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Silly Kernel Panic in Mac OS X 10.2.2

shibby tells us that it is easy to cause a kernel panic in Mac OS X 10.2.2, by attempting to move a directory into the same location as another one of the same name, using Terminal: mkdir ~/mydir; cd ~/mydir; mkdir mydir; mv mydir ... Kernel panic is instant. Save all your documents and quit your open apps if you feel the need to see it for yourself. Happy Thanksgiving!

6 of 192 comments (clear)

  1. I hope you submited to Apple by feldsteins · · Score: 5, Insightful



    Please tell me that shibbey or pudge...or someone... actually submitted this bug to Apple before posting it here.

    It'll be interesting, though, to see how long we wait for a fix. If this is a legit thing. I haven't tested it and don't plan to.

    --
    You like your Macintosh better than me, don't you Dave? Dave? Can you hear me Dave?
  2. Re:Sure by qengho · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Try explaining to mom why she can't have two directories named letters without crashing the machine

    The GUI (gracefully) prevents you from doing this, so if Mom can understand the sequence of terminal commands that triggers the panic, she'll have no trouble understanding why...

  3. Video editing was Re:mail info by Melantha_Bacchae · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Funny you mention video editing. Even on the low end, your $1,200 PC is never going to run iMovie.

    On the high end, your cost comparison is a joke, because the cost of the computer is the least of your expenses. A high end PC based (with Avid or the like) system is going to set you back $100,000 or more.

    The cost for a similarly featured Apple video editing system with Final Cut Pro? Less than $10,000.

    Read it and weep:
    http://www.filmandvideo.com/New%20Pages/art icle2.h tml

    Worried about this kernel panic ruining your video editing? Don't. You are not likely to be in your Terminal making two directories of the same name and moving them about in the course of your video editing. Even if you were, this is happening in the Unix part of OS X, which is open source, and it is being announced on Slashdot. Someone will probably fix it for fun over the weekend and email Apple a patch by Monday. We'll probably see an official, tested, security update from Apple next week. That is the beauty of open source.

    If this were Microsoft and a "blue screen of death", well, don't hold your breath. Their response would be the same as seven years ago: "There are no significant bugs in Windows XP. Trust us.". Yeah, right! That's what PC Magazine said about Windows 95, when I spent 11 months trying to get a stable install of the original version.

    Windows: "Go talk to my friend, an 800 pound monopoly-abusing gorilla!"
    Mac: "And here's my good buddy, the 66,000 ton Godzilla!"
    Godzilla: Stomp! ;)

  4. Re:os9 never did that by Melantha_Bacchae · · Score: 5, Insightful

    krel wrote:

    > os9 would never, despite its shabby memory
    > protection, and pathetic preemptive multitasking,
    > do that.

    Nope, because OS 9 wasn't Unix, and so didn't use Unix terminology for operating system failures. OS 9 bombed, OS X panics (very rarely). BTW, any kernel hacker can, if they choose, get the source code and fix this bug. OS 9 couldn't do that either.

    I'm glad, though, that I switched early enought that I got a chance to know OS 9. It really was amazing, despite it being basically a microcomputer OS, all the things Apple got it to do.

    OS 9 is the blue-eyed caterpillar, small and awkward, but courageous and friendly.

    OS X is the blue-eyed adult Moth, awesomely beautiful, supremely powerful. She soars above all, the peerless Queen of Monsters.

    And Apple is, as always, Mothra Leo's Forever Friend. ;)

  5. Fink/GNU is your friend by bluestar · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Sure enough using /bin/mv it crashed as advertised.

    But /sw/bin/mv, which is the GNU version of mv from the fileutils package, just gives a "cannot overwrite directory" error.

    This is (one of the many reasons) why the GNU versions of everything should be standard on all systems in the universe. So go fetch and install a copy of fink and (optionally) FinkCommander.

    Also, "alias mv mv -i" is a Very Good Idea(tm).

    --
    "The cost of freedom is eternal vigilance." -Thomas Jefferson
  6. Re:They know .... by Daniel+Dvorkin · · Score: 4, Insightful

    It's found. If it's not fixed, it soon will be. And since Apple is very good about patch releases through Software Update, the fix will soon be easily available to every OS X user.

    This kind of partnership between OSS and a major commercial vendor is unprecedented, AFAIK. (No flames, please; if I'm wrong, just tell me so, and who did it first.) It's produced some great things so far, and I'm looking forward to seeing where it goes.

    --
    The correlation between ignorance of statistics and using "correlation is not causation" as an argument is close to 1.