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Serious CGI Bug in MacOS X Servers
menthos writes "Multiple CGI queries appearently causes the MacOS X server kernel to do a "System Panic", making MacOS X almost useless as a web server. The
German computer magazine c't has
the story (in english)
"
It's too soon too lay judgement. Remember, the first Web browser/server was a NeXT Cube which Mac OS X was based on.
The port of Apache 1.3.4 is suspect.
So far this has only been recreated in benchmark tests (not in the real world), and appears to be due to Apache's resource allocation code, so it should be easy to fix.
This shouldn't be used to make an attack at Apple's "incompetence" like many will claim.
Yes It is a serious problem, yes it is completely stupid and yes it is very annoying and diturbing for anyone using OS X server as a web server and who need CGIs. But the article exagerates when it says it puts the implementation of Unix used by Apple in Question... I mean, come on.. this is version 1.0! And besides they are changing the kernel in the next iteration of OS X mfor Mach 3.0... And it will be open source... so if it is a problem in the kernel you can correct and/or patch it easily... And if it is in Apache... well... same thing...
I thinnk this could be a good occasion to prove that OpenSource is indeed usefulll with commercial products...
And besides that is one way to crash an OS that is userfriendly... compared to the many ways to crash a NT machine...
Well... I really think this looks like bad press on purpose... totally overblown...
Cgi Veranläßt Server MacOS X In Panik zu versetzen
Ein tödlicher Programmfehler im Server MacOS X macht neues Betriebssystem des Apfels praktisch
unbrauchbar als web server. Das Problem ist besonders kritisch, da es Freigabe 1,0 des
MacOS-Servers X in einer seiner Schlüsseleigenschaften beeinflußt.
**time-out** während ein Server Eingabe Test an c't Labor, d apache web server aufbauen in d OS
veranlassen d Maschine zu anhalten mit ein tödlich " System Panik " Fehler nach
aufeinanderfolgend cgi Index Abfrage.
Cgi-Indexe (Schnittstelle der allgemeinen Gateway) sind eine allgemeine Server Extension, häufig
verwendet für Web-Abfragen. Der Test stoppte die Systemkälte, wann immer 32 oder mehr Prozesse
wiederholt um cgi-Indexe vom Server baten -- dieses entspricht der Aktivität, die normalerweise
von mehrereen hundert Surfers verursacht wird. Es war immer notwendig, ein hartes Neuladen über
den Rücksetzschalter zu tun. Keine die Res
Slashdot still at least pays lip service to the "news for nerds" title even if many of the readers don't. Until they give in and come right out as a linux advocacy site (at which point I, and I would suspect many of the open minded minority of /. readers, will quit reading on a regular basis) they should post articles that are of interest to people who are interested in computers.
That was on an old school mac web server, not Mac OS X.
The guy that did the original write in made the silly statement:
"making MacOS X almost useless as a web server"
Well, did you ever hear of a bug fix? This seems to imply that MacOS X server will ALWAYS be like this and therefore don't even bother with it.
When a bug pops up in Linux, does everyone start to say: wow, Linux is now useless? No, of course not...because we know a patch will be coming down the pike shortly.
Back then they had to find something to use those NeXT cubes for...
Thats the problem! This is not open source so you will have to wait till Apple fixes it. If Apache can panic the kernel, there is a serious problem.
.....Gee all ya have ta do is reset!
Da
The older ones (the 'dinkyscreen macs') make nice front loading wastebaskets. (if you upgrade them from being Macs by coreing out the electornics).
I use Linux, Ultrix, Digital Unix, Solaris, Windows, Mac OS and VMS on a daily basis. While it is true that each OS has its' own strengths and weaknesses, there is no perfect solution. I applaud Apple in its attempts to produce a better OS while simultaneously becoming a member of the Open Source movement in an ever increasing way. Perhaps some personal inspection of why we attack certain OS'es is in order?
It's hard to compete with Microsoft on the desktop. Particularly now that server OSes like Linux are crowding Microsoft down into being only a desktop OS again.
So Apple will fix it. Just because it takes 20 months or so to get a fix out of Microsoft or other companies doesn't mean that EVERY company that produces a product can't produce a fix in a short time.
Are you implying that it's IMPOSSIBLE for Apple to produce a quick fix...and only open source can do it? This may be true. But lets see if Apple rises to the challenge first before totally condeming them because of past performance of others.
Also, let's just calm down with the Linux Jihad that everyone seems to have. This isn't a holy war or anything....it's just friggin computers.
"Da....Gee all ya have ta do is run Linux and all your problems magically disappear!"
Yeah...in a pig's eye.
I give them an A+ for enthusiasm, but only a D+ for technical knowledge and a C- for logic.
>> The apple advocacy ring would be broken in two.
That's harsh man. ( but true ! )
There are already patches for this, it's something to do with the version of Apache that shipped with Server X.
The kernel and apache are all open source under Darwin. Everybody bitching about the problem and Apple's response time can now go, download the code, and fix this "simple, stupid" bug that they seem to be so sure about.
I expect slashdot to have their fixed darwin distro up in an hour or two, at most. Otherwise, the whining about the license was just proof that you want linux and only linux to be open and bitch about everything else.
You're making it less likely that further Sun, game driver, or IBM gems will become open source by bitching without realizing that yes, it's open source and YOU, yes, YOU can fix it without waiting for Apple.
There have been a few of these types of contests in the past; only one was won. They ran Lasso and WebStar. I'm not sure what roles they play in the server but Lasso did not realize the proper security level for WebStar's password file...
Windows 98 is not a server operating system. Therefore, reboots are not as serious an issue. Heck I can remember back when I ran CP/M-80 on my Xerox 820 (dual 8" floppies). It was normal practice to press the reset button each time I inserted a new program floppy. (the OS fit on the first 2K of each floppy and took a few seconds to load. Further, each floppy could have it's own patched version of CP/M if needed)
Server OSes like Linux and Windows NT are a different story, of course, where reboots can take down all kinds of network services affecting many people.
Apple is scrambling to be something more than a producer of colorful Lear-Siegler ADM-3A knockoffs. Give them a chance.
I've seen this sort of blameshifting used to defend NT's dismal performance in the Yorktown incident.
A properly working kernel shouldn't crash, no matter what an application does. The job of the kernel is to be a stable platform on which apps can sit.
It's designed (and marketed) as more of an app server than a web server, imho. It's great for running a herd of iMacs or blue and white G3's in a lab environment (you can make them all boot off a copy of the OS located on the server). Just because the web serving software is there doesn't mean it's a strong point (nt, for example). Having been fortunate to see a demo of OSXS from an apple sales rep, I have to say, it's not shabby software. Clearly thought has gone into its design, and given how responsive they have been to their primary customers in the design of OSXS, if their customer base wants to use it as a web server, this problem will be resolved in a hurry.
