Today I tried to rename a few hidden files with the following command in terminal (might be a hint for the solution):
for f in .*; do mv "$f" "_$f"; done
Now I wanted to start vlc
and all I got was the messagebox to ignore
, report
or relaunch
.
Most application are not startable, except the few that are loaded (with the dot mark in the dock under the icon).
Non-startable applications:
Messages
App Store
Mail
Calendar
iTunes
Terminal
Notes
Chrome
Safari
VLC
Console
Boot Camp Assistant
Startable applications:
X11
QtCreator
JDownloader
Grapher
Disk Utility
In addition, the attempt to run Mail
from XTerm
resulted in LSOpenURLsWithRole() failed for the application /Applications/Mail.app with error -10810.
My system is a MacBook running Yosemite 10.10.5.
My guess is that I for some reason renamed system files and I am afraid that after reboot the system won't start.
Best Answer
It looks like a coincidence to me.
Only the files and folder in ~/Movies should be affected.
Even running the command with sudo in the root of my drive doesn't render my system unbootable:
Some files and folders are renamed (e.g. _.fseventsd, _.Spotlight-V100, _.Trashes, _.DocumentRevisions-V100, _.vol) but after a restart the important ones will be recreated with the proper name (leaving the renamed folders as they were).
Navigate with Terminal to / and /System/Library/CoreServices and check if anything was renamed; if not reboot otherwise remove all the underscores.