iTunes 2.0 Installer Deletes Hard Drives

Cheviot writes: "It seems Apple's new iTunes 2 installer deletes the contents of users' hard drives if the drives have been partitioned. I personally lost more than 100gb of data. More information is available at Apples Discussions board. (registration required). Apple has pulled the installer, but for hundreds, if not thousands, the damage is already done." The iTunes download page has a nice warning about the problem. Ouch.

Comments

The bug

[hysterion]

Summarizing discussions on MacNN and the Apple Forum:

The problem appears to be in two portions of the installer script which could translate into rm -rf /your_drive, if certain paths $1 or $2 contain spaces:

#!/bin/sh

# if current iTunes pkg exists, delete it b/c of Installer bug
if [ -e $1Library/Receipts/iTunes.pkg ] ; then
rm -rf $1Library/Receipts/iTunes.pkg 2> /dev/null
fi

# if iTunes application currently exists, delete it
if [ -e $2Applications/iTunes.app ] ; then
rm -rf $2Applications/iTunes.app 2> /dev/null
fi

Though when I looked, nobody seemed to have found where exactly $1 and $2 are defined; also it might be that disaster only strikes with localized versions of the OS.

Re:The big mistake here...

[aberkvam]

It sounds like you aren't familiar with what iTunes does. iTunes isn't just a pretty version of WinAmp. It actually is a CD ripper and CD burner that handles audio and data CDs. It supports the CD-RWs that come with Macs as well as many third party CD-RWs In order to properly support CD burning it has to install drivers "outside its bundle". It has to change things outside of iTunes.app.

I will admit that most applications should just use the "drag and drop" installation and Apple agrees. But there are some cases where the use of an installer can not be avoided and this is one of those cases.

Worked for me.

[prwood]

I have a Pismo PowerBook with MacOS X 10.1, and I downloaded iTunes 2 immediately after it was released. My hard drive has two partitions, one for MacOS 9.2.1, and one for MacOS X 10.1. I also already had a previously installed copy of iTunes on both drives. I ran the iTunes installer, and everything worked fine. It didn't wipe out any data, and I am quite enjoying the new iTunes 2. I

Gee, I guess I was just lucky?

Re:Liability

[wrt]

The EULA doesn't come up until after you install itunes. You accept the license agreement when you run it for the first time.

I didn't lose any data, that would have sucked.

Re:Oh, come on...

[Greyfox]

Clueful people cost more. We recently interviewed a few people for an open position and I reccomended the guy who could actually have helped fix our project up. Our team-lead went for the second most competant person we interviewed on the basis that the guy I wanted would be bored and leave quickly. Our manager went for the wet-behind the ears college graduate. The money involved was the largest factor.

Ask a bunch of hiring managers right now and I think they'll tell you that they'd prefer someone adequate for a job over someone perfect for a job if it meant a salary difference of $10K - $20K. This recession isn't going to lead to a concentration of clueful people in our industry. It's going to lead to a concentration of monkeys.