Another (serious) Finder bug..

[Hobofuzz]

Today for some odd reason the finder decided to quit working.

This wasn't the normal crash or freeze that the Finder experiences, this one was much, much more serious.

It all started when I tried to archive a file. The system told me it could not create a content list.

I tried this on a few other files, same error.

Then I push the back button and..

HOLY CRAP.

WHERE DID MY FILES GO?!?!?!

I check elsewhere on the drive and EVERYTHING is gone. Everything except for the currently running applications and the files they had locked.

I was pretty sure the finder was just having a big malfunction, so I tried running one of the apps in the dock that weren't shown in the finder anymore. It worked.

I relaunched the finder, same issue.

Path finder had no trouble seeing all the files, so I know it wasn't a kernel bug.

Upon further investigation I found that the Finder had incorrectly counted how much space I had left on my external drive. It's 250 total, and last I checked only 170 was left. However, the finder now reported that only 20 gigs was left, and my internal hard drive had lost 2 gigs.

Then it just got worse from there.

All my sidebar shortcuts were progressively disappearing as if their references had been removed from the system.
I opened a terminal and ran top so see if maybe some rogue process was going insane, but there was nothing. A quick reboot fixed all but the sidebar shortcuts. So, just out of the blue the finder decided to scare the **** out of me. How nice.

Thank you Apple.

edit:
Forgot to add: The finder is now using an ungodly 400 megs of RAM since the reboot.

 

[yellow]

Well, what you describe isn't normal, so... I'm not sure I'd completely call it a "Finder bug" just yet.
Is it reproducable?
Are you using haxies?

 

[Killyp]

Very weird, try a second restart...

 

[Hobofuzz]

I think it all started when I tried to transfer some big files from my windows machine over the network. Those files were corrupt when they were written to my disk, but it wasn't a disk error or anything because I downloaded things before the Finder went insane.

The reason I think it's a finder bug is because neither Path Finder nor the terminal had any problem with I/O from the Kernel.

I might also add that all my HFS disks were suddenly reported as being "Unknown Type (hfs)"

 

[yellow]

You MUST be using some haxies... Are you? And by that I mean UI "Enhancements".

 

[Hobofuzz]

Have shapeshifter installed but not using it.

 

[yellow]

But it still exists at a level between the "OS" and the UI, whether it's being used or not. That would be the first ting to go, IMO, in finding this "bug".

 

[Hobofuzz]

yeah, but this wasn't exactly a UI error, it was an I/O error.

The finder seemed to have lost the connection with the filesystem I/O.

Path Finder worked just fine.
The terminal worked just fine.
Spotlight worked just fine.

If it had anything to do with the system itself, none of those would have worked, because it would be a kernel issue.

 

[backsidetailsli]

wow thats horribly frightening. i had lost files before but no to that extent. i know how you feel..

my missing files were my noobness

 

[Hobofuzz]

oh, I didn't lose any files, they're all there, the finder just was too lazy to look for them..


More strangeness now, I think something seriously messed up the I/O module... Preview doesn't update nor do finder windows

 

[yellow]

yeah, but this wasn't exactly a UI error, it was an I/O error.

The finder seemed to have lost the connection with the filesystem I/O.

Path Finder worked just fine.
The terminal worked just fine.
Spotlight worked just fine.

If it had anything to do with the system itself, none of those would have worked, because it would be a kernel issue.

Except that you appear to have proved that it ISN'T an I/O error since alternate viewings appear to work just fine, which is what leads me to believe that it's a UI problem. If it was an I/O problem, I'd think you'd have problems with Pathfinder and Terminal when trying to list the contents of the directory. Also, error message pop-ups aren't always accurate.

Ultimately in troubleshooting issues, one of the FIRST things to start with is to remove haxies and UI enhancements that screw with UI elements like the Finder or WindowServer, which Shapeshifter most definitely is. Since these items insert their control at a low level layer in a non-open source system, what they are really doing is hacking at the Finder.. which can cause problems.

Since what you describe is extremely uncommon (I've never seen it in all my years of supporting OS X, and I've never read about it either, certainly I'm not the be-all-and-end-all of OS X support, but I get around ), I find it very hard to believe it's an actual bug. Therefore.. hacks must go.