Major Snow Leopard Bug Said To Delete User Data 353
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.
Butbutbut... (Score:0, Insightful)
Re:This is a bad bug, yes, but... (Score:1, Insightful)
You mean unfortunately. App£e is evil, even more so than Micro$oft. The sooner people realize it, the better.
Re:Apple.... (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re:Apple.... (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re:This is a bad bug, yes, but... (Score:5, Insightful)
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. :(
Re:Apple.... (Score:0, Insightful)
Since when is Win7 (a yet-unreleased OS) considered a "major OS"?
Re:Apple.... (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re:This is a bad bug, yes, but... (Score:4, Insightful)
then it's flawed
Re:not the only problem with the leopard (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:Apple.... (Score:2, Insightful)
Because cognitive dissonance is far superior to actually facing problems. There are no issue with Mac, OS X or any apple product and anyone who says anything to the contrary is a lair and a drunkard who wears women's panties.
Guest or permission limited accounts are necessary for anyone who take security seriously. I use them on my Linux and Windows home boxes and at work if you cant qualify for a permission limited domain account you dont get on. The point of a guest account is to limit the amount of damage a user can do, frankly if you're not using a guest account then you're doing it wrong, especially if you let others use your machine. No matter on what OS this is it is a pretty serious bug.
It never ceases to amaze me that Mac fanboys can never admit to a bug no matter how serious (I guess it does contradict the "just works" thing but still) and yet continually berate MS and Linux for the tiniest of errors. Bugs happen and need to be fixed, no-one is immune to this and you only make a problem 10 times worse by denying it. But I've no doubt the Mac fanboys have labelled me a "hater" and "MS fanboy" and are furiously typing in their replies whilst trying not to get spittle on their keyboards.
Oh man. Nightmare. (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re:I don't want to feed the trolls but... (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re:Oh. (Score:3, Insightful)
Well, of course. They're only counting dead drives. The ones that didn't fail don't get counted. Also, it's far less disturbing when you know that they were introduced roughly 20 months ago, and the vast majority weren't sold in the first three months of availability.
Further, I'm quite disappointed in your wording. I was expecting to see an article about buried bomb shelters having inadequate supplies or ventilation or something, and people trying to live in them long term after buying.
Can you take legal action? (Score:5, Insightful)
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."
Re:Hi, I'm a Mac! (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:I don't want to feed the trolls but... (Score:5, Insightful)
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?
Re:This is a bad bug, yes, but... (Score:4, Insightful)
...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.
Re:Apple.... (Score:4, Insightful)
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.
Re:This is a bad bug, yes, but... (Score:3, Insightful)
When your system comes with a backup utility that you can literally turn on and forget about until you need it, it's pretty damned stupid to not use it.
~Philly
Not especially useful when you only have about 100GB or so to play with.
I'm not sure where your 100GB number is coming from. You do have to buy a large enough back-up drive, but once you plug that in, you just turn on Time Machine and forget about it.
I'm not a big fan of the Time Capsule, Apple sells, but it would be the right tool if you had a MacBook Air (with its single USB port and no FireWire). For anything else, get a FireWire external drive. The first time you plug it in to your Mac, you'll be prompted to set it up as a Time Machine device.
Of course I'm not trying to dismiss this serious bug by talking about back-ups, but Apple should be credited with integrating a very decent backup system into the OS. There really is no excuse for not making backups.
Re:Can you take legal action? (Score:5, Insightful)
There is software which can kill you if it malfunctions. Avionics software (which spawned all kinds of guidelines, laws, and specialized programming languages), industrial control software, power network software, and so on. I assure you that people can be sued over poor design in these areas.
Re:Accountability (Score:0, Insightful)
It's more like Microsoft users report an issue and Microsoft release a patch when they get around to it.
Apple users never report issues because they won't admit that their Mac is anything less than perfection to "justify" the amount of money they wasted and not be proven morons. Apple themselves try to find a scapegoat.
Re:I don't want to feed the trolls but... (Score:2, Insightful)
On every OS, even Linux based, the user has the authority to wipe out their home directory and personal settings. This isn't a security flaw.
Is that so - so why does a Guest (!!!) account have the authority to wipe an Admin account's home directory. That IS a security flaw. You are making a mistake: the user has the authority to wipe out their own (!!!) home directory - not somebody else's. Since the Guest account obviously has access to the Admin account's home directory somehow, this does expose a deeper security flaw.
