So my iBook's logic board is suffering at last
( http://www.apple.com/support/ibook/faq/ )
It was only a matter of time anyhow. I've had my iBook since July 2002, and based on the serial number, it's clearly one of the potentially faulty models. To my surprise, however, it never showed any signs of display issues.
Until this morning, that is. I would do nothing out of the ordinary, and suddenly get weird display issues. I knew at once what was going on. After a reboot, however, the problem seemed gone - until about an hour later.
Now, several hours later, it's much worse - sometimes during startup, the display won't show anything at all, sometimes it briefly appears then starts flickering, etc.
Step one, of course, is to backup. I've managed to run hdiutil via SSH and have started creating disk images.
Here's to the questions.
0. I replaced my hard drive manually about a year ago, and it will show to the tech staff quite clearly that the machine has been opened. Is this going to be a problem (i.e. will they refuse to repair it)?
1. I'm about to backup by creating images of /Applications, /Library, /etc and /Users/chucker (no other important users on the machine). Is this going to be enough? Am I missing something important here?
2. I'm using "sudo hdiutil create -verbose -srcfolder <folder> <imagename.dmg>", e.g. "sudo hdiutil create -verbose -srcfolder /Applications RootApplications.dmg" as command. Something else to take into account? Encryption and compression would needlessly slow things down and I don't know how much time I have left until the logic board shows other issues.
3. Is this method safe, i.e. is there a risk that the images will fail to mount when I receive the repaired machine? I really need some of this data badly.
4. Finally, it would be nice to access the keychains (which contain a lot of non-password data - e.g. bank-related) from within Windows or Linux. Is there a way to dump their contents into a text file? Does Apple provide some CLI tool or is there a 3rd-party solution to this?
Any help hugely appreciated!
It was only a matter of time anyhow. I've had my iBook since July 2002, and based on the serial number, it's clearly one of the potentially faulty models. To my surprise, however, it never showed any signs of display issues.
Until this morning, that is. I would do nothing out of the ordinary, and suddenly get weird display issues. I knew at once what was going on. After a reboot, however, the problem seemed gone - until about an hour later.
Now, several hours later, it's much worse - sometimes during startup, the display won't show anything at all, sometimes it briefly appears then starts flickering, etc.
Step one, of course, is to backup. I've managed to run hdiutil via SSH and have started creating disk images.
Here's to the questions.
0. I replaced my hard drive manually about a year ago, and it will show to the tech staff quite clearly that the machine has been opened. Is this going to be a problem (i.e. will they refuse to repair it)?
1. I'm about to backup by creating images of /Applications, /Library, /etc and /Users/chucker (no other important users on the machine). Is this going to be enough? Am I missing something important here?
2. I'm using "sudo hdiutil create -verbose -srcfolder <folder> <imagename.dmg>", e.g. "sudo hdiutil create -verbose -srcfolder /Applications RootApplications.dmg" as command. Something else to take into account? Encryption and compression would needlessly slow things down and I don't know how much time I have left until the logic board shows other issues.
3. Is this method safe, i.e. is there a risk that the images will fail to mount when I receive the repaired machine? I really need some of this data badly.
4. Finally, it would be nice to access the keychains (which contain a lot of non-password data - e.g. bank-related) from within Windows or Linux. Is there a way to dump their contents into a text file? Does Apple provide some CLI tool or is there a 3rd-party solution to this?
Any help hugely appreciated!
Comments
Unfortunately, I can only attempt to answer question 0:
0. they might claim that you invalidated your AppleCare warranty by replacing the hard disk. if the iBook is not under AppleCare, they could claim that you invalidated the warranty but because your logic board is covered in the serial number range, they might 'look the other way' and ignore the hard disk change and go ahead and replace the logic board
good luck