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

137GB is a common problem

[devphil]

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.