Mathias
It's too easy. You people are like cattle. It's almost textbook stimulus/response experiments on lab rats.
Didn't you even READ the whole post? What did you achieve in responding to an obvious troll?
To make trolls go away...DON'T RESPOND TO THE FLAMEBAIT!!!
Sheesh...does it have to be beaten into your head?
The same thing could be said for corporate people using Linux in the future. After Linux breaks into more mainstream areas and regular people start using it, I'm not sure that they will trust fixes published on the net by people they've never heard of either. Instead they'll wait for an "official" fix/patch from like Redhat or Caldera, which may be faster in getting the patch out than Apple, but still would be slower than just picking up off the net.
The 1.0 release of a product has a bug which appears in very particular circumstances and is difficult to reproduce outside of the c't and Apple labs. So do people wait to find out a little more? After all, the story has only been out one day. No, they flame. 'Apple sux!' 'See, Apple can't do Unix!' 'Kernel panic is inexcusable!' 'No user level process...blah, blah, blah.'
What irony. Only a few days ago we found out that some versions of the Linux kernel had a bug: "There seems to be a bug in kernels 2.2.x (tested on 2.2.7 and 2.2.9), that causes them to panic when they are sent a large number of specific ICMP packages."
Kernel panic! Oh my God! That's inexcusable! Obviously these Linux people don't know how to code a Unix-like system! NO PEOPLE, IT'S A FSCKING BUG! These things happen -- to every O/S in existence. Alan Cox fixed it right away. Good for him. If you're using those kernels, thank him.
So far, I've only heard of one user who has been able to recreate this "serious bug" that makes OS X Server "almost useless". What about other users? Have users seen any other signs of system instability? Is this bug in the version of the kernel that's in Darwin? Has it occured with real clients as opposed to a benchmarking program? God forbid any of the übergeeks here should actually impart some real information instead of rehashing the same tired crap.
Mouahhahah... Who anyway would put a web server on a Mac??
"There seems to be a bug in kernels 2.2.x (tested on 2.2.7 and 2.2.9), that causes them to panic when they are sent a large number of specific ICMP packages."
So by the same logic I should be questioning the Linux community's ability to write a Unix-like system?
Oh, that's right, it was a bug and it got fixed. Perhaps we could give Apple a chance to do the same.
If there weren't mentally deprived comments posted (like the 1st one in this list) then half-truths wouldn't need correcting.
As far as directions, I have better things to do than read 750 HOW-TOs just to get familiar with an OS.
Because I can buy a box from a known company that has a good interface, comes pre-installed and works out of the box, and allows me to get my work done without worrying about a CLI.
Linux doesn't hold such a claim, even on your pre-installed systems. Something needs to be tweaked.
Linux for years was considering swiss cheese from
a security standpoint, not up to par on networking, and utter crap wrt documentation. In the least, the second still holds true compared to FreeBSD. And we all know about the documentation problem. You call those things online sufficient instructions? Linux documentation project? A valient effort, but right now, a joke.
And your GUI...bleh. You folks can't even decide what is good and ended up chasing your tails for at least a year.
Should I be asking you why do you hang on? Maybe. But I don't. Frankly, I don't care. You have your reasons. I have mine. I've used IRIX, SunOS, Solaris, Win98, redhat, and slackware, in addition to MacOS. Each has their own purposes. I continue to prefer MacOS.
Your only criteria in your insulting, short-sighted attitude is that anyone who decides to stick with an OS not to your liking is deemed an apologist. Personally, I like that. It means a member of the Linux community has the wintel attitude and is on the road to being able to be discredited in a sentence or two.
With the car and everything. Really, I loved it. I'm actually a little misty-eyed right now from reading it. Can't wait to see how this hits Hollywood.
God Bless
I almost feel sorry for Apple. This is such an embarrassing mistake. Even though it was only version 1.0 it shouldn't have a bug this serious.
I haven't read of a single report where somebody was able to reproduce the glitch. This doesn't mean the bug doesn't exist, but it does mean that it ain't as bad as some have made it out to be. But until others come through with similar reports, it's hard to know how valid the c't report is.
I think the bug should be fixed no matter what. I dont like the idea of having not-so-easy to trigger but still possible things like that on my webservers. Good thing I've got 3 boxes running 2 Linux boxes, and 1 FreeBSD, and no Macs. So much for my blue mac dreams *sigh*.
PS: Dispite all the stuff *BSD users have been blabbing about how much faster *BSD is then linux, i find them to be about the same, and this is in a real world application which serves real webpages. Just thought i had to say that.
Similarly, based on the fact that Apple has only had experience making single-user non-memory-protected operating systems that sell mainly because they are easy-to-learn and look pretty, I refuse to switch my machines from BSD, Solaris, and Linux to Mac OS/X...
Fair enough that you're not going to trust OS X as you would linux, etc. It's a 1.0 product, and very few people really have experience with it.
BUT: You haven't considered that OS X is really just the latest update of OPENSTEP. OpenStep is multiuser, does have good mem protection, etc. Apple's also being run by the guys who ran NeXT (Jobs, Tevanian, etc).
It'll be interesting to see what OS X looks like in a year or two...
A computer is not a hammer. But 'hammers' may one day have computers embedded into them. A great deal of configurability is needed so long as it is assumed that computers must remain general purpose devices.
Your general statements make it obvious that you're afraid of change. Computers are becoming solid enough, and inexpensive enough that they are becoming appliances. Many people use them in that way today. And, there are more embedded computers in appliances now than ever before (but that's somewhat a different issue.) Things are getting better. Someday not too far off, 'experts' like yourself won't be particularly necessary. Perhaps that is what you're afraid of.
Ah, but you're not a real hacker if you don't do it yourself. (this, of course, leaves aside the question of wether you're interested in being a hacker.)
BTW there are probably now 752 HOW-TOs you need to read. And twelve of the ones you've already read have been revised. Don't force us to remind you how uncool it would be for you to actually use your computer for something not related to the computer itself....
The point here is that Apache shouldn't be able to lock up the machine, however many bugs it contains. If it does so, then the OS is buggy. You clearly hail from Macland where lockups are a fact of life. Unix users basically never restart their computers (exceptions for hardware failures, upgrades at al).
So, buffer overruns in poorly designed user level programs can give talented users root access. In some ways this is worse than a simple Panic - and it is caused by user level code. Buffer overruns are ample evidence that the kernel can't be the only code worried about security.
(I am not saying that Kernel Panics are OK, merely that there are genuine cases where the Kernel cannot catch EVERY bad application).
