Symptom
After using Network Assistant on a Mac OS X volume, the following may occur if you try to start up the computer from Mac OS X:
- The computer does not start up.
- The computer starts up to a flashing question mark.
- A kernel panic happens during or after startup.
- Other unexpected behavior occurs.
Note: Apple Network Assistant is designed to work only with Mac OS versions up to and including Mac OS 9.2.2. It is not designed to manage Mac OS X systems.
Solution
Do not use Network Assistant to copy Mac OS X volumes. To prevent this issue in the future, you should use Apple Remote Desktop for remote management of Mac OS X computers. For more information on this product, see the Apple Remote Desktop product page (
http://www.apple.com/remotedesktop/).
Resetting permissions
This issue occurs because Network Assistant was not designed to preserve the permissions information that is associated with each file in Mac OS X. The Network Assistant Manage commands Copy Items and Copy Hard Disk do not maintain permissions information for any copied files. Without these permissions, Mac OS X cannot work as expected.
To correct the changes made by Network Assistant, you must manually reset permissions (or "privileges"). You may do this using either the Terminal (/Applications/Utilities/) or a third-party utility. For more information, see technical document 106712, "
Mac OS X: Troubleshooting Permissions Issues".