Blind Administration

A few weeks ago I've lost the ability to see any output form my MacBook Pro.

It was a second time. For the first time I had lost the embedded led display only.
The DVI output worked fine. Then came the healing power of promise - I have to buy a new one.
But threat without the coverage it's just the bucket of words.
The MBP makes me blind completely and definately. No video output. No remote access.
No working ssh daemon, no firewall access, no future.

I thought the target mode would be the cure.
I have PowerBook Pismo with Tiger onboard. Unfortunately, the data on MBP was encrypted with
a FileVault from Snow Leopard. Either try of target mode connection, or try of manual mount failed.

Collecting of the recipe components took me many hours, often filled with an exasperation.
Hidden typos. Invisible prompts. Lurking daemons.

The recipe.
It's here to remember. It's here to save other souls.

Power On.
Listen to chime and wait a few moments, then log in yourself:
username TAB
password

Open Applications
⌘+Shift+A
and invoke your favourite text terminal by typing its name, followed by CMD+O
i t e r m ⌘+O

Confirm you're in:

$ say ok
$ sudo su
> put your password <

Confirm your personality.

$ whoami | say

Let the dogs out. Select a race, choose wisely.

$ launchctl load -w /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/telnet.plist # enable configuration and
$ launchctl load -w /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/ssh.plist    # set Disable key to false
$ launchctl start com.apple.telnetd
$ launchctl start com.openssh.sshd

Check the locks.

$ defaults read /Library/Preferences/com.apple.alf globalstate | say
2

Firewall states

• 0 - de-activated
  
• 1 - on for specific services
  
• 2 - on for essential services
  

Open the gates.
Pretty enough for older systems (Tiger), where no reboot required:

$ ipfw flush
> 'y' to flush <
$ ipfw list | say # 'any to any' means success

Permanent solution:

$ defaults write /Library/Preferences/com.apple.alf globalstate -int 0
$ reboot

Connect and enjoy it.

Mount USB Disk drive.

sh-3.2# diskutil list| grep SAM
   1:             Windows_FAT_32 SAMSUNG                 2.0 TB     disk2s1
sh-3.2# diskutil mountDisk SAMSUNG
Volume(s) mounted successfully

Rsync your secrets.

primary label corrupt

During the ZFS testing process I've used dd command to erase the disk fragment with /dev/urandom (testing the ability of raidz crash handling). After resilvering there was still information on my console and dmesg log:

Sep 15 07:42:00 thumper scsi: [ID 107833 kern.warning] WARNING: /pci@0,0/pci1022,7458@1/pci11ab,11ab@1/disk@0,0 (sd2):
Sep 15 07:42:00 thumper primary label corrupt; using backup


I've resolved this with a format command.
It could be done in the following way.

thumper [/]# format
Searching for disks...done


AVAILABLE DISK SELECTIONS:
0. c0t0d0
/pci@0,0/pci1022,7458@1/pci11ab,11ab@1/disk@0,0
[...]

Specify disk (enter its number): 0
selecting c0t0d0
[disk formatted]
Reading the primary EFI GPT label failed. Using backup label.
Use the 'backup' command to restore the primary label.

format> backup
Restoring primary label.
format> label
Ready to label disk, continue? y

format> quit