The existence of Linux documentation is FUD
The above post was actually posted in ENGLISH,
however since a Macintosh is being used there was
a crash and BOOM!
They were wrong when they were being elitist about cars; why should we trust you now when the subject is computers?
They didn't split one OS, they gave to radically different ones the similar names, much like MS did with Win 95 and Win NT.
Yet other news sites have indicated that this problem has affected a number of people with and without the benchmarking CGI... It's just that c't was the first to heavily publicize it, and their demo script required the benchmark.
remember:
it doesn't matter how reliable your linux box is, 90% of the population cannot use it.
for 90% or so of the population all that matters is the pretty gui - it is all they will ever, ever see of an os.
Why couldn't you just get quake's pid and kill it?
it was using starnine's mail server i believe on a standard copy of macos (non-bsd)
Yes, *they* can ... it still means one had better not set up a WWW site using this OS right now, not one that must run reliable, full stop. It is bad enough they did not find it, since this seems to be a so obvious and easy to test condition and Apple is not a totally Unix newbie.
But as long as they are going to fix it instead of telling people it would be a feature like some other company so hey, another Unix ahead 8)
Haha, that's right!! I don't do alot of "actual work" on my computer!!
But really, Linux documentation does really suck, and FreeBSD's is a little bit better (it isn't a whole lot better, just a little bit).
All Open Source projects need better docs, as almost all open source projects have half assed ones.
Wow. Because you don't agree with the readers and the moderators you're just oging to stop going? Why not just look at the news and not the comments? nobody is forcing you to read them.
That would be like not using linux just cuz of its "fat assed penguin" mascot.
If it wasn't fixed and if at least the cause wasn't identified after some time, yes.
Unless apache is run with MacOS/X kernel privileges, all we know now is that any MacOS process forking too many other processes may crash the systems: this might happen with any kind of forking server (apache, ftp, imapd, maybe even the very essential inetd) with huge charge, or any forking server that is attacked.
What about testing high load on other server processes (ftp...) and inetd, to evaluate the possible extent of the bug ?
Except that the initial release of Linux was a toy to play with, not a release of a commercial server . The story would have been "CGI crashes Linux, Linus says you shouldn't use Linux as a server platform.". But I do agree that the story should have been "One (crashing) bug as been found in MacOS/X". This would put things in perspective :-)
macos X is really OPenStep 5.0
its like saying NT3.51 is really NT 1.0
most of macosx is not new code
seriously, linux + gnome is more usefull
He did answer your question. Why do you still ask it?
Apache asks for more memory. Kernel is confused. Kernel crashes.
This would mean that any application asking for too much memory would crash MacOS/X (see opening too many netscape windows, having a run away netscape java process, opening emacs with a far too large file, etc...)
Give me a break! I have been using OpenStep for 4 year, and Linux for 2 years. It is clear to me now that Linux's problem is that it IS a geek OS where no coherent attempt is made at getting things to tun together.
Also, another major handicap of Linux is that many people run Linux on Wintel machines which are becoming more and more basterized with gadgety features.
At least on Macs, features such as keyword power down and power up actually work.
PC's are time sink badly under-designed toys. I am glad to see, and use, hardware and sotware from Apple and Sun and which I do not have to constantly fix.
Nothing on the WWW, and I mean absolutely, freaking, NOTHING must run reliable, full stop. Anybody who doesn't recognize this needs to log off, turn off the computer for an afternoon, and go for a walk in the park.
No experience??? How about the 350 extremely talented NeXT people who joined Apple in 1996 and who have been responsible for MacOS X Server (aka Rhapsody)???
Except for a newer user interface drawn a bit more from the Mac platform (and with a lot still drawn from the underlying OpenStep) this MacOS X Server is certainly not new! This OS first release can be traced back to 1989! They have done a tremendous job at creating a user friendly extremely robust Unix OS. OpenStep is the only OS I have ever used that come close to Solaris in terms of stability. Linux (which I use extensively too) is not only much harder to tune up and customized but it is also more finicky and inherently more unstable.
So, Ct' found a problem with MacOS X Server?? I say good for them. Apple will fix it quickly. I certainly trust Apple more than I do MS. I bet you that you will not have to wait until MacOS X Server SE comes out in order to get this minor and overblown problem corrected.
GEM Desktop?! The first Mac-like interface from
Apple was Lisa in 1983. Mac came in 84. GEM came later (and I think it was stopped for infringing Apple's copyrights, giving Apple the confidence to try and stop Windows). Apple didn't get hold of anything under the table -- several of Xerox's researchers started working at Apple to develop the Mac OS after Jobs visited PARC. Yes, Xerox had a GUI, but many of the features of modern desktips come from the Mac (overlapping windows, most of the desktop metapor etc.). The Xerox looks more like an early version of X running twm but without overlapping windows.
Much of this history is well documented by people from Apple, Xerox, and elsewhere, yet still the myths continue.... Check your history. DOS (and DOS machines) didn't exist when Xerox was developing the Star. In fact part of the reason for the Macs early failure was that Apple was trying to develop a cheap machine, but memory was way too expensive to support the kind of bitmap display Apple wanted. In those days (when DOS machines had 32 or 64 k of RAM, a minumum of 128k was really expensive, but necessary for a (then) hig-res GUI to work at all.
If Gem was first, why did many of the Unix firms (e.g.Sun) license the concept of graphical user interfaces from Xerox in order to avoid being sued by Apple. If I remember correctly, Apple wasn't suing anyone for devloping graphical interfaces but for copying the look and feel of the Mac (documents, folders, trashcan and all that -- used to be called files and directories, which is a slightly different methaphor). Apple's failure (that goodness) to win in the courts HAS resulted in the desktop metaphor developed by Apple in becoming the most widely used metaphor today.
Ironically, the Macintosh developers 'won' their cause in that they brought the GUI to the masses, but through Windows, not the Mac.
A microkernel, but even smaller!!
In their next release, they will feature a picokernel!!
First, so far many people running OS X Server have had difficulty getting this script to work. It also does not affect all CGI queries....just this ApacheBench thing specifically. If you disable the ability of someone to run ApacheBench, it wouldn't affect it at all. Apparently a lot of it has to do with what daemons are running, which is why so many people have failed to recreate this problem.
It just isn't quite accurate for you to say that all multiple CGI queries can crash OS X Server, because that isn't the case.
I tend to think that there might be a flaw in the kernel letting user proccesses affect kernel space...
Any other ideas?
Do you read any other tech news site? Every single one has an OS that they tend to favor... Whether it be MacOS, or BSD, or Windows, or Linux. complaining about it doesn't do anybody any good. If you don't like the stories posted, then you have three option.
