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Silly Kernel Panic in Mac OS X 10.2.2
Posted by
pudge
on Fri Nov 29, 2002 08:54 AM
from the don't-try-this-at-home dept.
from the don't-try-this-at-home dept.
shibby tells us that it is easy to cause a kernel panic in Mac OS X 10.2.2, by attempting to move a directory into the same location as another one of the same name, using Terminal: mkdir ~/mydir; cd ~/mydir; mkdir mydir; mv mydir ... Kernel panic is instant. Save all your documents and quit your open apps if you feel the need to see it for yourself. Happy Thanksgiving!
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Silly Kernel Panic in Mac OS X 10.2.2
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Wow (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Why? (Score:4, Informative)
Well MACH isn't exactly an OS, it is more of an OS for running OSes, and one of the OSes it can run is the "BSD Single Server" which is a BSD4.3+/4.4ish derieved OS that isn't in my opnion as good as some of the other BSD4.4ish derived OSes (like FreeBSD).
One of the other OSes that runs under MACH is a modifyed MacOS9. I havn't run OS9 (aka "Classic") on purpose for months, but other people find it rather indepsnsable, and wouldn't use OSX without it.
As you say they could plop Carbon and Quartz ontop of FreeBSD just as easally as onto MACH's BSD Single Server. However getting OS9 to "run under" FreeBSD would have been a much larger pain.
I doubt it is SMP issues. I'm not even sure the FreeBSD people would reject the stuff needed to get OS9-under-FreeBSD working, after all it might not be that different from what WINE needs from the kernel...but it would have taken a whole lot more time then getting OS9 running under MACH more or less along side the BSD Single Server (kind of under it and off to one side I susspect...)
the device driver model is also different, and in a lot of ways better (and unfortunitly in a lot of ways worse) then FreeBSD.
Re:Why? (Score:5, Interesting)
When it comes to questions like this, if you can get the best people, using their prefered tools is often a good idea. If Apple could have hired all the architects of the freebsd Kernel, then sure, maybe you'd be right.
Also, I don't know what the hell you mean that you've "heard nothing but bad things about" Mach. It's a well known and well inspected peice of code. It might have problems, but saying "bad things" doesn't mean anything. What are the problems? Message passing is slow? This is true. Whatever. It's an architectural choice. Some of those architectural choices are exactly what makes Mach good for Apple - Multiple OS hosting.
I hope you submited to Apple (Score:5, Insightful)
Please tell me that shibbey or pudge...or someone... actually submitted this bug to Apple before posting it here.
It'll be interesting, though, to see how long we wait for a fix. If this is a legit thing. I haven't tested it and don't plan to.
Re:I hope you submited to Apple (Score:5, Informative)
Re:I hope you submited to Apple (Score:4, Interesting)
Now, i'm sure they had other things in that update, and it wasn't just on my account, but they thought it important enough to roll it in anyway. I thought that was the coolest thing :-)
Regards,
John
Falling You - exploring the beauty of voice and sound http://www.mp3.com/fallingyou [mp3.com]
C|/CON/CON (Score:3, Insightful)
Can this be exploited by a rouge shell script? "Funny_Picture.png.sh" wouldnt be fun, given the average mac user is
1) As guilable as windows users
2) Not as savvy to the ways of trick emails as windows users.
At least it wouldnt propergate - I assume theres a undered different mail clients on OSX. (I'm not a millionaire and cant afford my own mac you insensitive clod!)
Re:C|/CON/CON (Score:5, Funny)
i don't think so, but a big blue one could do the job.
Video editing was Re:mail info (Score:5, Insightful)
On the high end, your cost comparison is a joke, because the cost of the computer is the least of your expenses. A high end PC based (with Avid or the like) system is going to set you back $100,000 or more.
The cost for a similarly featured Apple video editing system with Final Cut Pro? Less than $10,000.
Read it and weep:
http://www.filmandvideo.com/New%20Pages/ar
Worried about this kernel panic ruining your video editing? Don't. You are not likely to be in your Terminal making two directories of the same name and moving them about in the course of your video editing. Even if you were, this is happening in the Unix part of OS X, which is open source, and it is being announced on Slashdot. Someone will probably fix it for fun over the weekend and email Apple a patch by Monday. We'll probably see an official, tested, security update from Apple next week. That is the beauty of open source.
If this were Microsoft and a "blue screen of death", well, don't hold your breath. Their response would be the same as seven years ago: "There are no significant bugs in Windows XP. Trust us.". Yeah, right! That's what PC Magazine said about Windows 95, when I spent 11 months trying to get a stable install of the original version.
Windows: "Go talk to my friend, an 800 pound monopoly-abusing gorilla!"
Mac: "And here's my good buddy, the 66,000 ton Godzilla!"
Godzilla: Stomp!
