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Panther Problem Roundup
An anonymous reader writes "SecureMac has posted an advisory on Mac OS X 10.3 Panther's screen lock. Apparently, to a limited degree, keys being pressed before the authentication window pops-up are sent to the currently logged-in user's environment. Note: Security Update 2003-10-28 version 1.0, which was released shortly after the advisory's release, does not fix this issue, but rather a hole in QuickTime for Java." Another anonymous reader writes "A problem with Panther has been found with external FireWire drives, that causes FireWire disk partitions in Panther above 137GB to be shown as corrupt after a reboot, in most cases being entirely unaccessible and unusable." And as a public service to all you mail rebels, I found out -- for me, anyway -- how to send email under Eudora without crashing.
As usual, MacInTouch is doing a great job of staying on top of the issues. Also, Mac OS X Hints has been flooded with loads of new Panther hints the past few days.
I watched C-beams glitter in the dark near the Tannhauser gate.
I'm quite happy to let others uncover the bugs first. Although so far bugs and incompatibilities seem to be thin on the ground so far.
The biggest problem for me is that uControl apparently doesn't work, so I won't be able to swap control and caps-lock if I upgrade. Since my hands are hard-wired to find the control key to the left of the 'a' key, this is a showstopper for me.
Does anybody know of any other way to swap control and capslock on an Apple Powerbook (ti, 866MHz)? Xmodmap apparently doesn't work either. This copy of panther is burning a hole in my pocket..
Since ive installed 10.3, ive noticed my system load hovers around 2.7 and my battery life seems far reduced. In 10.2 my load was always close to 0, and my battery lasted 5 hours atleast. Now I'm lucky to get 2.5 hours.
No major changes other than the OS upgrade have been preformed.
Anyone else notice their battery life drop?
Try this on for size.
So I run a clean install, just to make sure there isn't any issues with backwards compatability. Get everything set up just right. Throw the switch on filevault. It takes a while to encrypt, and then seems to work just fine. I then toss a bunch of old MP3's, over 2 gigs. When I log out the next time, filevault asks me if I want to let it "reclaim space" or some such nonsense. Like a trusting fool, I say yes. Upon the next login, everything looks mysteriously like a brand new finder. All of the files are still in the right places, but there's no connection between the application layer and the filesystem.
Filevault: It keeps files o secure, not even your applications can touch them!
Really I know this is usually the case with first version software, but with the OS X it seemed that more polished versions of the OS where comming out? Why the rush at Apple? if there where problems its not like we have to worry about compitition from Microsoft with their long in the tooth, err I mean Longhorn OS. They should have just held it and worked things out.
"Slashdot, where telling the truth is overrated but lying is insightful."
Another problem affecting a group of users (myself included) involves Sawtooth G4's with upgraded video cards.. these shipped with ATI 128's (and 128 Pro's I think). But many users swapped those cards out for nVidia cards (GeForce 2 mx etc) as these cards could do Quartz Extreme and were relatively cheap.. unfortunately, after installing panther on these setups it wont boot anymore.
The work are some work arounds but they all have draw backs. one fix is to remove all but 256 megs of ram from your computer.. things will return to normal then, but you'll be stuck with 256 megs of ram.. or you for some, you can copy over the old drivers from a previous version of os x, unfortunately you lose QE support then. or, the wisest, stick with 10.2 for the time being.. it remains to be seen if apple will take care of this problem.. i hope they do.
i tried doing the 256 megs of ram thing for a couple days, but it was just too slow, so this morning i went back to 10.2
Live EVERY week... Like it's Shark Week
Apple: It just works... Even when you're supposed to be logged out.
or
Apple: It just works... Unless you want to use your 137+ GB firewire drive and plan to reboot at some point in time.
I've learned more than I ever wanted to know about the "137GB barrier" after buying a driver larger than that and discovering the hard way that neither Linux 2.4.22, nor Win2K, nor my BIOS, were prepared to see anything larger than that number. It's definitely not a Mac-only problem.