That way, everyone gets is happy. The people who like the site don't have to sift through garbage in order to read the real comments.
Similarly, based on the fact that Apple has only had experience making single-user non-memory-protected operating systems that sell mainly because they are easy-to-learn and look pretty, I refuse to switch my machines from BSD, Solaris, and Linux to Mac OS/X... at least not straight away. Apple has not proven to me yet that it can make a good server.
Things like this deepen my lack of respect for the operating system for doing mission-critical things. A server should NEVER fail. Ever. Now, I know that my operating systems haven't done that. I have had crashes now and then. But BSD, Solaris, and Linux come darn close to never, ever crashing. They certainly wouldn't crash just by running a bunch of CGIs.
Yes, I know this was a test scenario. Yes, I know that ordinary use might not run 32 cgi programs (or whatever) at the same time. That's no excuse for a kernel panic!
I hope Apple patches whatever bug caused this. I hope that OS X server becomes a great and reliable server. But please forgive me if I say I don't trust it now, nor will I for quite a while.
-- Erich
Slashdot reader since 1997
no because it would have been. CGI crashes linux. get your fix here.
...making MacOS X almost useless as a web server
If a CGI kernel bug makes MacOS X almost useless as a web server, than the recent slew of Linux kernel bugs (filesystem corruption and Denial of Service attacks) would make Linux worse than useless as any sort of server. Why is it that an Apple bug makes the software "useless," while a serious Linux bug is considered minor?
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
There is a fundamental problem when an ICMP packet can bring about a kernel packet. Something is wrong here. It brings into question the Linux community's ability to (re)write a Unix. And that's why people start bashing.
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
I heartily agree with others that no user level process should ever, ever, ever be able to crash a server operating system, regardless of how small the scope of the problem.
I don't think the issue is that big, though. OS X is Apple's first real server OS, and there are bound to be bugs in any first release products.
Linux recently had a IP bug, bwhich could easily be used for a DoS attack, but the Linux community proved the worthiness of Linux by coming out with a patch the same day. [Thanks Alan!]
The real challenge for Apple is in how they respond. Do they issue a fix quickly, or do they whine and deny?
Posted by Adelor Lyon:
:)
I haven't seen anyone mention that the shipping version of Mac OS X Server is actually version 1.1. The CD I have says it's version 1.1.
Apple originally had a GM as 1.0, but later took it back in to do a bit more testing on it. I haven't been able to reproduce the crashing bug using the test cgi or any of my own.
Just the facts, please.
Posted by Redalert:
What I don't understand is how you sell something that doesn't have the performance of either Linux or FreeBSD. The only way I'd ever buy a Macintosh is if it had a Alpha/x86 processor or they went back to clones.
I think the iMac is okay for the consumer market, but probably is badly in need of an upgrade. The other problem is who wants to be tied down to one computer with three shipping speeds. Too make matters worse the case while having a neat design is ugly, and their current OS 8.6 is outdated.
Isn't it about time that Apple grew up and porting their Ui to Linux/other free unix. If I was in charge, and thank *** I'm not, I would at least put most of my time into the Yellow Box project for x86. Come on Apple time to grow up!
Jeff
and those of use who consider ourselves the open-minded Slashdot community, have mostly reacted as though this was 1) The end of the world or 2) proof that APple sucks.
In truth, neither are true.
Apple's trying something that could turn out to be very cool. Give them a chance.
Werd.
The bug has been spotted, and reported -- now
its up to the MacOS X engineers to fix it. Time
will tell if they do a good job.
So far as those of you screaming about Apple not
getting it right first time, just remember that
when Linux 2.2.0 came out
ldd core
run on any core dump file would cause an
immediate system reboot (even if run by a user).
Embarrassing bugs happen -- what counts is if
(and how quickly) you fix them, the current
state of the OSC/FSC is testament to this.
John_Chalisque
The problem is not fundamental to OS X, according to Apple sources.
According to me, Unix kernels should not be whomped on by userland programs. So the problem is fundamental to Mac OS X.
This got alot of coverage yesterday on the Macintosh sites.
MacOsRumors talked about it and I am going to quote them.
"1. This problem has so far been only reproduced when the 32+ CGI processes are spawned by a benchmarking CGI -- this problem may or may not actually affect other types of CGIs. It is very possible that it does not. Thus, the problem can be avoided simply by removing the Apache Benchmark CGI from the cgi-bin directory or setting its permissions to prevent it from running ("chmod 500 filename.cgi" should be sufficient).
2. The problem is not fundamental to OS X, according to Apple sources. Although the specific issue has not yet been determined, it appears to be related to Apache's use of system resources (although the issue itself is apparently in the kernel) and is not likely to affect OS X under any other conditions. A patch is in development and should be available very soon."
Since when does a bug make something "worthless", oh when it's made by Apple.
Gee, a sound, solid and informative article and it is ranked 'only' 2! I'd say that this article was interesting and more meaningful than the articles rated three or higher.
It's not a big deal in the overall scheme of things, though obviously it's a PITA if you were trying to use MacOS X as a web server (brave thing to do on such a new OS!).
What the hell is it with Apple and crashing machines? I used to think (when I used apples) that computers just crashed!. Boy am I glad I was wrong. I work around tons of Macintoshes. Boy, if you want to know true performance take a look at OS 8.6 and its new, improved nanokernel Whats a nanokernel?? I installed this OS on one of my machines at work (an iMac) and watch its already miserable performance drop a good 40%. I then read somehwere (I think rumours) that it was sopposed to be that way, and really just felt like it was slower cos it was actully multitasking better than before. Whatever.... I think I will stick to Linux.
It seems like moderation is at an all time low these days// What gives?
The exsitance of your IQ is a hoax.
Have source, will fix, no problem! Bug reports are a Good Thing! It ensures quality control.
NO normal user program should be able to take down the whole OS in a UNIX like OS. UNLESS Apple has the program running as root, if that is the case then the apple programers must be on crack.
I have to return some videotapes...
T'was the WebStar server. This thing is harder to crack than most servers. For one, it's an application-based server, so there's no OS-level loopholes that can be exploited to crack it. And since it's hosted on regular Mac OS wich, basically, is not a network OS per say, it was very difficult to crack.
One user did succeed, however, by exploiting a security hole in a CGI called "Lasso". This is a CGI that bridges the WebStar (and other) servers to a FileMaker database. Basically, Lasso gave the possibility to store/get files off the harddrive. From there, it became relativelly easy to anyone with the knowlege of both the directory structure of WebStar and the Lasso CGI, to make modifications to a config file and upload a replacement "index.html" file.
This did not, however, alter the original index file so was not something that could do dammage per say.
Both WebStar and Lasso have been revised after the discovery of the fault.
