After using a Mac for approximately three years, I finally encountered a system error that impeded upon my Mac's ability to boot into its Aqua GUI environment.

Fortunately, as a failsafe, my Mac did instead boot into its 'single user mode' console. From here, I was able to begin troubleshooting the problem. I tried an fsck file system check and several system reboots by typing 'reboot' into the console.

After a few reboot attempts I began to catch sight of a bit of text being flashed for split-second relating to a missing '/etc/hostconfig' file. Sure enough, this vital file, which keeps a list of the basic system startup services (i.e. Apache, Spotlight, CUPS, etc) and their boot time status, was missing.

To fix the problem, I mounted my PowerBook's drive with 'mount -uw /' and then, referencing the '/etc/hostconfig' on my Mac mini, I manually created a new one for my PowerBook using vi. I then typed 'reboot' into the console and my Mac proceeded to boot up normally. I was relieved.

Still, why this happened perplexes me. The only system task I recall doing as of my last power-up was an edit of my Apache '/etc/httpd/httpd.conf' file. I only uncommented three lines of it to turn on PHP support for Apache. Afterwhich, I used Mac OS's 'Sharing' preference pane to restart Apache.

It's unfortunate that this procedure could have somehow deleted '/etc/hostconfig'. Though there is definitely a connection between the 'Sharing' pref pane and '/etc/hostconfig', I would only expect the file to be modified and not deleted completely.

Fortunately, in the end, the problem was easy to resolve and my Mac is now back to normal.

Oh, and yeah, still no baby news to report. ;-)