What the fuck are you doing you stupid machine? Why o why did you dump the Library folder onto the desktop, wiping out the preferences for every single program I own? How come when I move them back to where they’re supposed to go, and get rid of the old files, do you still not recognize anything? Even if I logout and login? Even if I restart?
You lost all my bookmarks in Safari!
You fail to recognize that I own Excel and the whole damn Office set!
You wiped out every listing in iCal and AddressBook!
I’m afraid to open my Mail program because I’m afraid every message in there is gone too!
Holy shit! I can’t even get to my Palm Pilot memos! What the frigging hell is a ‘shared library error’ anyway!
What the fuck? You’re a Mac! You’re stable! Macs don’t pull this kind of shit!
Dumbass machine! If you were a person, I’d throw you out the window!
AUGH!
There’s your problem right there! JK!
Seriously, a single directory that’s not protected out the yahoo can destroy every associated program on a Mac?
Did you check the file attribute? I’m not a Mac man but I know Mac and Unix are cousins, did the folder have a system attribute that got changed to allow the copy?
I’m just trying to imagine what Barbarian did to even get something close to that mess – the closest I can even begin to imagine is a drunken night of passionately wanton dragging-and-dropping…
So far as I can tell, last night the missus goes to hit the ‘eject’ button on the CD/DVD drive, and it’s not working (happens rarely), so she restarts (usually I just sleep the machine and wake it up).
Presto, the Library folder has suddenly moved to the desktop (say what? That folder is protected up the wazoo!), and everything’s reset. I shuttle everything in the Library folder back to where it’s supposed to be (~/home/Library), but the only effect is that the keyboard settings and background image are restored.
The only possible thing I can think of is that I updated my Norton AntiVirus definitions a couple days ago.
Are you sure you put the Library folder back in the right spot? ~ is short for your home folder, in and of itself. If your username is barbarian, for example, then the ~ represents /Users/barbarian, and the path to your Library folder should be ~/Library or /Users/barbarian/Library.
My guess is that the filesystem on your hard disk is corrupted. If so, it will only get worse. If you can’t even run disk repair, it’s time to backup the disk, reformat it, reinstall the operating system, and restore your files from backups. Just letting it go risks loss of all of the files on the disk.
It’s a good idea to run disk repair every few months, to catch and fix little problems before they become big problems. Norton AV may also cause problems for your system. Some people have reported glitches and flakiness that they later traced to that software.
Ummm, I don’t suppose you’ve been doing backups, by any chance? This is OS X, not the old easy world of MacOS 9. MacOS X doesn’t go bad on you very often, but when it does it’s nowhere near as easy to fix as MacOS 9 was. When you get this sorted out, you’re going to implement a genuine and reliable backup strategy…right?
OK, now…Is it possible that it’s the other Library folder instead? You have one at the root level of your hard drive and another one in your Users/YourUserName directory. If the root-level version of Library ended up in your Users/YourName/Desktop folder (i.e., on your Desktop), that doesn’t sound good at all — you may be able to fix it by moving it back while logged in as root (if you have root enabled) or using “sudo cp -R” from the Terminal, but something frightening is going on for it to have migrated there in the first place.
If, on the other hand, it’s your own local-user Library, having it end up on your Desktop is a simple matter of accidentally dragging the folder “Library” on top of (and therefore into) the folder “Desktop” if you happened to have your own Users/YourUserName folder open and in front of you. Try this: create a new username from scratch and make sure you can log in as that user, just in case; set logon preference to let you choose who to log in as, and then log back in as your regular user name; rename the replacement Library folder, if there is one, to something like “Library OOPS”, drag the Desktop version into Users/YourUserName, and reboot. Log in as your regular user name with your fingers crossed.
MacOs 9? Hell I went straight to 10.1 from 8.6 (currrently using 10.2.8)
Okay, I fixed everything by bringing files to their correct places. Why’d they have to go and name two separate directories Library anyway? Why not RootLibrary and UserLibrary, or something like that.
grumble grumble.
Still can’t run Disk Verify or Disk Repair or Repair Permissions on the HD-- those options are greyed out…
Log in as root and fix all permissions from there. Should not have any greyed-out options there (shouldn’t have them anyhow, but if permissions are screwed up perhaps you can’t fix them because you don’t have permission to fix the messed-up permissions because your permissions are fucked up, can you say “vicious cycle”?)
If you’ve never enabled/logged in as root: open Terminal and type “sudo passwd root” and you’ll be prompted to enter, then confirm, a password for the root account. This enables the account. Log out then back in with username "root and the password you just chose. (for security’s sake pick a ridiculously complicated one, write it down on paper and store it somewhere extrasafe). As root user, run the fix permissions thing. Then log out and back in as your regular self. AHunter3 still boots MacOS 8.1 sometimes for old time’s sake but has Panther conned into running on the same WallStreet computer
Oh, I’ve logged in as root, and keep my password somewhere very safe: on the bulletin board above my desk. Of course, I abbreviate my notes, so even if you stare at it you probably won’t be able to interpret it.
That, and if you can waltz into my apartment and wander off with my eMac, you deserve to get access to everything on my computer just for lifting the weight
If you are still having big disk-check issues, an option is to start in single user mode (I think hold down Apple-S or S while restarting). This will bring up a Unix screen with instructions for running fsck, which is basically the same as the Disk Repair utility.
