Major Problems With Safari 199
kuwan writes "There have been many problems reported with Safari on Apple's discussion boards. The two most prominent are that option-clicking on a link to download can replace your Home folder with the downloaded file, effectively nuking your Home folder. The other has been reported as a printing problem, but is far worse. The printing problem occurs because Safari deletes /tmp, which is a link to /private/tmp."
X11 and /tmp (Score:4, Informative)
So that explains it. Apple's X11 application was crashing on me shortly after launch and immediately when requesting the creation of an xterm. The logfile said a lock file in
How to fix the /tmp problem (Score:5, Informative)
The following was deleted from my original post. Here's how to fix the problems with /tmp:
You need to recreate the /tmp symbolic link (/tmp is just a link to /private/tmp).
I agree with those that have said that you should use caution with beta software, but considering that over 300,000 people downloaded it on the first day there are going to be a lot of people that are going to be needing a fix. 5 of the 6 people I work with (including me) that used Safari had /tmp deleted. That's 83% which means there's probably more than 250,000 people (from just the first day) that are going to need a fix.
Other problems that might be experienced include:
There are many more problems that may come up, so anything we can do to get the word out is a good thing.
Alpha, Beta, Pre-Release Candidate, etc... (Score:5, Informative)
KDE Office Beta [kde.org]
Above is an old thread regarding KDE office beta and the confusion caused by alpha, beta, etc. and different people's expectations.
I think that a good general rule of thumb is to say that:
pre-alpha/alpha software all bets are off.
Beta - We've worked out all the major computer destroying bugs but there's still lots of little annoying ones.
Pre-Release candidate - Hey, we got this thing to work pretty well and now we need people to try and break it so that when we actually release we can
Honestly, I'd be pretty pissed if someone released a beta and it did something nasty like erase my ~ directory. We're not talking about CS 101 students releasing the Hello World Browser.
Re:Rushed job? (Score:1, Informative)
There are some notes [mamasam.com] in the Cocoa mailing list about the Safari implementation.
Re:How is this possible? (Score:4, Informative)
[xxx@xxx:~]% ls -l
lrwxrwxr-t 1 root admin 12 Jan 10 00:43 tmp@ ->
If you are a member of admin group, you can delete it.
I am beginning to get an impression that people who had set Download folder to Macintosh HD:tmp in OS 9 using Internet Config may be affected. Looks like Safari honors the setting from the Internet Config.
Posting from Safari
Another reason not to run as admin (Score:3, Informative)
Actually I'm a little perplexed about the home directory thing and would like to see more details on what is going on. /Users on both of my machines is writable by root and the wheel group, but not the admin group. It doesn't seem like this could happen without write permission to /Users, so it sounds a bit fishy. However, if the user were in the wheel group, that could explain it.
The /tmp thing is easily accomplished if the user is in the admin group since most Apple software updates like to chmod g+w / even when I don't want it that way.
Personally, I run everything as a non-admin user and have a special "admin" account which is the only one in the admin group. I've ranted on this before, but I still think Apple would have been better off telling people, when they first configure the machine, to simply enter a special administrative password, separate from their normal password. Behind the scenes, they would create an admin user, but any non-advanced user would need not even know that administrative privileges are given via a separate account. All they need to know is their regular account (non-admin) password and the admin password. The facilities for this setup are mostly there - many system-type actions (system-wide prefs, software installs) already ask for an administrative user/password. Just dump the user part (defaulting to "admin"), so as not to confuse non-advanced users. Then add stuff in places like the Finder - try to copy a new program to /Applications and get a dialog asking for the password. Make it as seamless as possible.
I really think this sort of scheme would have been better, more in line with the traditional Unix security model while still giving people full control over their machines without absolutely requiring knowledge of "root," "sudo" and other Unixisms. Advanced (or wreckless) users could even be given the option to "give my account full time administrative privileges" (add to the admin group) with proper warnings of possible doom.
here's what happened to me--specifically (Score:5, Informative)
Other Bugs (Score:3, Informative)
1. Safari can handle only three downloads at a time. If you put a fourth download in the queue, it will replace the third, which will be completely skipped; the fifth will replace the fourth; and so on.
2. (Cosmetic) The "no man's land" in the lower right hand corner between the scroll bars can get screwed up if you start scrolling before Safari's finished rendering the page. Occurs especially when the horizontal scroll bar is in use.
3. (Cosmetic) Safari attempts to win time by rendering each frame in a frame URL as it is received, but before the entire frame set is known. As a result, rendering can look clumsy, with frames jumping across the window and back again.
4. You can't turn off auto-complete. To not get an entire URL as Safari presumes it, you have to delete the completion twice.
5. You cannot stop animations, and you cannot set animations to loop only a single time.
6. The History menu becomes impossible to use with too many URLs - it locks up as Safari attempts to load the "Earlier Today" submenu. Workaround is to hit the up arrow key when the menu is highlighted on the menu bar.
None of these are serious, except perhaps the download queue bug, and that's a good one.
Cheers, R.
Possible Solution for /tmp folder, after Safari DL (Score:2, Informative)
Anyway (rolls eyes), go to Apple Discussion Boards [apple.com] and search for Galen Muir (the one who gave me the solution). Look for a post (or posts) with subject "RE: Possible Solution"
This fix should resolve any issues you may have with Classic, Software Update, Installer (and maybe printing, CD burning, and "incorrect PPP option" while trying to connect to the internet).
If you have downloaded Safari, and suffered thse problems, then i highly suggest that you check those posts and carefully follow the directions.
Re:Chimera 0.6 (Score:2, Informative)
MacOSXhints [macosxhints.com] had a story on how to remove the brushed metal appearance [macosxhints.com] from Safari (requires the free Developer Tools [apple.com]). Works for me.
As of this writing there are over a dozen other helpful hints [macosxhints.com] on Safari as well.