DiskUtility. Not surprisingly, that didn't restore any files, it simply changed their permissions. I also booted to a rescue CD and ran the apple GUI version of fsck (Disk Repair Utility)

reset RAM/PRAM (CMD+OPT+P+R), and boot to firmware w/ a 'reset-nvram; reset-all' didn't do anything.

I think _maybe_ the latest software update did this somehow. Or at least it turned up around then. File mods in /usr/bin are 6 Nov. Maybe it was a fink update? Doubt it. Maybe some sort of conflict with a 3rd party software/kernel extension? Re-booting with no exts loaded (kext | grep -v apple) didnt' help.

Searching for the above softwareupdate error brought only 1 hit, a Sept 14 2004 post in Italian: http://www.macity.it/forum1/messages/4163/295166.shtml?1095951196

While I don't speak Italian, I am not happy about this:
Brutta... una libreria di sistema devastata, devi reinstallarla dal CD.

All I can think of is a) re-seat the ram or 2) bring it to the apple store or 3) find a more appropriate forum.

Any thoughts?

   -k.
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