WebStar eventually made a second contest after the fix. All people could do after a 2 month (or so) trial period were DOS attacks, so WebStar decided to pull the plug on the contest until a newer, faster version of the server could be put to test. I haven't seen announcements since to that effect.
Try putting a telephone in one side of the tank and a bathroom with a mirror and plenty of beauty supplies in the other.
Just make sure the phone cord doesn't reach as far as the bathroom and you'll be fine. They'll coexist like two peas in a pod.
-Doctor Zaius
**>>BELCH
I remember when OS X first came out Apple was touting some benchmarks against linux - and it was all using static html. I was wondering why at the time, since this is pontless. Now we know.
So much for Apple.
support gun control: take guns from cops
No application should be able to crash a server, period. Even thought the port of apache may be crappy, it should, at worst, simply kill itself, never the whole operating system.
Apple -> 10,000 registered developers.
Be -> 10,000 registered developers.
Major media related software/hardware companies supporting the BeOS nearly every week.
(Check http://www.beoscentral.com)
Your days are numbered.
calx
> Where is system level color matching???
Built into the X window system. Pull up a man page on it sometime.
I've finally had it: until slashdot gets article moderation, I am not coming back.
Most likely, if this was a similar bug in a Linux, it would have not been reported in the same harsh way that many magazines report bugs. Instead it would have been immediately brought to everyone's attention in different way, like a mailing list or bug report. Since there is a large number of people who know the kernel code well the bug would have been fixed in a number of hours, not days. Patches would be easily attained, RPMs built, deps made, and documentation written. Finally, the story at Slashdot would not be as much about the bug, but where to get the fix. I am not a Mac user, but I can say that on linux bugs like these are fixed so fast that there it little time for a global "Reaction".
Er...I use Windows (9X and NT) for my work, and I'd say I spend less than 5% configuring my PC, and 95%+ actually doing the work.
Am I doing something wrong?
And, btw, I'm sure there are plenty of MacOS/Linux users who get similar results.
Tim
If this had been MS there would be the usual full on screaming that MS is the worst company in the world.
If this had been Linux or Unix there would be a patch for it already and all the arguement would have been over how to fix it
Buts its Apple, so what we get instead is excuses, the same old jihad bait as ever, and pointing fingers all around.
More telling than it should be, less filling then it ought...once again proving that if you cant fix your rig your the hapless crackwhore to the forces that be.
So next time your offering prayers to your fave OS heed the words of Frank Zappa;
"Remeber, theres not much differnce between kneeling down and bending over"
Poor little clams! Snap! Snap! Snap! Poor little clams! Snap! Snap! Snap! Poor little clams! Snap! Snap! Snap!
Dear Anonymous Coward,
I took your advice and got a frigging girlfriend.
Now I have two. However, I'm having trouble
keeping them in the same habitat, as they tend
to fight. Is there anything I can do to
prevent this, short of getting another tank?
Yours sincerely,
Confused but Carnally Sated in Wolverhampton.
How come there's an "open source" entry in the
Jargon File, when there isn't a "free software" one?
-- Proud descendant of semi-nomadic cattle-herders.
Someone finally cracked the "unhackable box" by exploiting a hole in Lasso (a cgi interface to Filemaker, I think) - and somehow changed the content that way. The bug was quickly fixed, and I haven't heard of any contests since.
that's nice. I remember reading an osopinion piece yesterday about how different OS's have their respective strenghts and weaknesses. I'll stay open minded about your attack, if you stay open minded about a few points.
1. I'll be willing to bet real money that the last time you coded, you wrote a bug. You probably fixed it too. That's just the way that song goes.
2. If you like Unix/Linux so much, you should be happy that Apple saw the light. When was the last time MS open sourced something (or did something close). Did you know the Yellow Box compiler borrows a lot of code from GCC. There are more things OS X and Linux have in common than set them apart.
3. If you don't like apple's hardware, then don't use it. Port darwin to one of the PPCP boards motorola still makes. The G4 has the only SIMD implementation that doesn't suck, and has the registers to use it. I don't know if you are familiar with SIMD(MMX/KNI/3DNow/AltiVec), but it can greatly speed up string handling by cramming multiple instances of that 8 bit data type into the whole space of the machine word. So if you had a 64 bit processor, you can handle 8 characters during one clock cycle. If you could speed up string handling by 8x, then how much faster is dynamic HTML generation??? The API's are in C, as opposed to assembler in some x86 implementations. BTW...hasn't it been 4 years since intel shipped a NEW core. Talk about mediocrity. And they only have what, 8 registers available for SIMD, as opposed to PPC's 32. Gimme a break, they're still using aluminum in their IC's. My guess is for real perfomance next year, run linuxPPC on a pair of multiple-core g4's (multiple cores per CPU means faster SMP, because they are communicating on the same durned piece of silicon/COPPER). Lots of bang for the buck.
4. For 90% of the users on the planet, Linux is unusable, and the learning curve required to FIND SOFTWARE that does what you need to do is bad enough to keep poeple away. OS X consumer will be a Unix style OS with a UI that isn't intimidating, and will probably be the mose useable and intuitive WM around. THIS OS WILL SHOW PEOPLE WHAT'S SO COOL ABOUT LINUX. I predict that OS X consumer will probably be the catalyst that accellerates Linux's acceptence in the consumer market.
5. Computers are tools. You shouldn't HAVE to think about how a hammer works, and it should NEVER get in the way of going about hammering nails. Right now, I spend more time tinkering with the System in Linux than getting any work done (for non-server tasks, it's an awesome server OS, and I reccomend it highly). Until linux gets out of my way and lets me work, I will continue to use MacOS and Be to develop multimedia content.
anyway...gotta go to work...DVCpro camera is calling me...
dan
"Let him go, Ralph. He knows what he's doing." --Otto Mann (simpsons)
So you really expect people to be able to use all of the power of Unix and the Unix shells without having to go through the same learning curve?
No. This will be the first time mainstream consumers have a Unix-style OS under the hood that they have access to; As opposed to Win9x and current MacOS, where novice users explore and become power users on that platform down the road. If consumers have OS X, then any exploration (inevitable with kids) they do under the hood teaches them the basics of Unix. Thus, these people are more likely to embrace linux, because it won't be too much new to them. Part of expanding into a consumer market is instilling consumer confidence. OS X consumer will do that for linux to some degree. WM's are and always have been a holy war. As yet, I have seen two trends in linux GUI. Either it's fast and not full featured, or it has what I need, but is slow and takes tons of ram. The only two GUI's I've worked with that are fast and small enough to run on non-unix specific hardware (x86 and PPC), while still allowing the user to navigate and work within the filesystem without wanting to hurl the CPU out the window are Win32, MacOS and Be. I haven't used os/2. I use WindowMaker on my MkLinux box, but I've used others. I find Linux GUI's to be feature incomplete, slow, and resource greedy. I've seen demos of Quartz (OS X's imaging model and and GUI server) and it is fast and intuitive, while still giving you full access (user optional) to the BSD layer. I don't know how much ram it takes, but I do know that I shouldn't have to add another 32 megs of ram to my system if I want to run a decent GUI. I could use that extra ram to do something productive.
