Snow leopard bug causes erasure of users home directory

[Josh]

Apparently not only are Sidekick users losing their personal data. Today, in a separate incident Snow Leopard (OS X 10.6) users are also finding their data fully wiped.

The bug was actually discovered within a week of Snow Leopard's launch back in August, when users found that logging out of their account, into a "guest" account, and then back into their personal account would completely erase the content from their home drive (Documents, Movies, Pictures, Music, Sites).

Source

Sorry for the BN link, I hate posting news from there but it still comes at a good time since the Windows vs Mac thread has really taken off.

[f0dder]

OS X - it just works

[40hz]

"It's the biggest thing to happen to Macintosh since the Macintosh" (Apple's ad slogan: (2001) Initial OS X release.)

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"I hope all your previous words were soft and sweet. Because you're about to eat them." -Anonymous

 

[Innuendo]

Want to lose all your data? There's an app for that.

[Ehtyar]

"I hope all your previous words were soft and sweet. Because you're about to eat them." -Anonymous

-40hz (October 13, 2009, 06:36 AM)

Want to lose all your data? There's an app for that.

-Innuendo (October 13, 2009, 10:06 AM)

Ehtyar.

[Innuendo]

The worst thing, besides users losing their data of course, is that Apple has known about this bug since September 12th and there still isn't a fix available.

[40hz]

The worst thing, besides users losing their data of course, is that Apple has known about this bug since September 12th and there still isn't a fix available.

-Innuendo (October 13, 2009, 05:34 PM)

Probably because they're still waiting for an answer back from the people who actually wrote the OS.

(If they followed a more open approach to OSX, it would have been patched no later than the 14th.)

[nite_monkey]

Want to lose all your data? There's an app for that.

-Innuendo (October 13, 2009, 10:06 AM)

rotfl I love that! 

[Innuendo]

Probably because they're still waiting for an answer back from the people who actually wrote the OS.

-40hz (October 13, 2009, 05:36 PM)

Oh, I don't know. Microsoft's OS is probably just as complex as Apple's and MS can get a patch out in just a few days when it's severe. I'm not saying that's how quickly MS would react if something like this happened on Windows, mind you. I'm just saying they have the ability to act fast when they need to & I would have thought Apple would have this capability as well.

Another troubling thought is that I thought OS X was built on top of BSD, a very mature and secure OS. How did this get past the BSD layer?

[40hz]

Another troubling thought is that I thought OS X was built on top of BSD, a very mature and secure OS. How did this get past the BSD layer?

-Innuendo (October 15, 2009, 02:30 PM)

It's believed the problem lies in the way OSX deals with the guest account. OSX is set up to automatically delete any files found in the guest account's home directory once the guest logs out.

That's not a bad idea actually.

Purging the guest directory eliminates the risk of having something left behind that can screw up the system. It also guarantees each person who subsequently logs in as a guest gets their own "clean set of sheets" so they're not put at risk either. Minimizing risk is the entire point of a having a guest account to begin with.

From what I understand, apparently something happens in OSX if you logout of a regular account and then log into the guest account. Because if you logout as guest after that - and then immediately log back into your regular account - that's when the glitch occurs.

Somehow, the files in the regular login's home directory get purged along with the guest's. That's an Apple original if there ever was one.

That gremlin has nothing to do with BSD since the same thing doesn't happen in BSD. Or Linux. Or Windows. Or...

[Lashiec]

The worst thing, besides users losing their data of course, is that Apple has known about this bug since September 12th and there still isn't a fix available.

-Innuendo (October 13, 2009, 05:34 PM)

Probably because they're still waiting for an answer back from the people who actually wrote the OS.

(If they followed a more open approach to OSX, it would have been patched no later than the 14th.) :P

-40hz (October 13, 2009, 05:36 PM)

Nah, it's simply due to the way in which Apple issues updates. You never will see them issuing a single patch for a zero-day exploit, or loose patches for OS X components like it's usually done in Windows and Linux, they always consolidate a group of unrelated patches on a single package. And until everything that is included is done, nothing gets fixed.

If you think about it, closed devices and appliances also get updated the same way :D

[Innuendo]

If you think about it, closed devices and appliances also get updated the same way

-Lashiec (October 16, 2009, 05:18 PM)

Yeah, but my DVD player that plays Divx files off of flash drives has never deleted all my Divx files, though.