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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.
In the terminal, run "top -u" to see what process is taking up all the CPU time. If your processor is running at 100% for hours on end, then that's why you are getting less battery life! Panther slightly improved my battery life on my 15" AlBook.
Doh!
Bear in mind that this is an article about problems with Panther.
Therefore a lot of the postings here are likely to regard problematic experiences with Panther for whatever reason, and so of course Panther is going to look bad.
Its like those people that visit the Apple support discussions forum and are like "Oh no, everybody is complaining about problems, I'm never going to upgrade now!!!", where the only reason those forums are there is for people with problems so what do you expect to see...
The real number of peopleaffected by problems with Panther are probably miniscule, but that's not what the discussion groups and articles like this make it seem like, and unwary readers may be caught up in thinking that everyone will have these problems.
-Nex
This sig has been deprecated.
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
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)
Check versiontracker.com, uControl was updated a day or two ago.
A few tips there too ;-)
--
Daniel C. Slagle
Keeper of the "Unofficial" iMovie FAQ
Tell Apple how you feel about iMovie
I've seen increased battery life too. Try resetting your power manager? (cmd-option-p-r on some systems, others you have to push and hold a reset button.. check apple.com/support and search for "power manager" and your laptop type)
Actually, this seems to me like a much smaller storm of problems than Jaguar introduced. I remember people really ranting at it; here, we seem to have a few problems. I haven't seen any "this is all shit, everything's broken!"-type rants yet, only "this specific thing [that I really need] doesn't work."
Well, it can tell you several things. Those things are not very useful in themselves, but they can aid you in determining the system configuration:
1. Server or desktop/workstation. Desktop systems are rebooted quite regularly. Servers tend to stay up for weeks to months.
2. From the uptime you may make some inferences about the OS on the machine. A machine with a year of uptime is likely a SUN, HP, IBM, etc "big iron" machine. Basially you know it's not windows so you can skip all those attacks.
3. If a machine isn't rebooted often, there probably isn't a monitor attached to it so no-one is looking directly at it very often. Sure there may be load monitors and such, but unless you do something harsh the extra CPU load won't get noticed. Whereas a desktop system intrusion may be noticed by the user via slow downs or "hiccups" in GUI response.
4. If an OS constantly uses the same timestamp for TCP packets, that's a dead giveaway as to the system/OS that's running.
Much of this comes down to "security by obscurity", which while not a viable mechinism in it's own right, is quite valuable when combined with other techniques. You want your TCP stack to give away as little information to a potential attacker as possible. The less they know, the more they have to search and the more likely you will find them before they get in the system.
Article X: The powers not delegated... by the Constitution...are reserved...to the people
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.
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.