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Guest user account bug in 10.9.1

Luba

Luba

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Apr 22, 2009
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Turned on FileVault, then activated Guest User account. When I go to the Guest account to test it out, Safari is flickering or some would say the screen is tearing. Everything is very slow. Anybody experiencing this graphical bug.

Read on another thread that through Guest account could read install logs etc.?

Hopefully, 10.9.2 is addressing this bug.

I have 10.8.5 on another Mac with FileVault and Guest activated, and it works fine.
 
Weaselboy

Weaselboy

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Jan 23, 2005
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I have a 2013 Macbook Air with FV2 turned on in 10.9.1 and I see that also.

I suspect it is because when you boot to that Guest account with FV2 on you are only running Safari off the Recovery HD partition and not really running the full OS... so the video acceleration drivers in OS X are not loaded, hence the tearing.
 
R

robgendreau

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Jul 13, 2008
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Weaselboy said:
I have a 2013 Macbook Air with FV2 turned on in 10.9.1 and I see that also.

I suspect it is because when you boot to that Guest account with FV2 on you are only running Safari off the Recovery HD partition and not really running the full OS... so the video acceleration drivers in OS X are not loaded, hence the tearing.
Click to expand...

Good catch; I bet that's it. Does it behave that way if you boot into the regular account and switch to the guest account? Apple sez: "Users not enabled for FileVault unlock are only able to log into the computer after an unlock-enabled user has started or unlocked the drive. Once unlocked, the drive remains unlocked and available to all users, until the computer is restarted." And since you started with a regular account, the video driver is enabled and no video oddities.
 
Luba

Luba

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Apr 22, 2009
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Weaselboy said:
I have a 2013 Macbook Air with FV2 turned on in 10.9.1 and I see that also.

I suspect it is because when you boot to that Guest account with FV2 on you are only running Safari off the Recovery HD partition and not really running the full OS... so the video acceleration drivers in OS X are not loaded, hence the tearing.
Click to expand...

But I have FV2 on another Mac with 10.8.5 and the Guest account running Safari runs smoothly.
 
Weaselboy

Weaselboy

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Jan 23, 2005
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Luba said:
But I have FV2 on another Mac with 10.8.5 and the Guest account running Safari runs smoothly.
Click to expand...

Oh I'm not saying this is right. I'm just guessing why I think it it happening. Each OS version has its own recovery partition version, so it could be something about the code in the 10.9.1 recovery partition.

I never tested the guest boot in 10.9.0.
 
R

robgendreau

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Jul 13, 2008
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Luba said:
But I have FV2 on another Mac with 10.8.5 and the Guest account running Safari runs smoothly.
Click to expand...

What happens when you switch back to the regular account (without restarting)?

I still think it's a kext or something for your video, since that's exactly the behavior that occurs when I start in safe mode. Perhaps some video addition is installed for the main user only, and not for all users?
 
Weaselboy

Weaselboy

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robgendreau said:
What happens when you switch back to the regular account (without restarting)?
Click to expand...

You can't. With FV2 on the guest account runs nothing but Safari off the recovery partition. You can't logout in the traditional sense. If you quit Safari the system reboots to the login screen. Apple calling it a Guest account is a bit confusing, because it is not really an "account" at all.

robgendreau said:
I still think it's a kext or something for your video, since that's exactly the behavior that occurs when I start in safe mode. Perhaps some video addition is installed for the main user only, and not for all users?
Click to expand...

I did see some forum posts recently with users seeing the same screen tearing in safe mode. I think safe mode runs with stripped down video drivers also. This says "only required kernel extensions"... so dunno. I know if you boot to safe mode the video response is slow as heck, so I think it is without accelerated video.
 
Luba

Luba

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Apr 22, 2009
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Weaselboy said:
so the video acceleration drivers in OS X are not loaded, hence the tearing.
Click to expand...

Sounds like an easy fix then, just turn the video acceleration drivers back on. :)

Didn't know recovery partition is different for each OS X, 10.8 recovery is different from 10.9's recovery partition. It seems some OS X version upgrades (10.x to 10.x+1) are tweaks, so I thought Apple could keep the previous recovery partition. I guess not.
 
Weaselboy

Weaselboy

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Jan 23, 2005
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Luba said:
Sounds like an easy fix then, just turn the video acceleration drivers back on. :)

Didn't know recovery partition is different for each OS X, 10.8 recovery is different from 10.9's recovery partition. It seems some OS X version upgrades (10.x to 10.x+1) are tweaks, so I thought Apple could keep the previous recovery partition. I guess not.
Click to expand...

I don't think that will happen. They would have to load the video drivers for all the different GPUs onto the recovery partition, making it much larger than it is already.

The recovery partition is changed with each OS update. It is even changed with most of the point updates. Like from 10.9.0 to 10.9.1 changed the recovery partition.
 
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