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Major Snow Leopard Bug Said To Delete User Data
inglishmayjer was one of several readers to send in the news of a major bug in Apple's new OS, 10.6 Snow Leopard, that can wipe out all user data for the administrator account. It is said to be triggered — not every time — by logging in to the Guest account and then back in to the admin account. Some users are reporting that all settings have been reset and most data is gone. The article links to a number of Apple forum threads up to a month old bemoaning the problem. MacFixIt suggests disabling login on the Guest account and, if you need that functionality, creating a non-administrative account named something like Visitor. (The Guest account is special in that its settings are wiped clean after logout.) CNet reports that Apple has acknowledged the bug and is working on a fix.
Well since the only apparent critics are anon cowards I'll just assume that they are all MS fan boys out to get their cockroach bites while the getting is good.
I don't think it takes a Microsoft fan boy to be critical of a production OS bug that results in complete data loss.
I'm not a fanboi of any particular OS and use all the major ones at home (Win7, Macbook Pro, Ubuntu, Debian, BSD, etc.). They're just tools and they all have their strengths and weaknesses.
But this is a serious bug, and based on the past I'm certain there would be many posts from smug Apple fanbois if it had been a Windows bug. I don't use my Guest account either, but that doesn't mean it would have sucked major ass if I had lost all my data because I did. The user could not possibly predict that just using the Guest account would incur this kind of risk.
It doesn't make sense to be an apologist. I cannot understand why Apple seems to get a free pass from their user community when this sort of thing happens to them. It's not enough to point out that the other developers have problems, too. Get pissed off and help them be better next time.
Eagles may soar, but weasels don't get sucked into jet engines.
I'm not one for the holy wars and I hate to sound like I'm defending Microsoft, but if this happened in Windows, people would be at their door with pitchforks and torches. For sure, no one would be admonishing the users.
See ya, karma. :(
I cannot understand why Apple seems to get a free pass from their user community when this sort of thing happens to them..
Never underestimate the power of shiny.
then it's flawed
If one thing has been burned into my brain as a programmer, it's this:
Crash all you want, but never, ever, ever harm, corrupt and by all that's holy, NEVER delete the user's data.
The data is sacred. The data is life.
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
I'm sorry, but there's no way this should've fallen through QA cracks, because it should not have made it to QA in the first place. This kind of thing should never have been possible in the first place due to a clear segregation of permissions between "Admin" and everything else - particularly "guest".
The fact that this is even possible suggests a much deeper flaw in the security mechanisms of OS X.
~/ssh slashdot.org ssh: connect to host slashdot.org port 22: too many beers
When will software/computer/IT companies be held to the same standards that other engineers (Civil, Electrical, Mechanical) are? If a bridge is built and it collapses due to a poor design, or a gadget catches fire or brakes are poorly designed, people head to their local courthouse and sue.
In the computer world, people just accept that "All my photographs, resume, music, documents, tax returns, whatever" being lost forever is par for the course.
How do you measure the value of data? You can't assign $/KB of data, as one couldn't equate a 20MB Stephen King unpublished manuscript to be equivalent to 4 hi-res pictures of my wife's flower garden. However, I'm not a fan or Stephen King, but my wife loves her flower garden.
Should computers (or electric devices in general) with persistent storage carry a huge warning label on them that says,
"Not guaranteed to maintain data integrity, always back up your data. Use at your own risk."
I'm sorry, but there's no way this should've fallen through QA cracks, because it should not have made it to QA in the first place....
So your solution to software quality problems is "don't make mistakes in the first place."? Have you ever released a production-level application before?
6th Street Radio @ddombrowsky
...an average user is more likely to get hit by it as they are more likely to have the Guest account "feature" active.
I seriously doubt that. In my experience average users don't even know such a feature exists or care at all about security. They just share a single account with their family and friends and would not see the point of having a separate account for guests.
The guest account feature is probably used mostly by people who surf porn on the family computer and are moderately savvy about hiding it and by more advanced users who set up a machine for their whole family or who let friends use their machine to look something up. Any feature that is off by default is unlikely to be used by the average user.
I'm more amazed that the system ignores user permissions (aka when you're not logged in as an user with admin permissions) and it proceeds to nuke files the user doesn't have "permission" to touch.
Lots of system services have permission to do things the currently logged in user cannot. For example, people logged in as guest users can still see the correct time, despite them having no ability to access the NTP client. That's because the system takes care of business regardless of the user. The problem here is the system, which has access to delete files and change settings the guest user does not, is somehow overzealous i tis cleanup. A similar situation would be an antivirus program running that does not know how to deal with guest accounts that hoses its own permissions and stops working when a guest account logs out. It's not that the guest has permission to mess with the antivirus, just that the OS screws up when the guest account is used for anything.
I don't see any evidence of apologism or Apple getting a free pass. Whenever Apple screws up, they're instantly on the front page of Slashdot, Digg, etc.