Member Avatar for kayashiva

i cant open any dmg files. stuffit expander opens and nothing happens. i tried dragging into applications with no result. i'm working on 0SX10.2.8. can anyone please help

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  • Latest Post Latest Post by matt warren

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Quick diagnostic steps for a Panther (OS X 10.2.8) machine that won’t open a .dmg. Older installs can fail for a few concrete reasons: the file is incomplete or corrupted, the image uses a newer format the OS doesn’t understand, there isn’t enough free space for the image to expand, or the file’s permissions are wrong. The commands below will produce clear, copyable error messages so you can tell which of those is happening.

Run these from Terminal (change MyImage.dmg to the actual filename):

cd ~/Desktop
file MyImage.dmg
md5 MyImage.dmg
hdiutil verify MyImage.dmg
hdiutil attach MyImage.dmg
df -h

What to look for and next steps:

  • file shows whether the name really is an Apple disk image or something else (a renamed archive).
  • md5 gives a checksum you can compare with the download source; mismatches mean re-download.
  • hdiutil verify reports corruption; if it fails, the image is damaged.
  • hdiutil attach prints mount errors (unsupported format, I/O errors, etc.). Those exact error lines are the most useful diagnostics.
  • df -h confirms you have enough free space; some images expand during mount.

If hdiutil reports an unsupported format, the image may use features introduced after Panther; try extracting files with an image/extraction utility that can open damaged or newer DMGs, or open the image on a newer Mac. If verify fails but the source checksum matches, re-download over a different network or copy the file to the local hard drive before retrying. Also check permissions (ls -l MyImage.dmg and chmod a+r MyImage.dmg if necessary) and tail the system log (sudo tail -f /var/log/system.log) while you attempt the attach to capture related messages.

Following the earlier suggestions from , and , these CLI checks give concrete errors to work from and usually point to either a corrupt file, a format/compatibility issue, or a local resource problem (disk space/permissions).

Member Avatar for g3t

Hi,Look in the preffs. of stuffit expender where it put the files after mounted . It could be there...or use diskimagemount. by default.Right click on the mousse

Member Avatar for acescence

drag and drop the dmg file on disk utility, located in applications/utilities/disk utility, and it will mount.

alternately, toast will mount a dmg file, even some that disk utility reports as damaged

Member Avatar for matt warren

you should try upgradingyour OS to 10.3.8 or 10.3.9
these would be free (i think). you could also check your version of stuffit exp.
it might solve your prob.
other than that you may have corrupted .dmg
cheers&aloha,
matt

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