Follow-up on EVE's Boot.ini Issue

Krinsath writes "CCP, publishers of Eve Online, have posted a Dev Blog detailing the circumstances leading up to the deletion of XP's boot.ini file, which was earlier discussed on Slashdot. The blog post has intimate details about how the mistake occurred (a new installer from their normal one), how they responded and what CCP has learned from it. While fairly dry, it is to the company's credit that they're being open about one of the more serious bugs to crop up in gaming's recent history."

Comments

That's actually a really straightforward response.

[Silverlancer]

Now if only more businesses acted this way.

Re:That's actually a really straightforward respon

[Harmonious Botch]

But they should delete greater percentages of XP...

How is that even possible

[AndrewBuck]

From the article...

"Why doesn't Windows protect its system startup files? That's a good question, one that I have asked myself in these last few days and wish I knew the answer. But of course I'm not going to blame Microsoft for our mistake. Windows doesn't protect those files and therefore software developers must take care not to touch them. We should have been more careful."

That is a good question. I am not an EVE player myself so I don't know if this update had to be run with admin privileges but it doesn't appear to be that way from the question and reply. If you are not running as admin then how is it even possible to remove a system file that is necessary to boot the system. Unlike the EVE representative making this statement I am going to blame Microsoft, it should not be the developers responsibility to make sure they don't break the OS, it is the OS developers responsibility to make sure that it cannot be broken without admin/system/root access.

-Buck

Re:How is that even possible

[Osty]

That is a good question. I am not an EVE player myself so I don't know if this update had to be run with admin privileges but it doesn't appear to be that way from the question and reply. If you are not running as admin then how is it even possible to remove a system file that is necessary to boot the system. Unlike the EVE representative making this statement I am going to blame Microsoft, it should not be the developers responsibility to make sure they don't break the OS, it is the OS developers responsibility to make sure that it cannot be broken without admin/system/root access.

Two things to note:

1. This was an XP problem. Technically it could've happened on Vista, but I haven't seen anything that said it did. As such, this falls into the same category of problems that Microsoft attempted to fix in Vista with UAC -- nearly everybody ran XP as admin, and many apps expected you to be running as admin.
2. This was a problem with an installer/uninstaller. Since nearly everything on Windows installs into %programfiles% and that's a shared location, installers need admin access (installers that ask if you want to install for "Just this user" or "Everyone" are not going to install in %userprofile% if you choose "Just this user". They're just looking to see if the Start Menu shortcuts should go into "%appdata%\Microsoft\Windows\Start Menu" or "%allusersprofile%\Microsoft\Windows\Start Menu"). Vista will elevate your privleges when you try to run an installer (you'll get a UAC prompt), after which a misbehaving installer could screw up boot.ini. Regardless of operating systems, you almost always install applications as administrator. Yes, you can install apps in $HOME on *nix systems, but 9 times out of 10 you'll use sudo on the installer (sudo apt-get install foo). Therefore this is technically a bug that could happen on any OS. It's not difficult to imagine an application install that deletes your kernel image, for example.

The real WTF here is that they have an important game file named "boot.ini". That's an exceedingly poor choice of filename. Think of it like having a game file called "autoexec.bat" or "vmlinuz" that actually has nothing to do with the DOS boot process or the Linux kernel. The only defense they give for that is "legacy".

Re:How is that even possible

[RulerOf]

Didn't Quake have an autoexec.bat file as a startup script? Quake 3, and I assume for 2 and 1, contained a file called "autoexec.cfg." I always thought it was aptly named, being a DOS veteran myself, because it contains game configs like default keybindings (e.g. bind w +move) and such that actually allow you to control the game in the first place, and it's always called during game startup. Very similar in function to the file that it is named after.

Straightforward, sure.. but... | also, the bug

[Animaether]

what of the users who did lose valuable computer time due to this problem? The proverbial kid handing in their homework (or dissertation paper or whatever), for example. Apologizing and willing to pay for a third party tech support service (e.g. Geek Squad) is nice and all, but does that cover damages incurred? doubtful. Perhaps that EULA will finally get a test.

As for the bug itself... the installer code is NSIS script; quite powerful, but you do need to know what you're doing. Especially with a command such as "Delete", I can't help but wonder who failed to RTFM (TFM reads, as they point out, that "Delete" requires a full path to be safe or else it expects the path to be root) and instead made an -assumption- on how it would work.

Now, to their defense, NSIS is also a little inconsistent (RMDir needs /r to be recursive, but DeleteRegKey needs /ifempty to NOT be recursive; whatthe.) and I've wiped my entire root myself while developing an installer with it, although via a more complex bug.. NSIS simply doesn't have any built-in "you dumbass"-protection like most commercial installers.

Although I think it's nice of them to say that they're not blaming Windows for their own mistake, I do honestly think that Windows should protect such vital files at all cost - including against Administrator level process (e.g. a prompt "you dumbass - are you sure?" will do).

Re:Straightforward, sure.. but... | also, the bug

[TooMuchToDo]

what of the users who did lose valuable computer time due to this problem? The proverbial kid handing in their homework (or dissertation paper or whatever), for example. Apologizing and willing to pay for a third party tech support service (e.g. Geek Squad) is nice and all, but does that cover damages incurred? doubtful. Perhaps that EULA will finally get a test.

Almost never will damages be covered. Come to think of it, I think in this case I can say "Damages will never be covered." You have to show value and proof of destruction of that value. Your homework being destroyed? Your dissertation being destroyed? While it may have a large amount of value to you, monetarily it has very little value.

Alright!

[Cheezymadman]

Finally, a benefit to Vista! Vista users like myself were 100% unaffected by this. It was awesome.

I cant help but wonder...

[Nezer]

I have never been into MMOs. I just didn't get them. However, in the last week things have changed and it's due, in part, to this bug.

You see, until this bug happened EVE was totally off my RADAR screen. When I read about the bug on /. last week I went to the companies website and found myself intrigued. Further discovery that they didn't charge $50 for the box on top of the monthly fee was also appealing. Further, I see client software for Macs and Linux. Intrigued I download the Mac client and create the trial account. Two days later I'm hooked and sending them my CC #.

If it hadn't been for this bug, I probably would have never bought their product! They say that any publicity is good publicity and I think this is true. Sure the SNAFU was pretty bad yet the product was still compelling enough to buy it despite a pretty bad QA miss. This latest response from the company will only help further get their name out there and is truly an opportunity to make lemonade from lemons.