[geeks] Weird MacOS issue

[Shannon Hendrix]

On Dec 23, 2008, at 15:41 , Mark Benson wrote:

> I'm so glad you have such boundless appreciation and trust for Apple  
> products, but I don't. OS X has broken on all 3 machines I've run it  
> on at least once, and never through any fault of my own (and yes, at  
> least one was due to an update). Moreover OS X 10.5.x has been a  
> whole wold of pain with bugs and glitches that I never had on  
> previous versions. I'm losing faith in them very fast here. I still  
> love OS X but I've been very badly hurt by NVIDIA drivers that still  
> crash occasionally, a colour profile manager that seems to be  
> permanently screwed and a Mail.app that just hates me a lot of the  
> time.

Ditto.

I see Apple quality has falling off in the last 2-3 years, hardware  
and software.

Leopard was released long before it was ready, and it still isn't right.

The Mac Pro has been one of the most problematic computers I have ever  
owned, even compared to my $350 Dell T105.  In fact, I'm on my second  
one: Apple had to replace the first one which died prematurely.  Of  
course, some of the problems are Leopard and nVidia drivers.

Apple nVidia drivers are outdated and buggy.

Apple's sleep code is buggy, especially on the Mac Pro.

Apple shipped a ton of nVidia 8800GT graphics cards that were broken.   
The jury is still out on my own and Apple tech support has so far been  
useless in trying to determine it.

Apple's USB code still has kernel panic inducing bugs, though most of  
that is finally gone.

There is something wrong with Intel virtualization, because running  
anything like Fusion notably increases the chances of a kernel panic.   
Maybe that's Intel's fault?

Recent releases of Leopard seem to suffer increasingly from tlbflush()  
issues where CPUs do not respond to interrupts.  Instead of handling  
the problem, MacOS kernel panics.  It seems to be related at least  
somewhat to virtualization since it happens far more frequently if you  
are running something like Fusion or Parallels.  This started  
happening after the Leopard release where Apple said they had improved  
multi-core speed.

It's frustrating and I worry about it a lot.  I hope Apple's recent  
focus on Leopard will flush this stuff out, and I hope their hardware  
QC improves as well.

> So when Rick refers to the File Allocation Table as a FAT he gets  
> away with it, and when I do it you assume I'm referring to FATx  
> filesystems used in Windows.
>
> What I meant was I would go along with the suggestion file table/ 
> tree/hierarchy (whatever it's referred to as in HFS+) being damaged.  
> I was only suggesting an
> alternative (and frankly nigh-on-bullet-proof) way of addressing it.

Well, I think the issue here is this:

I reported that Drive Genius had destroyed my filesystem and deleted a  
bunch of files.

That's basically what you are saying above this time around by calling  
the filesystem structure a "FAT" (*).

However, you also said you could fix it by moving the drive to Windows  
and zapping the MBR.

The "MBR" has nothing to do with FS corruption, and you can fix either  
easily from inside Drive Utility.

"FAT", regardless of what Rick says, is not the proper term for a UNIX  
filesystem structure.  Shame on an otherwise smart dude for abusing  
the namespace!

That's why we were confused.

Your two cents were appreciated, I just didn't get it at first.

So yes: Drive Genius did destroy the filesystem (FAT), which really  
sucks since it is a tool to repair and maintain the filesystem... :)

It was free, so I guess I'm not out anything if I stop using it.  I'm  
pretty paranoid about ever running it again.

At least my backups are now redundant enough that restoration is  
pretty trivial, if also time consuming.

-- 
"Where some they sell their dreams for small desires."