But a computer is not a hammer; a computer is an extremely powerful and general-purpose tool. It's capable of doing a great many things, and this requires a great deal of configurability.
Good point. What I'm trying to say is that 5% of what you do on a system should be config, 95% should be the work you got the machine for in the first place. Right now, I don't see ANY OS that meets that criteria, but outside of the server realm linux is at the way back of the pack. Where is system level color matching??? Guess I'll have to code that myself. Where's SMPTE timecode, or any multi-codec video standard for that matter. Guess I'll have to port over quicktime and the associated codecs myself too. I can go on for hours. The point is that right now, if I want to create any kind of multimedia art that doesn't suck on linux, I've got a lot of coding to do. If I do it on OS X, MacOS, NT worstation, I get to focus on my work, and I can use my coding talent on the project I'm working on, rather than reinventing the wheel. I've rewritten line drawing functions enough to know I don't want to walk down that road again if I don't have too
Right now, Linux is my server OS of choice. Hopefully, with the help of the Open Source Community, it will mature into something everybody can use (the versitile tool you talk about). Right now, it isn't there. Not even close.
I'm getting tired of ranting here. I replied to this thread to counterattack the premises of some untoward generalizations. I believe I've done that, but am probaly starting to do what I set out to stop here, so this is all for now.
"Let him go, Ralph. He knows what he's doing." --Otto Mann (simpsons)
Save yourselves the headache. Get Linux and read the instructions. You'll be glad you did.
I saved myself the headache. I got Linux, and read. Well, I more got advice and tips from my Linux-guru friends than read instructions, but rest assured I did a healthy dose of both.
I wasn't glad. I have installed Linux not once, not twice, but three times. Every time MacOS falls down once too many times, or feels too slow or too underpowered, or I get angry because the entire machine freezes when I pull down a menu, I go install LinuxPPC on the spare partition I keep.
It never lasts. After an hour or a day or a week steeping in the immense power and even greater lack of usability that is Linux, I'm pining away for my MacOS again. And so I go back.
I get uptimes of better than four days with great regularity. Now, it's not the amazing rock solidness of Linux, but you must admit that it's pretty good. Two reboots a week is something I can easily live with.
Overpriced hardware? Hard to say for me, my current box is a Power Computing product, a 180MHz 604e for two thousand bucks purchased in August of '97. Kicked the crap out of top-of-the-line Pentiums costing half again as much for a good six months to come, at least. Apple may have killed the clones off, but they learned from them as well. Their current hardware is fast, stylish, and not terribly expensive. $1600 for a base 350MHz system may seem like a lot when compared to the rock-bottom PCs available out there, but when you realize that you're purchasing a product whose reliability, features, and great ease-of-use are second-to-none, you must admit that it's a pretty good deal. It may not be the best machine for all you Linux hackers out there, but for someone like me who likes to use his machine to the limit, which means that I use the machine to the point that I am doing as much as I possibly can at any given moment, not wasting any of my time, it's a great box, even if you don't believe the Apple propoganda about G3s being twice as fast yada yada.
Linux is not the end-all and be-all. Neither is MacOS, nor any other product currently in existance, and most likely no product to be created at any time in the future will be too. Know this, know that choosing the best tool for the job can but doesn't always include choosing your favorite home-use OS, and things will often work a lot better for you.
Mod down posts with a "Free Mac Mini/iPod" sig, they're spam!
Most of these posts seem to be Apple apologists. For years Apple has been producing crappy, crash-prone software on overpriced hardware. Why do they hang on?
Save yourselves the headache. Get Linux and read the instructions. You'll be glad you did.
I've written user level programs that crashed SunOS (which, I admit, is generally rock solid). I don't see many people claiming they don't know Unix. I've also wiped out NetBSD, OpenBSD, and Linux (kernel 2.0.36). I don't recall if I've crashed AIX or not.
I'd also like to point out that this "bug" is caused by the very same web server that Slashdotters lambasted for spawning too many processes on Linux. It's not just Apple's problem; their symptom is just more severe.
Apple and Unix:
A/UX, c1987-1993
AIX servers, c1995-1997
MkLinux, c1995-1998
NeXTStep (now OS X), c1988-1999
I think Apple has all the Unix credentials it needs. Slashdotters are looking for any excuse, no matter how specious, to nail Apple's balls to the wall. I know it's true. You know it's true. Just admit it.
Why don't you hold off questioning Apple's abilities until they've had a week to get a fix out the door? We all seem to think Linus & co. are pretty good, but they've had to release a new kernel every other week since the "release" of version 2.2.
There is still a fundamental problem when a user level process can bring about a kernel panic. Something is wrong here. It brings into question apple's ability to (re)write a Unix. And that's why people start bashing.
Photos of bits of the past hiding in the present: afiler.com
Let me start by saying that I enjoy reading /. articles and usually the discussions that follow. There are generally enough intelligent, informative, open-minded posts to make it worth my time to read them.
/., it is just an opportunity for the same old arguments to get rehashed. For example, in this case, there are a handful of useful posts concerning the OS X story. The rest are the SAME old trolls and useless arguments that I have seen any time I look through posts re: a Mac related story, many not related to the current story at all!!!
I should also mention that I work on Macs, PCs, Unix and Linux. These are tools, each has strengths, and I am not an evangelist for any particular platform,
However, it seems that any time a story to Macs appears on
Moderation helps a little, but it is too bad I can't filter the posts by some more specific criteria. In this case, I'd be interested in seeing:
- who has tested this phenomenon on an OSX box
- recent information about this bug
- information about this (or similar) phenomena on OTHER Apache servers
Am I in the minority here to be interested in the technical issues here? Are there really that many people who would rather bicker about the Mac GUI vs other GUIs or whether a one-button mouse is inherently inferior to a multi-button mouse? I am sure that I will be flamed as a result of this message, but I am frustrated (and disappointed) by the petty squabbling that is going on, and curious if anyone else out there feels the same way.
YS
"Arrr! The laws of science be a harsh mistress." -- Bender
Other Mac sites have reported this bug last night, and it seems that some are unable to reproduce the bug. The conclusion seems to be that it depends on the configuration.
Also, Apple reported that it was working on a patch since yesterday.