Basically, the standard LBA addressing mode uses 28 bits to hold an address/offset, which means you can only see 137 gigs. There are 48-bit LBA devices out there, nearly all of them PCI controller card, but support for those is either spotty or widespread, depending on which shill you talk to. I eventually got mine working under both OSes.
Usually, however, lack of support means that the device shows up as only being 137GB, not that the partitions are corrupted. Ick.
You cannot apply a technological solution to a sociological problem. (Edwards' Law)
The "official" procedure from Apple in their help file is to click Show Certification button in the warning, then option-drag the icon to the desktop and install from there. But on three different machines I've tried it on, Mail.app hangs soon as you click that icon. This hanging behavior happens with many others too.
Not that the cert warning is the end of the world, but it does get annoying.
A few tips there too ;-)
--
Daniel C. Slagle
Keeper of the "Unofficial" iMovie FAQ
Tell Apple how you feel about iMovie
Said update didn't include panther compatibility.
I've noticed that on my 10.3 upgrade install, Japanese input is sort of flaky. I use the caps lock to switch between Japanese alphabets, and this feature often fails to work.
Also, Safari seems to have issues sometimes when it runs into animation-heavy sites. The cursor stops updating its icon (like when you move it over a link, it doesn't change), and Safari itself has troubles going to the links you try to click on.
One more thing (although this is just a pet peeve): when you navigate to any of the "special" folders like Pictures, Movies, Documents or whatever inside your Home folder in Column view, you can't scroll to the left anymore. This is especially annoying when you're in an Open/Save dialogue.
Next uncool feature is the inbox collection instead of leaving it where it belongs to. I have a bunch of accounts but my inboxes never show up together with thei Imap folders. Thats annoying since I cant re-move it back to its own folder. I dont know, maybe this was already a 'feature' in 10.2 but 10.1 was much better with that.
Another thing is the menu bar which gets always messed up. SPeakers, time and so on look messed once a program with many entries shows up.
Anyway, I like Panther.
PS One more bug is the mouse wheel. Its so jumpy to scroll a page in browsers. Nothing smooth anymore.
I feel that their latest patches/fixes/upgrades seem to be rushed out the door without much testing. A lot of the problems should have been ironed out in testing or even beta testing with users.
-joe
"A problem with Panther has been found with external FireWire drives, that causes FireWire disk partitions in Panther above 137GB [128 GiB] to be shown as corrupt after a reboot, in most cases being entirely unaccessible and unusable."
Reminds me of a problem with Final Cut Pro and Mac OS X 10.1. Random Pyro Firewire drives would have their partition tables overwritten. But then they weren't just shown as corrupt, they were corrupted.
Oh, say does that Star-Spangled Banner entwine / The myrtle of Venus with Bacchus's vine?
Tons and tons of Panther users have found Java to be broken after upgrading. Apparently Panther incorrectly installed Java. Typing 'java -version' reports back "HotSpot at incorrect virtual address. Sharing disabled." Some reported that if they explicitly tried to use the 1.3 JVM that it all-out-crashed on them. Others just reported not being to start Java 1.4 apps.
My Quicksilver dual 800 G4 (installed Panther via Archive & Install) has issues waking up from sleep... probably 1 out of every 3 times I wake it up, it doesn't come back to life - the fan spins up, but that's as far as it goes. Video doesn't come alive, network doesn't come alive, and the only thing I can do is power-cycle it (thank god for journaling, eh?)
I haven't heard anybody else report this problem, and I haven't had any problems with my 500mhz TiBook (cleanly formatted and installed Panther fresh). It's really quite annoying.
The split in the headphones line where it separates to each ear and just above the jack frayed on mine and that's when I learned there is white electrical tape. Good stuff.
After upgrading to Panther I cannot see Window's shares in the Finder. I can still go to previously used shares (I have an alias for them) and I can share my disk with a Windows box. I just cannot browse.
