[michaelcly]

I wait for the pipe after the Dell screen and hold the shift key down. All I get is a picture of the boot drive as if I need to select it.

I want to boot into chameleon so I can enter single user mode. I want to get into single user mode so I can fix permissions. I want to fix permissions because I can't use sudo in the terminal mode. I want to use the terminal to turn off my spotlight indexing. Phew.

I have two Dell Mini 9's one with an stec 32gb and the other with a runcore 32. The stec works fine. I did a fresh install on the RC the exact same way as I did the STEC. Everythings the same except the "sudo permission denied. Neither will boot into Chameleon by holding the shift key down. Maybe I could copy some files from one with permissions to the other?

Both have 10.6.3 installed with NBI 0.8.4. Both have 10.6.7 combo upgrade and NBI.....51.

[underwhelmed]

Can't you just boot up using the installation USB drive you used to do your install and accomplish what you are wanting to do?

[michaelcly]

Originally Posted by underwhelmed

Can't you just boot up using the installation USB drive you used to do your install and accomplish what you are wanting to do?

Yes, I can boot from installation USB. But how would I fix the permissions? That's really the problem: I can't use the sudo command because of permission denial. I read this thread about it which seems to have a solution (sudo: Permission Denied - MacRumors Forums). To do it I have to boot in single user mode. On my mac, that's starting up with "command s". On our minis it's done by starting up and holding down the shift key immediately after the Dell screen. I think it's supposed to bring you into some kind of terminal mode where you can start in safe, verbose, single user, or other modes. But it doesn't work that way on either of my minis. Not sure what I'm doing wrong.

Here's another thread Booting to single-user mode

[michaelcly]

OK, finally figured it out. to get into Chameleon boot loader, as soon as the "/\" appears after the dell screen, briefly hit "shift s". I don't know why the "s" but it's the only thing that works for me. At the lower left of the screen is the word "Boot:" now you can use the boot loader commands from: Bootloader Commands List
To go into single user mode I typed "-s". Then I used post 16 here: sudo: Permission Denied - MacRumors Forums to repair damaged permissions.

Permissions restored! Now I can use "sudo" again. I used this to disable spotlight indexing to save my SSD from unwanted use: "sudo mdutil -a -i off"

phew what a struggle. BTW permissions got gunked up when I set up file sharing to share my root drive.