Re: corrupt database?

Roy Sigurd Karlsbakk wrote:

> I'm an OS X user and my addressbook just fscked up. This is for what 
> I've been told, based on metakit.
>
> Are there any tools around that I can use to try to rebuild it? I can 
> find the data scattered all over the database file, but I can't 
> assemble it...

Chances are very slim.  Metakit datafiles have very little redundancy.  
Data is stored column-wise, which means that adjacent items on file are 
not part of the same row but values from different entries.  Finding 
out which item goes with which is next to impossible if the structural 
information in the datafile is damaged.

Having said that, this is the very first report ever of a corrupted 
address book, as far as I'm aware.  I cannot quite rule out a hardware 
glitch at this stage.  Note that the datafile is in your "Library" -> 
"Application Support" -> "AddressBook" folder and is called 
"AddressBook.data".  There is also an "AddressBook.data.previous", 
which might contain a backup if all else fails.

One way to determine whether your data is salvageable is perhaps the 
following:

1) download these two files to your "Desktop" folder:
	http://www.equi4.com/pub/tk/8.4.8/tclkit-darwin-ppc.gz
	http://mini.net/sdarchive/mk2tcl.kit

2) launch the "Terminal" application, it's in your "Utilities" folder

3) in the new window, enter these lines *exactly* as follows:
	cd Desktop
	gzip -d tclkit-darwin-ppc.gz
	chmod +x tclkit-darwin-ppc
	./tclkit-darwin-ppc mk2tcl.kit > saved.txt \
	'../Library/Application Support/AddressBook/AddressBook.data'

4) open the newly created "saved.txt" file, i.e. double-click it
    (make the TextEdit window as wide as you can, preferably)

With a bit (a lot!) of luck, you may be able to see entries from your 
address book.  If not, then I don't see an easy way to recover things - 
it may not be possible at all in fact.  If you do see entries, then my 
suggestion would be to contact Apple since in that case the datafile 
itself is still readable (I have no knowledge or involvement in the 
AddressBook itself).

-jcw

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