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Snow Leopard Bug Responsible for Loss of User Data Gaining Notice
- Thread starter fpbecker
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See my earlier comment about lack of pity for those who don't backup.
Data loss happens, either through virus' or situations like this. Just last night at Thanksgiving dinner I listened to a family member reminisce about 2 years of lost digital photos that were cooked when their XP machine was trashed by a virus. I reitterated the absolute necesity of backups to her and she's picking up an external drive this week.
Based on my observations Apple has at least made backups stupid easy and have advertised Time Machine enough that the average OS X user should know about it, and sheesh, it can't possibly be any easier to use.
Therefore, I come full circle about having little pity for those without backups. Even if money is tight you can get a used 500gig external USB drive for $30 or $40 and it'll do the job.
My files were not deleted... However the accounts and files had become
"disassociated". I am an old time Unix user so I actually live 90% of the time
in the terminal. My solution was to re-set the accounts and re-associate the
data to the approriate accounts.
Anyone displaying their usernames in the login window didn't care about security in the first IMO. Accounts without passwords? Yeah, that is security.
well, if you are using a system with the guest account enabled, either you need to have a backup of your data, or don't have valuable data on that machine
that's something I didn't expect with the OS so far away from the start line
I'm glad I don't use guest accounts and that I haven't upgraded to SL.
Backup seems to be the word of the day.
Well I've said it before, the reality is that if anyone installs a version prior to .2 of these releases then that's just signing up to be an Apple beta tester. And obviously it's necessary to prepare accordingly.
Explain please! I just Googled and found nothing specific except for this post.
Thanks!
-- N
I never use the upgrade option. On any OS. I don't trust them (for these reasons, and others) to upgrade properly. It all simplifies down to this: there's never a 1:1 correlation between versions, requiring guesswork and intelligence on the part of the installer.
Rather, I keep a backup from which I can recover my computer within an hour. This means I can "upgrade" by doing a clean install, and then simply start fresh with my backups.
I think whoever uses the "Upgrade" option probably (though not always) doesn't have a good backup system in place.
Rather, I keep a backup from which I can recover my computer within an hour. This means I can "upgrade" by doing a clean install, and then simply start fresh with my backups.
I think whoever uses the "Upgrade" option probably (though not always) doesn't have a good backup system in place.
This is a big deal and obviously a significant problem. It doesn't matter it requires a particular set of circumstances to trigger it - we're talking about a reasonably standard Mac setup (not one I use, fortunately).
Equally big is the need for regular backups. I don't understand people that don't do this - I've been a programmer for 20-odd years and remember the days when hard drive crashes were not unusual events. But even without hard drive crashes, data corruption and accidental erasure do still happen - and, as we see once again, software is not perfect.
Equally big is the need for regular backups. I don't understand people that don't do this - I've been a programmer for 20-odd years and remember the days when hard drive crashes were not unusual events. But even without hard drive crashes, data corruption and accidental erasure do still happen - and, as we see once again, software is not perfect.
Sorry for the biting response, I thought you were talking about the deleting issue... If SL is doing this, too, that's not good either!
Using the Guest account is extremely rare. You probably wouldn't find anyone doing beta testing on such an account. Whatever was changed in the code for that function was probably believed insignificant, so it wasn't thoroughly tested.
The article mentions a thread that contains 45 posts, most of which aren't from people with this problem, who claim an occasional issue with something that only occurs in a particular method, sometimes but not always. This bug in Snow Leopard is apparently not easy to reproduce, and will not even work on a clean install. So if you were planning on buying a new Mac, this wouldn't even affect you.
It helps to maintain the proper perspective on the issue.
The article mentions a thread that contains 45 posts, most of which aren't from people with this problem, who claim an occasional issue with something that only occurs in a particular method, sometimes but not always. This bug in Snow Leopard is apparently not easy to reproduce, and will not even work on a clean install. So if you were planning on buying a new Mac, this wouldn't even affect you.
It helps to maintain the proper perspective on the issue.
This happened to me . I lost all data except apps, otherwise, it was like I had done a clean install of SL.
. I lost all data except apps, otherwise, it was like I had done a clean install of SL.
If one does a du -h on their account to determine whether their inode tree structure shows their root node has been redirected will determine whether the "loss" actually exists or whether it's hidden from the primary account holder due to that pointer mapping losing access, and or it's been renamed without an update visible to the original account holder.
Example: $ du -h
If the size of files hasn't changed and you cannot view the content then the pointer to that content structure has been renamed and gives the appearance that all content has been removed.
Why is everyone and their mother voting this negative? The fact that it's gaining notice should mean a greater likelihood of it being fixed (faster)!
Man, you would think, this version was supposed to be tweak and bug fix one, and they would cover all their bases in the two years of development. But it really looks to me that Apple really wanted to make a very thorough and concerted effort to build iPhone platform (nothing wrong with that), leaving no stone unturned, and used much of OS X team resources to accomplish that. Hence, there were limited resources available and limited development on the OS X front, which they covered up by calling it a bug fix and fine tuning update, and selling it for less.
In reality, my feeling is that this was not at all supposed to be a "stop new features and fine tune" but came to be that way as a result of iPhone's gestational nutritional needs.
In reality, my feeling is that this was not at all supposed to be a "stop new features and fine tune" but came to be that way as a result of iPhone's gestational nutritional needs.
Actually I wouldn't feel safe with just Time Machine either. I have had problems with Time Machine file corruption and I have done full restores from Time Machine and they have been plagued with problems.
Your best bet is a full backup strategy. Time Machine, Drobo, Cloud, and offsite.
Right, blame everything on the iphone.Man, you would think, this version was supposed to be tweak and bug fix one, and they would cover all their bases in the two years of development. But it really looks to me that Apple really wanted to make a very thorough and concerted effort to build iPhone platform (nothing wrong with that), leaving no stone unturned, and used much of OS X team resources to accomplish that. Hence, there were limited resources available and limited development on the OS X front, which they covered up by calling it a bug fix and fine tuning update, and selling it for less.
In reality, my feeling is that this was not at all supposed to be a "stop new features and fine tune" but came to be that way as a result of iPhone's gestational nutritional needs.
Would you mind trying to recreate the issue to confirm that a clean install does not cause this bug? If not, your comment was useless.
I'll admit I've experienced issues with it in the past as well but when I did need it in a large scale once (fresh install on our Macbook) it worked perfectly, and on smaller scales (accidentally deleted files, etc) it's worked as well.
I've found it more stable/reliable since the final updates of Leopard, and rock solid since SL. I did have to start over once when something happened that was irrecoverable (within the first few months of having TM when bugs were plenty), but a new backup built automatically within hours restoring me to a safe status. Since then I've had no issues and my offsite backups add another level of comfort for me.
This problem pales in comparison to the FireWire I/O issue that is plaguing many users with external hard drives, corrupting data and preventing copying of large amounts of files.
Apple has yet to acknowledge it nor has MacRumors drawn attention to it on its news page event after 6 pages of user complaints.
http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=2136580
Apple has yet to acknowledge it nor has MacRumors drawn attention to it on its news page event after 6 pages of user complaints.
http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=2136580