Interestingly at work I can see the Domains and in some of the domains I can see one or two servers (that's all that is there) but the main company wide domain remains empty. Under 10.2 (all versions) I could see all hundred or so machines.
So this iPod cable goes into a bar and orders a drink. Bartender says, "Sorry, iPod cables aren't allowed in here!" Feeling rejected, the iPod cable goes back out, when it has an idea. After just a few short months of regular use, it becomes all frayed near the connector. Then it ties itself into a knot and goes back to the bar. The bartender says, "Hey, aren't you that iPod cable I threw out a few months ago?" The iPod cable says, "No, I'm a frayed knot!"
Well, personally, I'm kindof looking forward to the "128 Petabyte barrier" at 48 bits.
But, seriously, if a drive was formatted at over 137GB, and then mounted with a system that can't read that much, then, at best, there will be data that can't be accessed. At worst, the computer will try to write to that area and roll over the address and overright the start of the drive (I did this with a 3 gig drive and a 2 gig limit).
HIV Crosses Species Barrier... into Muppets
A problem with Panther has been found with external FireWire drives, that causes FireWire disk partitions in Panther above 137GB to be shown as corrupt after a reboot, in most cases being entirely unaccessible and unusable.
I've been using a 160GB drive over Firewire since Jaguar. I did an "archive and install" of panther, and the same drive still works great.
I did, however, turn the drive off while I was installing the OS. I wonder if that has anything to do with it? Or perhaps its a particular Firewire chip/controller causing the problem?
Perl - $Just @when->$you ${thought} s/yn/tax/ &couldn\'t %get $worse;
in 10.2 when you wen't to your network browser all shared systems showed up and you could mount them on your desktop, do a cmd F and search all the mounted driveso n the network.. very handy when you connect to some big drives amongst other things.
however, in 10.3 network browsing has moved to the finder, which is very handy to just click on the network icon and all shared computers show up.. the problem begins there.. once you connect to these devices there is no way to do a network search. you can add it as a specific place to search, but it doesn't work. you must physically have the drive mounted on the desktop to be able to do a file search..
but in 10.3, while cmd k does bring up the network browser, it no longer provides you a list of shared devices on the network.. so whereas before the names were listed, you must not know the ip address of the computer you're trying to connect to.. which, for some isn't that big of a deal.. but explaining this to users here at work who haven't even mastered keyboard shortcuts is a serious problem..
now the question remains, is this a "feature" of panther? or is it a bug in pather... to me (and others) it seems like a step backwards in usability and makes panther a hard sell in some network situations.
Live EVERY week... Like it's Shark Week
TCP timestamp: Fixes CAN-2003-0882 where the TCP timestamp is
initialized with a constant number. This could allow a person to
discover how long the system has been up based upon the ID in TCP
packets.
Why is revealing the uptime of a system considered to be a security vulnerability?
I can confirm this bug exists in Panther. If a FW800 drive (usually an Oxford 922 controller) is plugged into a FW400 port, the drive will be irrecoverably corrupted upon reboot.
Plugging the same FW800 drive directly into a FW800 port on the machine skirts the problem (though the damaged filesystem is still lost forever).
Plugging FW400 into a FW400 port has no problems.
In sum, this is specific to FW800 enclosures plugging into FW400 ports under Panther.
cr
Mail.app changed a few behaviours. one of which I liked the old way. it used to be that if an account was unchecked for collecting mail automatically then pressing the "get mail" button did not check this account either. Now it does check the account when you press the button. Personally I liked that since I cant "see" my external e-mail mailserver from work and I cant see my work mail server from outside. thus I just had my external e-mail server unchecked so It did not try to check it when i pressed "get mail". anyone know how to change this back to the old way.
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
These 'people' are spreading 'information' that puts Apple and Jobs in a bad light.
Why are they still allowed to be free?
