Media puts Snow Leopard flaw in spotlight
As with everything Apple does, the tech media has made much of a data munching flaw found in the recently released Snow Leopard OS, forcing the company to release a progress report.
The first reports began to appear in user forums in September, with users noting problems after upgrading to Snow Leopard, the much-heralded new release of OS X. The problem, which manifests itself after a guest account is opened and closed, results in the disappearance of the primary user’s home folder and its replacement with an empty folder. The bug seems to afflict only Macs that have been updated to Snow Leopard from the previous operating system, Leopard, and not new Macs systems that were originally shipped with Snow Leopard.
Apple rarely comments on situations such as this one, but a combination of media scrutiny and the serious nature of the problem have led the Cupertino company to issue a press release, which says in part, “We are aware of the issue, which occurs only in extremely rare cases, and we are working on a fix,” according to a Wired story. There are rumors that there is already a fix built into 10.6.2, which is already in beta.
It is said that the problem has afflicted a very small number of users, perhaps only about 100, although Apple (of course) will not confirm the number of cases that have been seen in the wild. Still, the bug does replace the primary user’s home folder with an empty one, which could cause significant problems for most users, since almost all users save a large number of files there. Also, since the problem apparently only occurs when the guest account is used, it may be wise to disable that account unless you really need it. Obviously, it would also be smart to have a backup available in case the problem strikes you, at least a backup of the home folder.
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October 14th, 2009
My problem is with my Airport Express and a Canon irc2880 printer – since upgrading to Snow Leopard I can’t access the airport and the printer tells me it needs new software – which Canon don’t have! Wish I’d stuck to trusty old Leopard!!!