Oh, horse pucky. Back in the day, I took down several SunOS 4.x boxes with some buggy socket code in a user-level process when I was learning OS programming. This was in 1993 or so. I first tested the code on a remote access box (shared by a few dozen users), and the box just went away. This wasn't uncommon (there were only 4 remote access Suns at RPI then and they were heavily overloaded), so I switched to another one. I ran the code and _it_ disappeared too.
Being relatively smart, I noticed the pattern and tried a remote AIX box. It just gave me a core dump. I then went in to a campus computer lab and tried it on an unshared SunOS box. The box froze solid. I don't recall if Stop-A worked. I quickly changed computers and went to an AIX box to fix my code.
Moral of the story: holes in the kernel happen. As an aside, both Mac OS X and SunOS 4.x are BSD derivatives. Maybe BSD has a few issues; I dunno.
-jon
Remember Amalek.
Heres an update from MacOSRumors:
UPDATE: Thus far, ten readers have written in with reports -- so far, only one has been able to duplicate this problem using C'Ts script...and at Black Light, with our testbed OS X Server machine, the script did not cause any errors. Discussing the problem with Apple turned up the fact that depending on configuration, some (possibly many) OS X Server installs appear to be proof against the problem. One suggestion from Cupertino is to disable as many other service daemons as possible on your server to maximize your chances -- and, of course, this also improves memory usage and overall performance.
End quote. Thus far it isn't a 100% reproducible bug. That being the case, anyone know how Apple knows what/how to fix it? Regardless, lets see how fast Apple can fix this...
-AS
-AS
*Pikachu*
allright, a lot of you are pissing me off because of your anti-apple attitude, but that doesn't matter. what matters is that everyone suddenly thinks osx is completely screwed because of this one, hard to reproduce, stupid bug. hey, if this really was such a big deal and really affected osx, it would've been discovered a long long time ago. but osx has been out for, what, atleast 3 months? and ONE person has JUST discovered it?? yah, gee, this bug is realyl going to screw everyone over if it happened by chance to one person in 3 months. yah, apple's totally screwed. they're going down the toilet. oh man this is the end!!!!!!
eat me.
Joseph?
Its not harsh to say its "useless." If you bought a car and then hit the brakes 32 times and after that you car sputtered, and died, wouldn't you think "you useless pease of crap?" If something that is common to a server, and vital for a buisness using the server, crashes it then something is obviously wrong, therefore not making it a viable solution. I may be completely way off base here but thats what a gathered from it.
Beau C
I almost feel sorry for Apple. This is such an embarrassing mistake. Even though it was only version 1.0 it shouldn't have a bug this serious.
This reminds me somewhat of that ICMP DoS attack that linux was vulnerable to a couple of days ago. Perhaps they can patch it fast before it becomes really embarrasing. Imagine all of the servers running OS X (all run only by apple advocates) disappearing from the net. The apple advocacy ring would be broken in two.
Perhaps apple should stick to what they are best at, producing fantastic, easy to use desktop systems.
If the story had been "CGI crashes Linux", would you have reacted the same way?
This isn't intended to start a flame war or anything, but the story would not likely have been titled "CGI crashes Linux, Get Your Fix Here" three or four months after the initial release of Linux...
If one is concerned with the future of Linux and competing OS's, this article should be of interest.
Does anyone know if this affects the Darwin 0.2 binary release?
I remember about a year ago there was this contest going on (I think they were calling it 'Hack a Mac'). This company had some Macintosh Webservers which they claimed to be unhackable. And they were giving some big cash reward to anyone who could change the content of a page on the server (DoS did not count, of course). Anyone have more info about this?
There seems to be a lot of confusion surrounding this issue, and I've put a explanation up at macnn.com, but it makes sense to try to help as many people possible understand exactly what the problem is -- including Apple. :) Here is the crash case:
/Local/Library/WebServer/CGI-Executables/. By default, the script is not executable. You must 'chmod +x test-cgi' for it to work. However, this could probably happen with any script, though tests of that sort were not published.
/Local/Library/WebServer/CGI-Executables
When 32 or more copies of ApacheBench (ab) are pointed at a CGI script on a website running on Apache/Mac OS X Server machine, the kernel will panic, usually within 30-60 seconds, forcing a reboot.
The general thinking is that this many copies of ApacheBench running at once mimicks the load generated by hundreds of clients accessing a site at once. ApacheBench can be launched locally or remotely (assuming sufficient bandwidth), which is where the problem comes in. Somebody with malicious intent could decide to launch 32 copies of ApacheBench _from_their_machine, against a server, and crash it.
In the test, c't directed 32 copies of ApacheBench at the "test-cgi" script which is in
I actually tested this on my Blue G3/400 running MOSXS and did get a kernel panic. I got essentially the same results whether launching the attack from the same machine that the webserver itself is on, or launching the attack from a linux machine on the same network. Incidentally, I ran this same test again a Red Hat Linux 5.1 (2.0.34 kernel) box, which did not experience any problems during the "attack."
Important Points:
----------------
(1) This is, first and foremost, a security concern. The type and volume of traffic required to make the OS crash would most likely not be generated by normal web clients. However, ApacheBench can be launched remotely, and with malicious intent.
(2) The crash is not triggered by 32 successive CGI requests, as some people seem to think. Informal MacNN tests show that in one case, Apache actually serviced 1666 CGI requests in 26 seconds before crashing. The c't article is a bit confusing in this manner, but the "32" refers to 32 or more ApacheBench processes being launched -- each of which issues hundreds of requests.
(3) The problem is not with a particular CGI script. It is a problem with an immense ammounts of requests for CGI scripts coming in during a very short period of time.
(4) The problem can not be stopped by simply removing ApacheBench from the server. An attack can be launched remotely.
(5) The script used for the c't test is a bourne shell script. A Perl or C script may not exihibit the same results. PHP may also be immune (though I have no proof of any of that).
(6) This problem is most likely present in Darwin as well, so those interest in resolving the problem could probably download the source and work on a fix.
(7) Red Hat Linux 5.1 (2.0.34 kernel) running Apache 1.3.3 seems to weather the attack well, so it's almost certainly an OS issue.
(8) In some cases, bandwidth may become constrained before an attack is successful in bringing down the system.
Possible workarounds:
--------------------
(1) Configure router to filter immense number of requests from one IP address (like DoS attack)
(2) Disable CGI execution, or simply remove all files from
(3) Disable Apache, if you're only using MOSXS for Macintosh management, AppleShare or QuickTime streaming
Scott Stevenson
Macintosh News Network
http://macnn.com/
Scott Stevenson
Tree House Ideas
Zack you must be a really happy guy! AND I'm sure you consider yourself an expert at something.