--
Poll: 75% of Palestinians support Haifa restaurant attack:
Amazingly, even with completely new Samba and browser implementations, WINS resolved browsing on a routed network is STILL hosed. It works a little better than before. I see a few shares for a few seconds before the window goes blank and reports zero shares. I replicated the failure on three machines, then a report with Apple, including a tcpdump.
The other big problem I have had stemmed from being short of space after doing an upgrade install. Using the new Disk Utility, I backed up my whole home directory to a disk image on my iPod and did a reformat install of Panther. Next time I mounted the disk image, the file system was unrecoverably corrupted. So much for my data.
This is a bit off topic, as it is pertains only to pre-Panther revs of the OS, but @stake is reporting a kernel buffer overflow in 10.0-10.2.8. I submitted this as a story, but it was rejected. Does @stake have a bad reputaiton or something? Apparently our Windows team subscribes to it. One of them forwarded the advisery to me.
It is cowardly, and a betrayal of whatever it means to be a Jew, to act as a white man
-James Baldwin
I have a 200 gig hdrive in a granite digital firewire enclosure that saw no problems being used in panther. I'm not sure what happened to the other user, but I can confirm it did not happen with me.
The only annoying bug I've noticed is that network locations are not saving wireless HEX keys. It's a pain to type the 20 some characters over.
You great big goob!
so, let me get this straight.
You replace Apple's fans with models that were much quieter. Of course you checked to see that the replacement fans moved as much air as Apple's fans right?
Then you took off Apple's heat sink, the one designed to fit their CPU card, and you..... wait, let me finish giggling...
you attached a PC CPU fan with insulated wire. I bet it was nearly as stable as the average Junk Collector's pickup truck.
Then, after you ripped out the fans that the machine was designed to use, and after you wired a fan that wasn't designed for your machine, you get all ticked that Apple won't fix your machine.
I'm laughing so hard I'm gonna piss myself.
You do know that Apple offered a free upgrade kit for your machine right? You could have simply paid the shipping and they would have sent you a new Powersupply and new fans. You even got to keep the old stuff as spares.
geez...
I'm not feeling witty so bite me
The ringing in my ears comes from three distinct camps.
1. Those who are peeved that their super-specific, GUI or API-hacking freeware no longer works.
2. Those who crammed their heads up their asses and used the "archive and install" or upgrade methods to put Panther on.
3. Those elite few who have found a legitimate bug in panther.
My answers are...
1. "Umm, duh?" If the API I is no longer there, of course your freeware hack won't work. Its not apple's fault, so why blame them? We've gone through this on every major upgrade since system 6. If apple had to keep every API in each upgrade, macOSX would be as unstable as windows. Wait a week until your freeware developer updates the application to utilize the new API and then upgrade to panther. What's the problem?
2. Apple's use of point release numbers (10.1, 10.2, 10.3) is quite misleading. All three really change a lot under the hood and as such upgrading is a really messy process. If you expect and demand a stable OS, then manually backup your data and do a clean install. This should be common practice. Sure, its convenient to upgrade, but if you are browsing slashdot, you should have enough computer savvy to do a proper clean install.
3. Thank you for finding an error. I assume you've posted a bug report to apple? For the benefit of the rest of us, if you could post your system configuration, hardware, etc that'd be really useful for troubleshooting the problem. As always, the next point-point release (10.3.1) will solve a lot of the problems that people report.
Shouting "apple blows b/c feature XYZ doesn't work!!" is not very helpful. You have to also include your hardware info, whether you upgraded or clean installed panther, and what third-party apps you have installed. Let's be productive people, not a bunch of whiners.
I have a 180gb external Firewire 400 drive that's been rebooted with Panther multiple times with no issues. Its clearly not any single factor that is causing the problems: that's what Macintouch is saying anyway.
Its not as clear cut as it being an ATA VI problem, anyway.