Re:mail info (Score:4, Funny)
What's also amusing is, children have no problem using dos, linux, windows, MacOS or OSX. They have no preference to OS as long as it can play sound, let them personalise their desktop etc. what they favour is SOFTWARE
Yet for some unknown reason, if you put an average highschool computer user who's grown up on a windows PC all his life in front of a mac, and open up netscape, they can't seem to figure out how to make it work, despite it having an identical interface to the PC version. The reason I was given was becasue "It's a mac, I don't know how to use a mac"
Its not a bug (Score:5, Funny)
Those crazy kernal programmers
Ooops (Score:5, Funny)
BOOL HFSPLUS_Directory_Move( const char *src, const char *dest ) {
if ( !strcmp( src, dest ) ) {
__kernelPanic( KP_IMMEDIATE );
}
}
Re:Ooops (Score:4, Informative)
Yes, I know this is trying to be funny, but on /. accuracy counts in humor as well.
Colonel Panic and General Controls... (Score:5, Funny)
Then there was Colonel Panic, who wouldn't work if you added two folders with the same name to the same in box on his desk.
What's next? Private Keychain will forget where he stored my passwords and x.509 certificates?
Oh wait... you were talking about kernels...
Sorry!
-wjc.
IMPORTANT! (Score:5, Informative)
Works just fine on my system.... (in Bash, though) (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Works just fine on my system.... (in Bash, thou (Score:4, Informative)
- You have the correct permissions to the folder, and
- You are running 10.2.2?
Missing either of these might make the bug not work (oh no!).Re:Works just fine on my system.... (in Bash, thou (Score:5, Funny)
"DAMN, sticking that fork in my eye really hurt!"
"Oooh, I WANT TO TRY!"
They know .... (Score:5, Informative)
Here's the message [apple.com] (login: archives, pass: archives)
This list is teeming with Apple folks, so I'm sure someone's posted a RADAR bug already.
This problem also came up on MacNN and is discussed in detail here [macnn.com]
Now here's the kicker - as the kernel is open-source (APSL - don't complain), someone's already traced the problem back to a recursive lock in the HFS+ subsystem (hfs_vnops.c). Kewl or wha'?
Re:They know .... (Score:4, Informative)
What's wrong with HFS+? (Score:5, Informative)
It's got metadata, which Microsoft only *added* with NTFS
It finally got journaling with 10.2.2
It spans, quite comfortably, 180GB hard drives
File sizes can be larger than 2gb, and I believe up to 2TB (2^63 bytes per file)
Is there something missing? Perhaps encryption? Apple already has support for encrypted volumes...
Re:They know .... (Score:4, Insightful)
This kind of partnership between OSS and a major commercial vendor is unprecedented, AFAIK. (No flames, please; if I'm wrong, just tell me so, and who did it first.) It's produced some great things so far, and I'm looking forward to seeing where it goes.
Re:They know .... (Score:5, Interesting)
- user accidentally finds bug in OS
- user talks about it on open-source forums and other places on the internet
- Apple gets notified as well as open-source community at large
- within minutes of its discovery, some geeks manage to find the root of the problem
- apple developers are notified of geeks' findings, confirm, fix, and thoroughly test the fix.
- within days apple users get a software update notification if bug is important, or fix is rolled into the next major sub-dot release if fairly inconsequential for the broader user base, as it might be the case for this one
You see, apple users don't need to do shit. All i know is that some bug that is fairly inconsequential to me was found, and that it's guna get fixed, fast, and my next OS X release will be all the stronger, and all i'll have to do is click the "install" button when prompted, and i will feel warm and fuzzy all over. I don't even need to what a fucking kernel is.now that's just me. Yes, many geeks out there will gladly hunt-down the bug in the source code and recompile their kernel.
The point is, you know problems are addressed in an appropriate matter.
So yes, open-source, is, indeed, so much better than anything else, especially if you're dealing with what i consider in my little world, the mission-critical piece of software that is my tibook's operating system.
Such process shows me that a product that relies heavily on mature open-source components is less likely to cause productivity-killing crashes and loss of data such as the ones i've experienced with my previous dell laptop running win2k, as described in one of my journal entries [slashdot.org].
And if was to direct an IT department, gee, i just may consider putting a flat-panel iMac on every employee's desktop. Shit i could mount user directories from a central location, enabling employees to switch work stations, i would uniformely configure all machines, prevent users from writing files or installing applications outside of their home directories, i could ssh in each box for sporadic debug work, i could create automated processes to create development environments based on users' needs, wether they're graphic artists or J2EE application developers.
OS X owns you.
this is it people. we are well on our way to reach the nirvana of computing, with symbiotic collaboration between a major hardware and software vendor and the open source community at large, market share gains in each camp benefits the other.
