How OS 9 Helped Me Repair OS X 10.2.8
Yes I was one of the unlucky ones (or stupid, depending on who you ask) who updated to 10.2.8 as soon as it came out.
I have a dual G4 450. Suffice it to say after updating to 10.2.8 my Ethernet connection was dead. Suddenly the world’s most modern operating system went from modern to, well, pre-historic. No Ethernet means no internet which these days is like having a car without wheels. After cursing myself numerous times I did what I had to do….I booted up in OS 9. Aah…OS 9, with it’s funny flat-looking interface and its uncanny ability to crash…it was like the good old days.
Now that I had the web I could snoop around for a solution. The ever-trusty Macsurfer had a link to Macfixit where someone had kindly posted instructions and the old KEXT file. The instructions were as follows.
The AppleGMACEthernet.kext driver in /System/Library/Extensions has been updated from 1.2.4 to 1.3.0. The 1.3.0 version apparently breaks the onboard ethernet somehow. I found someone who had not yet installed the update, and copied their kext to a CD. To install it, back up your existing kext to your home directory, and then go to the terminal:
cd /System/Library/Extensions
sudo rm -Rf AppleGMACEthernet.tar.gz
sudo cp -r /path/to/AppleGMACEthernet.tar.gz .
cd ..
sudo rm Extensions.kextcache
sudo rm Extensions.mkext
Now reboot.
I am the kind of Mac user who breaks out into a cold sweat of panic when it comes to using the terminal. But hey, this looked simple enough, and I’m pretty smart (except for updating to 10.2.8) so what the heck. Well I tried. And tried. I think I did all the steps correctly but when I booted up no dice.
Then it hit me. OS 9!! I remember all those days of just throwing out rotten preference files, of writing over extensions with new extensions. None of this sudo nonsense. And permissions? I didn’t need permissions to do anything in OS 9.
So I did reboot, but in OS 9. I dragged the old (10.2.7) KEXT file in System/Library/Extensions and was done. When I rebooted into OS X suddenly the internet was available to me. Just when I thought there was no reason for OS 9 anymore it helped this UNIX neophyte out in a pinch.
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Comments
one thing about the terminal command “sudo” you have to have the Root User activated (via NetInfo) before you can use it as a command. Its possible that you haven’t enabled Root yet?
I have completely weaned myself off of OS 9, mainly because I hate to see how messy the harddrive gets with all the necessary files for both systems. I use my old 333Mhz laptop for OS 9 - which is plently fast enough with that system.
this is the same reason a lot of people have dual-boot Windows 98 and Windows 2000/XP systems. the fact that i can draw that parallel reflects sort of poorly on Apple… should people with such a next-gen OS really have to worry about keeping OS 9 installed just in case something breaks?
and if the fix was that easy, maybe Apple should have posted it in an easier-to-use fashion, maybe the KEXT file with a script that handles all the UNIX commands.
still, it’s an ironic and funny story.
Nathan, you’ve got it backwards. If you have the root account activated in NetInfo then you can just use ‘su’ to become the root user on the command line. ‘sudo’ allows a user to execute commands as is they were root, without the root account being activated.