2Part mac mini questions & thoughts of catastrophy

So it all began bout 3 days ago, as I was my mini G4 ( 512mb ram 70gb 1.2ghz I believe) the base model, one of the first to come out, it is rather old, but I really don't use it for much and its never really given me any trouble till recently. I really only use it for colloquy and the dashboard, so I was infact using colloquy when the trouble began. It was lagging a bit, and I figured I should reboot cause it had been awhile since I had restarted, I went to the menubar and quit colloquy, as I was doing that I noticed on my dock that my finder was not open, the colloquy icon quit on the dock, but the menubar stayed as colloquy, I've noticed this happened before and usually it just goes back after a few seconds. This is were the trouble began, it froze a bit, as I wondered if not having the finder open may have been to blame, idk how it closed maybe I closed it or it crashed before without me noticing. I wanted to try and force logout, as I was using my laptop with windows on it almost exclusively for the past few months I had gotten acustomed to its shortcuts, and I hit what I thought was crtlshiftesc, but what I hit on the mac keyboard was commandaltesc I believe, and at the moment the screen went black and I was in the BSD console, I've tried rebooting, loggin in as #root and rebooting, and it goes back to BSD. I tried 'exit' which I thought would go back to the aqua login screen, but no luck. I also began to try other things, like 'fsck', and '/sbin/fsck' and '-fy', '-f' I believe, but none of those did anything, and I don't mean they executed and then showed that all was good, I mean they did nothing at all, they just went to the next line, as if they meant nothing, which I find rather strange, as that should do something. ... I'm not entirely familiar with commandline Darwin/BSD, so I'm rather confused as to happened. Idk how I got into this console from osx, I think it had something to do with my finder being closed, and something may have crashed, resulting in me being forced into the text console., so I'm stuck, and I'm not sure how to get back. Also, I tried to boot into 'safe mode' and 'verbose' both just put me back into the BSD console.
That is the first part, so I've decided that I may aswell try and reinstall using the archive so I wouldnt loose anything on my hd. I had most it backed up but I had some recent writing and some music I've made that I'd like to get back. I'm without a firewire at the moment so I can't target disk mode. I inserted my install disk, and began archive installing, and it began, and as I was prompted to insert my "Mac OS X Install Disc 2" , it ejected and I put in Disc 2, and it sounded like it worked a bit, spun the disc around, and spat it out. ... So I'm wondering if somehow I can stop this, in the midst of disc two, and try and do it over, or perhaps use a new disc, or maybe a external HD. Any quick help would be so very excellent. Thank you so much! I really need help as I'm kinda stuck, and at the moment its still at Please Insert the "Mac OS X Install Disc 2" disc to continue installation.