ArsTechnica (Score:5, Informative)
Could it be a copyright problem ? (Score:5, Funny)
smb bug? or maybe i'm an idiot (Score:3, Interesting)
try to mount a share from an local smb server that does not exist. cancel it, then try to mount one that DOES exist.
ie. from the finder command-k
smb://10.0.1.3 #does not exist
cancel it,
smb://10.0.1.4 #does exist
the second attempt will time out and the machine will have to be hard reset.
maybe this is just me, but this has been happening to me since 10.1.5
Fink/GNU is your friend (Score:5, Insightful)
But
This is (one of the many reasons) why the GNU versions of everything should be standard on all systems in the universe. So go fetch and install a copy of fink and (optionally) FinkCommander.
Also, "alias mv mv -i" is a Very Good Idea(tm).
Cool. (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Cool. (Score:4, Interesting)
Use GNU fileutils-4.1 - Won't panic (Score:1)
journalling (Score:2, Insightful)
sudo diskutil enablejournal
Another bug. (Score:2)
Overall, I've found OS X to be a wonderfully stable product, and have never seen a kernel panic.
Don't you get it? (Score:3, Interesting)
While this bug appears trivial it is not.
Consider: An entire apple server can be totally killed requiring a human to reboot it just by getting a totally unpriveleged shell access.
EVEN A GUEST can kill the system using this simple simple set of commands. That's not good. Of course it's not the end of the world either.
anyone know of a way to get unprivileged access on an apple server of your choice?!
Another easy one (Score:3, Interesting)
Works fine with UFS filesystem... (Score:1, Interesting)
mv run on an SMB share also caused a panic (Score:2)
I was able to cause a panic in 10.1.x by simply moving all files out of the root of an SMB share on a foreign host from the Terminal. I was able to duplicate at will, and did submit to Apple at one time.
No problem copying and removing the files from the terminal (using the same filespecs). Only the "mv" command would do it.
I have no idea of this was fixed in a later release of 10.1 or 10.2.
this must just be 10.2 (Score:1)
Another cool Kernel panic (Score:1)
I sent an email to Apple awhile back, so it may be fixed; however, I have not tested this bug recently, as I cannot stand opening Classic anymore T.t
WARNING: SHUT DOWN YOUR FTP DAEMON (Score:4, Interesting)
I just tested this over an FTP connection to a Mac OS X 10.2.2 box using Transmit (a Mac FTP client) from a MacOS 9 machine.
I was ABLE to panic the kernel remotely.
This has just taken a violent swing into serious, as ANY USER WITH FTP ACCESS can now drop your Mac OS X machine. Apple needs to patch this, and quickly. I don't care if the security update is 15k to replace
Any idea what eactly could be wrong with either the kernel or mv that would cause such a problem? Branching to the wrong case (i.e. branching to the "same name" case as opposed to the "can't replace a directory with an item it contains" case)?
Is this a job for the Darwin team since it involves a BSD component?
Yes it works in 'console'. (Score:1)
Re:Sure (Score:5, Insightful)
Try explaining to mom why she can't have two directories named letters without crashing the machine
The GUI (gracefully) prevents you from doing this, so if Mom can understand the sequence of terminal commands that triggers the panic, she'll have no trouble understanding why...
Re:os9 never did that (Score:1)
More like non-existant. The way I understand it, the low level code was non-reentrant, so it was inherently impossible without a total rewrite.
Why does that make this story a troll though? Is it so amazing that a relatively new OS has a bug, whereas an older and heavily tested one would not?
Re:os9 never did that (Score:5, Insightful)
> os9 would never, despite its shabby memory
> protection, and pathetic preemptive multitasking,
> do that.
Nope, because OS 9 wasn't Unix, and so didn't use Unix terminology for operating system failures. OS 9 bombed, OS X panics (very rarely). BTW, any kernel hacker can, if they choose, get the source code and fix this bug. OS 9 couldn't do that either.
I'm glad, though, that I switched early enought that I got a chance to know OS 9. It really was amazing, despite it being basically a microcomputer OS, all the things Apple got it to do.
OS 9 is the blue-eyed caterpillar, small and awkward, but courageous and friendly.
OS X is the blue-eyed adult Moth, awesomely beautiful, supremely powerful. She soars above all, the peerless Queen of Monsters.
And Apple is, as always, Mothra Leo's Forever Friend.
Re:os9 never did that (Score:2, Informative)
There was preemptive multitasking, and asymetric multiprocessing. Essentially, all the normal applications ran in a single task and you could write preemptive services. I never saw this feature used for anything productive. Since QuickDraw was only available to the main task, you'd probably have to use IPC to have your services do their output.
OS 9 would never do that because its filesystem code was highly refined, after all, it was the 7th or 8th major revision of the OS. (I'm pretty sure we jumped from either System 1 or 2 to System 4. I don't remember System 5, so maybe it was only the 6th.) However, I do recall that the PC Exchange software was pretty flaky and some bad DOS floppies could crash your Mac.
Also, there was a horrible Quicktime Autoplay feature that was designed for CD-ROMs. Some people used it to put viruses on Zip disks that would activate merely by inserting the Zip.
All in all, OS X is, so far, doing a good bit better than its predecessors.