Hell Folders and the Destroyer TechTool Pro 3.0.9

[Old-School-BBSer]

Me oh my! When will these problems ever end???

If you are a long-time Macintosh user, then you surely know what "hell folders" are. For the uninitiated, they are folders which absolutely refuse to be deleted from the trash, no matter what you do.

Well, it seems that as a result of setting up Basilisk on one disk image, and SheepShaver on another disk image, and passing so many files and folders back and forth between SheepShaver and the Yosemite side via the "Shared" folder, I ended up with a total of about a dozen "hell folders". That's because there were some folders within folders.

I think one thing which resulted in so many of those pesky things, is that sometimes I would delete things from the SheepShaver side, when they should have been deleted from the "Share" folder on the Yosemite side.

Anyway, through trial and error, I was finally able to get rid of all of them but two. Yes, these are zero data folders, with nothing in them.

So I embarked on a campaign to utterly destroy those detestable things.

I ran Disk First Aid, and it reported errors with the b-tree; at least I think that is what it was called. But it also said that it fixed the errors. However, when I ran "Verify" a few more times, it said that the problem still existed.

Time to get out the Big Guns!

I tried an old copy of Disk Warrior. It claimed that the disk was damaged beyond repair. Thanks!

Next, I booted up in my other partition, and I installed an old version of Norton System Works. Oh gosh what a mistake that was. FileSaver and Norton Disk Doctor kept freezing up SheepShaver, so I said goodbye to that and removed it entirely from my system.

Next I tried using an old version of TechTool Pro. It claimed to have fixed the problem. Liar! It totally hosed my disk image, and I was forced to reinstall everything again from my other partition.

Prior to the Big Boys, I also tried to get rid of those two "Hell Folders" by using the following:

EmptyTempFolder 1.0.1
FileUnlocker 1.0.1
Hell Folder
QuickDelete 1.0.1
Trash Lock Files 1.0.1

I also tried the re-blessing trick by removing the System suitcase and Finder from the System Folder and putting them back in again. No dice!

Absolutely nothing worked! How annoying!

Now comes the strange part which has me scratching my head.

After restoring everything on my main 20 GB hard drive -- or disk image really -- I discovered that if I use the Terminal script to create a bridge and tap device, both of my start up drives in SheepShaver refuse to launch. I get the typical floppy disk with a blinking question mark. And here is what I get in the Terminal:

SheepShaver V2.4 by Christian Bauer and Mar"c" Hellwig
Reading ROM file...
WARNING: Cannot open MacOS904.dmg (No such file or directory)
WARNING: Cannot open MyNew.dsk (No such file or directory)
Using SDL/coreaudio audio output
Detected CPU features: MMX SSE SSE2 SSE3 SSSE3
PowerPC CPU emulator by Gwenole Beauchesne
logout

[Process completed]

Now, I know what you are thinking. "Oh, SheepShaver can't find the System, and you need to "re-bless" each of the two System Folders.

Not so.

How do I know?

Well, because if I click directly on the SheepShaver icon in my dock, I can start up SheepShaver from either of the two hard disks. To me, this proves that there is nothing wrong with the System Folders. Other than the two "hell folders" -- GGGRRRrrr --- both partitions run just fine, and are quite snappy.

It is only when I use the shell script that I get the above error messages in the Terminal. I have been using the following script repeatedly and successfully for days now, so I don't know why it is suddenly saying that it can't find either disk image:

#!/bin/bash
sudo arch -arch i386 /Applications/SheepShaver/SheepShaver.app/Contents/MacOS/SheepShaver & sleep 10
sudo ifconfig bridge0 create
sudo ifconfig bridge0 addm en0
sudo ifconfig bridge0 up
sudo ifconfig bridge0 addm tap0

At this point, I only have one suspicion. Is it possible that when I purged my system of excess files and folders so that it would run faster, I removed something from the System folder that the shell script needs? If this might be the case, does anyone here know exactly what system files the script may require?

As I said, the system on both disks boots fine when I click directly on the SheepShaver icon in my dock. However, there is no ethernet bridge, which means that no one can connect to my Hotline server, or to my Hermes II BBS. Neither can I load Hotline trackers without the ethernet bridge and tap device.

Thanks in advance to anyone who can offer some assistance.

[Cat_7]

Hi,

First, it should read:
sudo -arch i386 /Applications/SheepShaver/SheepShaver.app/Contents/MacOS/SheepShaver & sleep 10

Second: did you check that your paths in the .sheepshaver_prefs file are still absolute? If you use the prefs editor to add/remove volumes, the paths become relative.