The point is that this bug is really insignificant and is meant to take a jab at OSX which, in my view, is a waste of time. If the author had done a little research they probably would have come to the same conclusion but hey who am I, right?
Thanks for the one-two-three steps to happiness though!
> You're still a geek/loser
Geek, definately... Loser, I don't think so, but that's a matter of opinion.
> and I could still kick your ass.
I really doubt it... Bring it on non geek/loser anonymous retard!
The oxen are slow, but the earth is patient... - High Road to China
Additonally, I remember recent QuickTime 4.0b bashing. Many of the comments should have been moderated-out as they were nothing more than flames. However, many of the comments should have been forwarded directly to Apple so they could actually fix the bug!
Does anyone remember back to the days of Windows 1.0? It wasn't even usable. How about the early releases of Linux? More usable than Windows 1.0, but hardly enterprise worthy.
MacOS X Server 1.0 is just that---a 1.0 release. It's going to have a few bugs, most minor and a few major. If you don't like it, don't use it. Better yet, fix it yourself. It's OpenSource, after all.
----
Am I the only one who thinks Microsoft is a misnomer? Perhaps Macrosoft would be a better fit?
Amen.
-ElJefe
I am an apple user myself, but I also use Linux & *BSD. Competition is good, bias is bad. Linux is making such big waves in the industry today... and causing only one major OS vendor, Apple, to open it's OS (even if only partially). The linux coverage would fall under the other heading "Stuff that Matters".
I usually don't respond to deliberate flamebait posts, but here's my thoughts on the doorstop macs. I used to hang out at an internet lan gaming shop (16 computers, 14 pcs 2 macs) that was placed right next door to a mac shop. When it would rain we'd prop the door open with one of the original black and white macs, because due to their size, weight, and the handle on the top, they actually made great doorstops. Anyway, this thing would get wet, accidentally kicked, etc. on a regular basis.
One day, out of curiousity, I decided to plug it in (expecting it to explode or short out). After a couple of seconds of humming, it popped up with a question mark disk on the screen. It was looking for an OS boot disk! I couldn't believe my eyes. This thing actually wanted to work. Ran next door, got a super old-school boot floppy and the damn thing ran.
They just don't make 'em like they used to, do they?
Someone proclaimed,
:)
"Mac GUI is only popular on the Mac? Umm... Every Windows user (still the most popular desktop OS) is using a retarded variant of the Mac GUI."
Er... not quite. The Mac GUI is directly descended from the GEM desktop, a WYSIWYG interface which ran on DOS machines. If you've ever used Ventura Publisher for DOS, you've used GEM (VP runs on top of it).
Xerox stol^H^H^H^H licensed-after-the-fact GEM from Digital Research, then Apple got hold of it under the table (the way I heard it, a Xerox rep who had no right to do so gave the critical development information to an Apple rep at some big computer conference).
What's interesting is that to this day, the Mac interface retains enough of the original GEM look to be recognisably its descendant.
One could say that Macs are using a variant of a DOS GUI
~REZ~ #43301. Who'd fake being me anyway?
This morning's MacOSRumors page has some additional information about the problem. It seems to not be as easy to do as the c't article makes it appear. It is definately a problem, but it's not as easy to do as they make it out.
"Understanding is a three-edged sword"--Kosh
I don't think you see the big picture. Sure, if you base every Macintosh judgement on the Toolbox, and other "bloated" system resources, then yes -- the Mac can suffer from performance problems.
But to put the blame on the PowerPC is just plain wrong. The PowerPC consistently smokes the x86 architecture in benchmarks, especially floating point ones. As an assembly-level programmer of SPARC and PA-RISC architectures, I can tell you that it's much more useful to have real sets of general registers, instead of the namby-pamby x86 registers which require certain operands to be in specific registers. Rather than spend my time spilling registers left and right to cached memory, I can simply move over to another set and start anew there.
While I don't mean to restart the idiotic (and worthless) RISC vs. CISC discussion again, there is merit in cleanly supporting a nearly orthogonal instruction set, a well-implemented OoO (out of order) execution paradigm, speedy and plentiful functional units, and an appropriately-long pipeline.
Rather than making baseless remarks regarding the performance of one sort of computer over another, you'd do better to learn some basic concepts of computing hardware first. Comparing the architecture of a mid-80s vintage 68000-based "Fat Mac" to one of today's G3 machines solely on the basis of inefficient OS routines overlooks the most important issues...
Let me guess, you're a UNIX head, right? Do you even REALIZE that MacOS X is UNIX-based? That's right, Jeff, when Jobs is back at the helm of Apple, you can be damn sure that he won't let his NeXT technologies go to waste. A version of CMU's Mach kernel is now hiding inside of that Macintosh...shouldn't you at least be HAPPY that Apple is even thinking about putting UNIX inside their machines? No, you'd rather spew forth a tired invective about "x86/Alpha is better than Mac."
Hopefully, no one else here takes your comments seriously; rather, they are trying to understand how this problem potentially affects their Mac's security, and are working to solve the problem.
Oh, and your comment about the iMac -- that's why Apple sells G3 server boxes. In fact, that's the platform chiefly targeted by OSX, not the iMac. The iMac feels consumer-level because ......wait for it...... it is! Those of us who are here at slashdot, in general, live on the bleeding edge of technology. We're not content with Windows 9x, iMacs, the PS/1, the PC Jr., 640x480x16, a 286 @ 16MHz, and so on. Yet there are those perfectly happy to have a round, blue computer on their desk through which they can browse the web, play a few games, and capture digital images through their USB camera. For what it was designed to do, it does a damn good job -- and Jobs deserves most of the credit for marketing it appropriately.
Finally, as regards porting their UI to other OSes -- don't you realize that's secondary to providing their own hardware with an advanced OS first? Personally, I'd rather have the clean hardware architecture of a Mac any day over the god-awful mess that is my PC. (Granted, Merced might make this discussion somewhat moot, but I learned not to hold my breath about 3 years ago on that one...)
Go back to your Quake server, and leave slashdot to those who can truly make use of it as a informed, technological forum.
"But always she's the spectre of uncertainty I first endured, then faded, then embraced..."
well then...
good thing no one uses OSX.
no. really.... i like apple, but they're not a *nix company. suer NeXT was more of a *nix company, but never a server company.
i always viewed OSX server as more of a symbolic OS release. apple's strength has always been on the desktop and if OSX Desktop release sucks, i'll be pissed off at them for ruining one good operating system by splitting it into two lousy ones.
I was wondering exactly the same thing when I
read posts re: Linux Documentation, GUIs...
I mean... like... huh?
Stor
"Yeah well there's a lot of stuff that should be, but isn't"