HUGE "bug" in OS X? Hmmmmm...

It crashed for me too. I put a flashlight on the center of the keyboard, waited 6 minutes, and pressed enter. The screen saver immediately quit as if I had entered a correct password, although I suspect it crashed, and I was able to gain full access to the desktop like the article said.

I hope apple fixes this asap :-\
 
winword10 (interesting name btw :p ) you can confirm the crash by going here: ~/Library/Logs/CrashReporter. If there is a ScreenSaverEngine crash log then the screen saver did indeed crash.
 
WOW! TOO many people report that this "BUG" exists... I hope that Apple will find out the problem and fix it ASAP... :(
 
Can't seem to reproduce it in "Panther" so far.

My Mac OS X Server 10.2.6 box Screen Saver didn't crash and dump me to the desktop, but I've been looking at the spinning color wheel for about 5 minutes...

[edit] OK, after 5 minutes the screen went black. I moved the mouse and was prompted with a login window, although it appears that the screen saver engine went belly-up as "Cosmos" is no more. Just a black screen.
And, indeed, there was a ScreenSaverEngine.crash.log generated 7/8/03.

Results of my testing thus far:
Panther just says " :rolleyes: "
OS X 10.2.6 Server ScreenSaverEngine crashes, but does not dump you into the Desktop.
 
Let's see...

Assuming I could crack into the computer through SSH as the logged-in user, I could easily kill the screensaver process and thereby gain access to the local machine.

Hey, a bug!
 
I think this raises an interesting point. You may call it a bug, I call it a reminder to not trust your screen saver app for security. Try logging out when you leave your system rather then using the screen saver for security purposes.

I realize the convenience behind using the screen save, but with convenience comes lack of security in this case.
 
In XP, you can use local security policies to force the system to logout after a period of idleness. Is there a way to do that on OS X too?
 
... and the console says:
Jul 8 22:16:12 Carlos-Le-Mares-Computer crashdump: Crash report written to: /Users/clemare/Library/Logs/CrashReporter/ScreenSaverEngine.crash.log

2003-07-08 22:16:12.892 ScreenSaverEngine[1367] Exception raised during posting of notification. Ignored. exception: *** -[NSCFArray objectAtIndex:]: index (0) beyond bounds (0)


and the file mentioned contain:

**********

Date/Time: 2003-07-08 22:16:12 -0400
OS Version: 10.2.6 (Build 6L60)
Host: pc-200-74-1-63.apoquindo2.pc.metropolis-inter.com

Command: ScreenSaverEngine
PID: 1364

Exception: EXC_BAD_ACCESS (0x0001)
Codes: KERN_PROTECTION_FAILURE (0x0002) at 0x01294000

Thread 0 Crashed:
#0 0x900743b8 in memmove
#1 0x92be129c in checkpw_internal
#2 0x92cf4414 in checkpw
#3 0x000066cc in 0x66cc
#4 0x930c7e44 in forwardMethod
#5 0x930c7e44 in forwardMethod
#6 0x930c1694 in -[NSWindow sendEvent:]
#7 0x930a8e20 in -[NSApplication sendEvent:]
#8 0x000074d8 in 0x74d8
#9 0x930b1dac in -[NSApplication run]
#10 0x00004678 in 0x4678
#11 0x00004328 in 0x4328
#12 0x000041a8 in 0x41a8

Thread 1:
#0 0x90014d08 in syscall_thread_switch
#1 0x97e03ef4 in +[NSThread sleepUntilDate:]
#2 0x93081cac in -[NSUIHeartBeat _heartBeatThread:]
#3 0x97e2cc50 in forkThreadForFunction
#4 0x90020d28 in _pthread_body

PPC Thread State:
srr0: 0x900743b8 srr1: 0x0000f030 vrsave: 0x00000000
xer: 0x00000000 lr: 0x92be129c ctr: 0x000000ed mq: 0x00000000
r0: 0xe280a2e2 r1: 0xbffff110 r2: 0x80a2e280 r3: 0x01284b8e
r4: 0x0133b482 r5: 0x00011207 r6: 0xe280a2e2 r7: 0x80a2e280
r8: 0xa2e280a2 r9: 0xe280a2e2 r10: 0x80a2e280 r11: 0xa2e280a2
r12: 0x01293ff0 r13: 0x00000000 r14: 0x00000000 r15: 0x00000000
r16: 0x00000000 r17: 0x00000000 r18: 0x00000000 r19: 0x00000000
r20: 0x00000000 r21: 0x00000000 r22: 0x0117f410 r23: 0x00000000
r24: 0x00000000 r25: 0x011aaf70 r26: 0xfffffffd r27: 0x0132c000
r28: 0x00000001 r29: 0x0001121f r30: 0x01284a80 r31: 0x92be1134

clemare
 
Originally posted by clemare

#3 0x000066cc in 0x66cc
#4 0x930c7e44 in forwardMethod
Click to expand...

That's the problem right there! I always hated sector 0x000066cc anyway. It's damn unstable and probably rattled up the forwardMethod a bit. They can fix that in a jiffy.
 
WinWord10,
That's a new feature in Mac OS 10.3 (aka Panther). It's been absent for a long time. Thank God they included it.
 
In fact, this problem looks like it's not restricted to screensaver - any Cocoa app with a text input can be made to crash. Go into Mail.app, add a new account, and type maybe a hundred characters into the password field. Then copy them all and paste them about fourty times. Hit return and boom!

Anyone who says the screensaver crasher is not really a big problem, since you shouldn't trust your screensaver for security, yadda yadda, is out to lunch. If Macs are to make it into any serious lab/business setting, you need to be able to lock the workstation when you're just going to be away for a few minutes, without saving and quitting every program.

That being said, you're probably right that the locking functionality and the screensaver functionality should be separate - any security sensitive code should be as isolated as possible from other programs, to avoid unforseen interactions (bugs in fancy OpenGL eyecandy should never get near account-protecting security measures). That's Apple's fault though, not the user's, since the only locking function Apple offers is the screensaver.
 
hopefully that fix that is rumored to come out in the coming days will not only fix the screensaver, but the problem system wide.
 
Originally posted by wtmcgee
hopefully that fix that is rumored to come out in the coming days will not only fix the screensaver, but the problem system wide.
Click to expand...

Actually, the Security Update is out already :cool:
 
Well, my iMac still has the base version of 10.2 on it; should I try this, and see if it's a .6 thing?

I also heard that you could get around the screen saver and access the Dock, but I don't know...
 
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