Best,
Cat_7

[adespoton]

Yes; my first thought was actually that you were using the terminal, so your base path started from wherever you happened to be (most likely in ~/) instead of where you'd be starting if you launched from the Finder -- so your prefs file won't actually be pointing to the right place for your image files.

[Old-School-BBSer]

Thanks guys! You were both right regarding the paths having changed because I was opening ".sheepshaver_prefs" from the Terminal.

Regarding the other issue, Cat_7, my friend, you are getting old.

You probably forgot, but the other day when you and I were chatting, you were the one who told me to use "sudo arch -arch i386" instead of "sudo -arch i386", because SheepShaver was not launching when I used the latter version.

Well, I am happy to report that fixing the path -- and not for the first time -- has resulted in the disk images being recognized as startup volums again, and Internet connectivity has returned.

But guess what?

After all is said and done, those two "hell folders" STILL remain on both partitions, and nothing I have tried or used has gotten rid of them. It is very annoying. I want my trash empty!

[adespoton]

You could always install osxfuse and the latest version of fusehfs, and remove them via OS X instead of OS 9 If trashing them doesn't work, just use rm -f.

But you're probably better to create a new image and copy everything over (from within OS X) just to ensure your disk catalog is sane.

Other useful bits of advice:
Use a sparse bundle instead of a standard DMG, and back up the entire thing in Time Machine. That way, if something goes wrong, you can revert to an appropriate checkpoint. Using sparse bundles is so that only the portion of the image that gets modified has to be updated in Time Machine, saving space on your archive, and giving you finer grained control of the backup/restore. Remember that you can manually back something up to Time Machine whenever you want, and don't have to rely on the background schedule. But the background schedule should be good enough anyway.

[Old-School-BBSer]

You could always install osxfuse and the latest version of fusehfs, and remove them via OS X instead of OS 9 If trashing them doesn't work, just use rm -f.

But you're probably better to create a new image and copy everything over (from within OS X) just to ensure your disk catalog is sane.

Other useful bits of advice:
Use a sparse bundle instead of a standard DMG, and back up the entire thing in Time Machine. That way, if something goes wrong, you can revert to an appropriate checkpoint. Using sparse bundles is so that only the portion of the image that gets modified has to be updated in Time Machine, saving space on your archive, and giving you finer grained control of the backup/restore. Remember that you can manually back something up to Time Machine whenever you want, and don't have to rely on the background schedule. But the background schedule should be good enough anyway.

I am not that familiar with osxfuse and or fusehfs. I seem to recall that it is some kind of alternative file system.

Regarding backups, that is why I have two identical startup disks for my SheepShaver setup. Whenever I make a change to the active one, I just copy over whatever has been changed to the other disk.

But that is not all. I do not use Time Machine. Instead, I just Carbon Copy Cloner and clone my iMacs hard drive to TWO USB drives, once at midday, and once at 8:00 PM. I have it set to clone everything, but it only replaces what has been updated.

So basically, I have a lot of redundancy, because I like to play it safe.

[Cat_7]

At my place
sudo arch -arch i386 /Users/hsp/SheepShaver/SheepShaver.app/Contents/MacOS/SheepShaver & sleep 10

leads to:
arch: Can't find -arch in PATH

While
sudo arch -i386 /Users/hsp/SheepShaver/SheepShaver.app/Contents/MacOS/SheepShaver & sleep 10
brings up sheepshaver.

Best,
Cat_7

[Old-School-BBSer]

It sounds like your system and mine are arch enemies, Cat_7.

[Ronald P. Regensburg]

After all is said and done, those two "hell folders" STILL remain on both partitions, and nothing I have tried or used has gotten rid of them. It is very annoying. I want my trash empty!

Where did the folders come from? If you dragged them from the "Unix" folder to the Trash, they are now in a folder "Trash" in the shared folder on the OSX side and not on your disk images. That "Trash" folder is invisible in the Finder on both sides. You can use a utility in OSX that can make hidden files and folders visible and trash the files on the OSX side. Easier will be to simply move (drag) them back from the Trash to Unix in SheepShaver and subsequently trash them from the shared folder on the OSX side.

[Old-School-BBSer]

Oh my gosh!!! Oh my gosh!!! Why didn't I think of that???

I have a little menubar utility installed called "DesktopUtility". One of its functions is to make invisible items visible . . . like that trash can in the "Shared" folder.

I just successfully trashed both of those darn folders! Yay! No more error messages on the SheepShaver side.

Thanks, my friend. Consider how much time I invested in trying to get those things deleted, and all of the apps that I installed in the process, and the aggravation of getting my startup disk hosed by TechTool Pro, I feel like I should punish myself by banging my head against the way.

The solution was so simple.