What is the result of running Disk Utility repair volume from the Startup cd?
Print off these posts & follow. Report the results of each suggestion.
At the unix command line, no news is good news. That is command when run successfully will not report anything.
In the case of fsck, the command should take awhile & should I think report something.
You may try to recover your data by booting up an installation cd/dvd and using the terminal.
You could try getting into the Unix command line interface and copy some files or directories.
You can copy files on the Unix command line interface if you placed the flash drive the USB port before powering on your machine.
Boot up your installation CD or DVD. To do this, place to the CD or DVD its drive. Power off the the machine. Hold down the c key then power on your machine. After you specify the language you will come to the installation panel. Do not install. Go to the top of the screen and click on the tools menu item. Click on Terminal to use the command line interface.
You should verify that the files have been copied correctly by trying them in another Mac before it the deleting the original.
*Here is an overview of the commands.*
Lets assume that the problem account has a short user name of mac.
#Copy directory "/Applications/Applescript files" to
# directory "/Volumes/Spotless/Applescript files".
# "Spotless" is my flash drive.
ditto -X -rsrc /Applications/Applescript\ files /Volumes/Spotless/Applescript\ files
#cd is change directory
cd /Volumes/COPYIT/answers/
# pwd is print working directory
pwd
#the ls command is for list
# l is long
# a to show hidden files. not shown in this example.
# F is type of file where / is directory
sh-2.05b# # Please note ls is the list command. l is a lower case L
sh-2.05b# ls -lF
Here is what these commands mean:
cd is change directory
pwd is a print working directory
ls is list
sudo is Super user do
# The sudo command will ask for your administration password. No characters will appear when typing your password. Press return when done typing.
cp is copy
copy a file example:
sh-2.05b#
sh-2.05b# cd /Volumes/Macintosh-HD/Users/mac/desktop
sh-2.05b# pwd
/Volumes/Macintosh-HD/Users/mac/desktop
sh-2.05b# cp -i answers.txt /Volumes/SpotMore
Will copy the file answers.txt in the directory SpotMore.
Some files have a space in the name. You need to escape. see example:
mac $ ls -l ~/"see it"
-rw-r--r-- 1 mac staff 3171 Oct 26 23:38 /Users/mac/see it
mac $
mac $ cd /Users/mac/Desktop/ttt\ html\ copy/
Do you know about tabing? Type in a few letters of a name then press the tab key. The computer will type out the rest of the name if it is unique.
The up arrow key will retrive the previous command. You the left arror and right arror keys to move around. Use the delete key to delete a character to the left.
<eol>
*More examples and moving around*
sh-2.05b# pwd
sh-2.05b# ls /Volumes
.Trashes        Classic                Macintosh-HD
._.Trashes      Mac OS X Install DVD   SpotMore
sh-2.05b#
sh-2.05b# df -h
Filesystem      Size   Used  Avail Capacity  Mounted on
/dev/disk4s3    2.6G   2.5G    89M    97%    /
devfs           121K   121K     0B   100%    /dev
fdesc           1.0K   1.0K     0B   100%    /dev
<volfs>         512K   512K     0B   100%    /.vol
/dev/disk5      467K   9.0K   435K     2%    /Volumes
/dev/disk6       95K    64K    27K    70%    /private/var/tmp
/dev/disk7       95K    14K    77K    15%    /private/var/run
/dev/disk3s1    3.7G   1.3G   2.5G    34%    /Volumes/SpotMore
/dev/disk0s10   1.1G   1.1G   3.4M   100%    /Volumes/Classic
/dev/disk0s12    70G    45G    25G    65%    /Volumes/Macintosh-HD
sh-2.05b#
sh-2.05b# cd /Volumes/SpotMore/
sh-2.05b# pwd
/Volumes/SpotMore
sh-2.05b# # Please note ls is the list command.  l is a lower case L
sh-2.05b# ls -l
total 880
-rw-r--r--    1 unknown  unknown    6148 Sep 10  2010 .DS_Store
drw-------    4 unknown  unknown     136 Aug 25  2010 .Spotlight-V100
drwxrwxrwt    3 unknown  unknown     102 Sep  3  2010 .TemporaryItems
d-wx-wx-wt    3 unknown  unknown     102 Sep 10  2010 .Trashes
drwx------    3 unknown  unknown     102 Sep  3  2010 Desktop
-rw-r--r--    1 unknown  unknown   18944 Aug 27  2010 Desktop DB
-rw-r--r--    1 unknown  unknown       2 Jul 29  2010 Desktop DF
-rwxrwxrwx    1 unknown  unknown   26281 Oct 27  2009 Warranty Information.PDF
drwxr-xr-x   13 unknown  unknown     442 Aug  4  2010 backup
drwxr-xr-x   13 unknown  unknown     442 Aug  4  2010 backupPrior
drwxr-xr-x    7 unknown  unknown     238 Aug 27  2010 cons
drwxr-xr-x   65 unknown  unknown    2210 Sep  4  2010 iMac-back
... clipped ...
sh-2.05b#
sh-2.05b# cd /Volumes/Macintosh-HD/Users/mac/desktop
sh-2.05b# pwd
/Volumes/Macintosh-HD/Users/mac/desktop
sh-2.05b# # Please note ls is the list command.  l is a lower case L
sh-2.05b# ls
 Z2300               iMac
.DS_Store            move
.FBCIndex            new Belward
.FBCLockFolder       primary-comments-new copy.doc
Consolidate-rc       primary-comments-new.doc
Downloads            psc 1200
... clipped ...
sh-2.05b# ditto -X -rsrc iMac /Volumes/SpotMore/iMac-back
sh-2.05b#
sh-2.05b# # Please note ls is the list command.  l is a lower case L
sh-2.05b# ls -h /Volumes/SpotMore/iMac-back/
total 2800
-rw-r--r--    1 unknown  unknown    24K Sep 12  2010 .DS_Store
-rw-r--r--    1 unknown  unknown     2K Apr 18  2010 Differentiate Between Models .html
... clipped ...
sh-2.05b# pwd
/Volumes/Macintosh-HD/Users/mac/desktop
sh-2.05b# ls
 Z2300               iMac
.DS_Store            move
.FBCIndex            new Belward
.FBCLockFolder       primary-comments-new copy.doc
... clipped ...
sh-2.05b#
Robert

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