Major Problems With Safari

kuwan writes "There have been many problems reported with Safari on Apple's discussion boards. The two most prominent are that option-clicking on a link to download can replace your Home folder with the downloaded file, effectively nuking your Home folder. The other has been reported as a printing problem, but is far worse. The printing problem occurs because Safari deletes /tmp, which is a link to /private/tmp."

Comments

X11 and /tmp

[Daleks]

The other has been reported as a printing problem, but is far worse. The printing problem occurs because Safari deletes /tmp, which is a link to /private/tmp.

So that explains it. Apple's X11 application was crashing on me shortly after launch and immediately when requesting the creation of an xterm. The logfile said a lock file in /tmp could not be created.

How to fix the /tmp problem

[kuwan]

The following was deleted from my original post. Here's how to fix the problems with /tmp:

You need to recreate the /tmp symbolic link (/tmp is just a link to /private/tmp).

1. Open the Terminal application.
2. Type "sudo ln -s /private/tmp /tmp" (without the quotes).
3. You'll be prompted for your password, so enter it.
4. Everything should now work like before (you may have to log out and then log back in again).

I agree with those that have said that you should use caution with beta software, but considering that over 300,000 people downloaded it on the first day there are going to be a lot of people that are going to be needing a fix. 5 of the 6 people I work with (including me) that used Safari had /tmp deleted. That's 83% which means there's probably more than 250,000 people (from just the first day) that are going to need a fix.

Other problems that might be experienced include:

1. Can't launch any Classic Application
2. Can't run Software Update. I get "an unexpected error has occured."
3. Can't log in as any other user except the Admin.
4. Can't print.

There are many more problems that may come up, so anything we can do to get the word out is a good thing.

Alpha, Beta, Pre-Release Candidate, etc...

[shdragon]

This is a rather old debate...please see link for related debate.
KDE Office Beta

Above is an old thread regarding KDE office beta and the confusion caused by alpha, beta, etc. and different people's expectations.

I think that a good general rule of thumb is to say that:

pre-alpha/alpha software all bets are off.

Beta - We've worked out all the major computer destroying bugs but there's still lots of little annoying ones.

Pre-Release candidate - Hey, we got this thing to work pretty well and now we need people to try and break it so that when we actually release we can

Honestly, I'd be pretty pissed if someone released a beta and it did something nasty like erase my ~ directory. We're not talking about CS 101 students releasing the Hello World Browser.

Re:How is this possible?

[KH]

[xxx@xxx:~]% ls -l /
.
.
lrwxrwxr-t 1 root admin 12 Jan 10 00:43 tmp@ -> /private/tmp


If you are a member of admin group, you can delete it.

I am beginning to get an impression that people who had set Download folder to Macintosh HD:tmp in OS 9 using Internet Config may be affected. Looks like Safari honors the setting from the Internet Config.

Posting from Safari :)

here's what happened to me--specifically

[cmdrjbgoode]

i run 10.2.3, and have two main users, an admin and a normal user. i always log in a the unprivileged normal user and only use the admin for, uh, admin. duh. when files are downloaded, they go to ~/Desktop. i won't reveal my usernames for security reasons but they don't contain spaces. my admin user lives on the same disk as os x (/users/admin/), and my normal user lives on an external firewire disk (/volumes/disk/foouser/) i download flat files from my bank to import into quicken. on every other browser i've used, clicking the appropriate link on the bank's page downloads a file "foo.qif". safari comes out, i get it and use the default settings. i try downloading the file. safari shows me the contents of the flat file in the window. i go back to the previous page, option click on the link and choose "save link target as..." (i don't have the exact text, because safari is banned for reasons that will become obvious). the file downloads, i import it. fine. good. i keep using my computer for a few days, using safari (but not option-click downloading anything). i read here about how this problem has happened. i logout from my normal user, log in as my admin user and delete /Applications/Safari.app, ~/Library/Safari/*, and everything else i can find with that name. (yes, i know i can do that from terminal, but i had other stuff to do in the gui.) when i try to log back in as my normal user, i get the default desktop and dock. yikes! sure enough, my home dir /volumes/disk/user is empty except for . and .. after a few minutes of panic & regret & resolutions to get a friggin cd burner for backups of those priceless photos of my kid, etc, i realize the disk usage hasn't changed. relief sets in and i realize the files aren't gone, they've just been misplaced. i log out and then log in as my admin user. i run disk utility and repair the external disk. it says the directory listing is incorrect and repairs it and then everything is magically good as new. i log in as my normal user and all my files are back. i never had any printing problems.