Lord Pixel - The cat who walks through walls
A little bigger on the inside than out
But how long did it take you to copy that 17MB file?
but i did not troll the deputy!
For whatever reason, Sendmail won't compile in 10.3/XCode, and it gives repeated warning messages about varargs.h being deprecated and please use stdargs.h instead. My solution was simple: compile it under 10.2.
Meanwhile, I'm waiting for Fink to be properly supported under 10.3 before I Pantherize my other Macs.
--
"Open source is good." - Steve Jobs
"Open source is evil." - Microsoft
I don't think it's a buffer overflow. I believe this is the offending code:
... ...
xnu/bsd/kern/kern_exec.c:
do {
error = copyoutstr(cp, (caddr_t)ucp,
(unsigned)cc, &len);
ucp += len;
cp += len;
nc += len;
cc -= len;
} while (error == ENAMETOOLONG);
This code will cause the kernel go into an infinite loop if the command line is not too long but the command line plus the environment is too long. It's a cut-and-paste error, clearly (elsewhere in the code is a copyin loop which also changes error to E2BIG if ENAMETOOLONG appears).
some 30 plus users i know did archive, and have little or no trouble. 5 or so clean, same.
but those 2 who did upgrade........ damn.
Another news from C|Net saying "Apple patches Panther but not older OS":
g =n efd_top
http://news.com.com/2100-7355_3-5098688.html?ta
Is that another FUD?
it's the link to the apple website that you removed almost immediately when you started using the machine. it's in the default config but it's a huge waste of space. you forgot. :)
how many goddamn times is this fucktard going to repost this tardfucking comment?
The source of this problem is also the source of the first Panther security update; namely QuickTime for Java. Those unlucky enough to update QuickTime for Java in 10.2.8, prior to upgrading to Panther, found their Java 1.4.1 frameworks hosed.
This is being called the "69 error", as the reported version is 1.4.1_69 rather than 1.4.1_99. The unintentional proximity of releasing this QT Java update and Panther's release, and the inability to change Panther's install scripts after being burned to CD is the cause of this problem.
I can't verify that the security update fixes this problem, but my hunch is that it does. I fixed my machine before the security update was released, and I suspect that those who claim not to have the problem are already patched with the security update, or didn't install the QT Java update prior to installing Panther. The fact that many java programs still utilize Java 1.3, which was unaffected by this problem, probably masked the symptoms from many users, leading them to believe that they were unaffected also.
-- Len
Those of us waiting patiently for the point release to even begin to think about upgrading are in your debt. Perhaps now you'll learn: just because it's from Apple doesn't mean it "just works."
Personally I do not consider it 'advanced' to have to wipe my drive once a year, but to each his own.
If Jesus wants me it knows where to find me.
When I first time looked at it I was shocked (At last! Great! and so on... ;) - THIS EXACTLY model HEATSINK is built on 4 THERMOTUBES! Copper plate, four thermotubes and thin copper radiator plates on them, parallel to motherboard.
It's the best thing in AIR processor cooling I've ever seen by myself.
I wiped the shite from my drive. I've already paid for an excellent OS - 10.2.7 - and I'm not going to waste my time and peace of mind on a RAM glutton bug farm like 10.3.
I encourage you all to consider doing the same - maybe that way we can force Cupertino to get their act together again.
Oh, 10.2 is unusable?
Good you're telling me. Dammit, I could swear I've been using it happily for months. Must have been the reality distortion field...
There are two rules for success:
1. Never tell everything you know.
After hitting CMD+F, click the browse button and a list of shared devices on the network pops up in a new window - then you can just double-click on the one you want.
It works essentially the same although it requires an extra click to initiate the search. No need to know the IP address or protocol.
I'm not sure about your setup, but when I hit CMD+F to do a search, there's a list of all the mounted local and network devices on the top panel -- no different from jaguar.
Make sure you've got "specific places" selected in the "search in:" pulldown or you won't see 'em.