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.

Comments

uControl doesn't work

[GrumpyOldMan]

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..

Filevault wasn't quite cooked yet

[Anonymous Coward]

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!

Re:Filevault wasn't quite cooked yet

[CmdrChillupa]

I had the same problem with one of the betas. I started with Filevault on, thinking that I would rather have it incrementally encrypt files as I brought them into my home directory instead of waiting for it to do them all at once. It worked great for a few weeks, seemed a lot more stable then the previous build so I didn't upgrade to the next released build. Then all of a sudden I turned my computer on, tried to log in and it sat for 10 minutes doing something. Finally I got impatient, figured I had a journaling file system and did a hard reset. Ooops. When the PowerBook came back up my username and password worked but my home directory was empty.

That wasn't the result I was hoping for.

Filevault is one of the most touted features. I'm sure it works great, never tried to crack it.

Maybe they shouldn't have implemented secure delete and FileVault all at the same time. They seem to work a little too well together.

Firewire drives?

[ZxCv]

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?

Lost funtionality (file searching over a LAN)

[godawful]

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.

Re:137GB is a common problem

[Alcimedes]

i actually have 7 200GB drives attached to a machine running Panter. it's never had any problems with any of them.

maybe i'm just lucky.

Archive and Install doesn't suck

[thatguywhoiam]

I agree with your post completely... with the exception of your comments about Archive and Install. This is not a head-up-ass move - it works really, really well, and is the equivalent of a clean install, without a lot of hassle. Look into it, you'll be surprised. (You do need some free room though.)

Personally I do not consider it 'advanced' to have to wipe my drive once a year, but to each his own.