Re:This is a bad bug, yes, but... (Score:1, Insightful)
"I really like Time Machine, but I do have two faults with it. The fact that it requires a separate drive is something of a joke. "Every mac comes with automatic backup software that takes care of everything for you, *tinyfont* once you buy an extra drive */tinyfont*'. "
Yeah, I wish I could back up my data to the same drive it's already on. Then when the drive fails I can replace it and restore my data from the failed... er, wait... D'oh!
Not too many frequent flier miles on that geek card, eh?
Re:Can you take legal action? (Score:5, Insightful)
When consumers are willing to wait (much) longer, pay (much) more, and/or get (much) less powerful software for the "not warranted for any particular purpose" to be removed from the license text. Don't hold your breath.
It's entirely possible to make software that is rock-solid and that people will legally stand behind. But something has to be sacrificed to do so, and I don't imagine consumers will want that trade-off any time soon for the software on their desktop. Rather, people just complain about software developers not taking responsibility without really understanding what that would mean. It's like the old adage - good, fast, cheap, pick any two (if you're lucky). Unless the developers are just incompetent (which theoretically in non-monopolies the market will correct), it's hard to improve in one way without sacrificing something else. Software development is cumulative, so there's some hope of improvement over time - essentially you can mitigate the sacrifice of development speed through reuse - but that only takes you so far.
What difference would it make? I think that it's common knowledge that you should take backups. Would putting that in warning label form make it more likely for people to actually do so?
Re:Can you take legal action? (Score:5, Insightful)
When will software/computer/IT companies be held to the same standards that other engineers (Civil, Electrical, Mechanical) are?
When you start paying $100,000 for an operating system?
Re:Apple.... (Score:2, Insightful)
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.
Wait a bug that has affected about 100 reported users is on the front page of Slashdot and a dozen other tech news sites and that's what you call being given a free pass? Are you insane?
Seriously it sucks that this bug exists and I'd be pissed as hell if it happened to me but I don't understand how you can claim this is a major bug and Apple is being given a free pass. This affects users who are in the 20% or so using snow leopard who are also in the subset that they upgraded from Leopard and the further subset that had a guest account enabled under leopard and the subset of that that had a crash while using a guest account and rebooted and opened an admin account. And for that small subset, it does not even happen consistently. That's a pretty unusual and edge case bug, only notable because the results are so devastating. It's probably a lot less common than people who lose their data because of a catastrophic hard drive failure. And it's being billed as a major failure an Apple's part. That's just one of those bugs that QA is unlikely to have found, even if they're being thorough. Getting pissed at Apple won't do much good other than to make Apple developers decide users and the press are unreasonable and there's no point in trying, since any weird edge case bug will be get them as much bad press as if they had a major easily detectable bug.
Re:Can you take legal action? (Score:3, Insightful)
Your argument is still skipping the step where something of incredibly high sentimental value is even remotely like those other situations where it's peoples' (plural, in each case) lives on the line.
You simply cannot replace the word computer with bridge/airplane/car brakes, unless the computer is actually in a system where multiple lives depend upon it, which, it wasn't (although there actually ARE computer components to airplane, traffic lights, many car brakes, and drawbridges).
You can maybe replace it by a lock that gets picked, or a photocopier whose autofeeder that mangles the original document. Both of which happen.
Re:Oh. (Score:1, Insightful)
As an Apple fanboy
Fanboy basically means "no matter if they do good or bad I'll follow them", which is just another way of saying "I'm a fucking idiot". Seriously, being called fanboy is a bad thing.
Why does it feel like I'm wasting my time?
Re:Oh. (Score:3, Insightful)
As an Apple fanboy
Fanboy basically means "no matter if they do good or bad I'll follow them", which is just another way of saying "I'm a fucking idiot". Seriously, being called fanboy is a bad thing.
Hey, since everybody who hates Apple calls everybody who doesn't a fanboy, who fucking cares.
Why does it feel like I'm wasting my time?
Because you are a hateboi.
I have no substitution, I'm not a fan of anything. I choose whatever is best, and not by brand. I'm a brand turncoat and I always get what's in my best interest. Can you honestly say that this isn't the best way for a consumer to act? In terms of personal economy -- that is.
Re:Oh. (Score:1, Insightful)
Why MSFT always seems to be piss poor on basic tools I have no idea,
At this point, including *ANYTHING* with windows will be seen as "leveraging their monopoly to gain a competitive advantage in other markets"
http://www.google.com/search?&q=microsoft+*+monopoly+*+leverage [google.com]
Re:Oh. (Score:3, Insightful)
Why MSFT always seems to be piss poor on basic tools I have no idea [...]
Because when they're not, crowds gather outside chanting "Anti-trust".