7 ms·

Repair file sharing after Security Update 2017-001 for macOS High Sierra 10.13.1

107 points by kylesethgray 9y ago

excalibur 9y ago
Quick show of hands, who here is surprised that this patch broke something?
- acoye 9y ago
  I am not, Yet given the public disclosure and the criticality of the issue, they took the most pragmatic approach.
- mikeash 9y ago
  I’m a bit surprised that this is all it broke, given how quickly the patch was released.
pwinnski 9y ago
This is why it should take more than 24 hours to put out a patch for an operating system.
- gpm 9y ago
  When the choice is between "allow public, easy, possibly remote, root access" or "maybe deal with a bit of inconvenience fixing the fix" I'll take the second one.
nkkollaw 9y ago
What a mess.
yuhong 9y ago
I remember the emergency Java patch after Flashback. I think it also had an issue.
cmlndz 9y ago
I think this shows the poor state of Apple’s QA. Theorically there should be a list of predefined tests with a binary output, to pass the test or not. Before deploying anything, tests must be run and passed. It seems the procedure is very human-dependant.
eccstartup 9y ago
"If you experience issues with authenticating or connecting to file shares on your Mac after you install Security Update 2017-001 for macOS High Sierra 10.13.1" --Will I experience that? How can I tell before experiencing that?
bichiliad 9y ago
I seriously can't imagine how much pressure engineers at Apple were to ship this patch. Considering they tend to ship infrequently, I doubt they have the sort of QA turn-around that'd support emergency releases. Remember that: - They learned about this yesterday - They had as much heads up as the general public did - They are a large company. I don't disagree that the apparent QA quality from Apple software isn't what it used to be, but we all have to take these sorts of things with a grain of salt. I've certainly been in situations like this before.
- roblabla 9y ago
  The fact they learned this only yesterday is amazingly stupid to start with. People were talking about this weeks ago on the Apple Forums, as a "neat trick" : https://twitter.com/fristle/status/935670476214378496 https://twitter.com/fristle/status/935670476214378496. Surely a moderator should have noticed something was wrong at that point. This is a major fuckup the kind of which should be illegal.
  - tzs 9y ago
    > People were talking about this weeks ago on the Apple Forums, as a "neat trick" Aren't Apple forums mostly meant as self-help forums, with minimal monitoring by Apple? It looks like one person posted it two weeks ago, not as a bug or security problem but as a solution to the problem that the original poster had, not realizing it was a bug. People didn't seem to notice it and start talking about it there until yesterday. I would guess that any developers at Apple that check the developer forums just look at the first post to see what problems people are reporting, and a few of the replies to see if others are seeing the problem and see what workarounds people have found. In this particular thread that first post was in June, and by early July someone had posted a fix. Some people had trouble with that and someone posted a more detailed fix in the middle of October. I doubt any developers would be still following that thread on November 13th, when the root bug was posted. As far as moderators go, I'd expect that they just skim the posts to make sure they don't violate any major rules.
    - 9y ago
nixpulvis 9y ago
I guess now we get to see where all the holes in apples fucking automated tests are... meanwhile I'm happily running Arch ;)
mberning 9y ago
From a quality standpoint Apple is a shadow of its former self. For me a large number of the more recent features in macOS and iOS don’t work reliably. Things like handoff, text message forwarding, enabling tethering from the Mac, etc. are 50/50. These kind of things used to be Apples bread and butter. Taking ideas like these and making them “just work”. And now the security regression are creeping in. I would love to see them get back to very simple product lines and a more minimalist approach to software features.
- masterleep 9y ago
  Handoff is definitely a weird one. I don't think I've ever gotten it to do anything useful. Its functionality is seemingly limited to popping up a random icon to the left of the dock from time to time to distract me.
LCDninja 9y ago
Seriously! I can’t even install 10.13.1 on my Mac Pro 2013 - computer acts like its bricked until rebooted a number of times (and when it finally boots we’re back at 10.13). This also means I can’t install the latest security update that fixes the root problem (and yes, i’ve changed the root password to mitigate). OSX is becoming more like Windows every day.
- jason_slack 9y ago
  Me too!!. I was almost ready to wipe and reload.
GirlsCanCode 9y ago
What a mess! I'm glad I run Windows10. There's only so far you can try to put a pretty face on a 1969-era Operating System (Unix).
k_sze 9y ago
The article says “if file sharing doesn’t work”, but is it ok to just run this command line fix anyway? I’m not sure if file sharing is broken for me. I don’t use it right now. But I’m afraid I might run into this bug in the future when I eventually use file sharing, and then I will have forgotten about this fix, and end up spending hours scratching my head and head-desking.
- rbinv 9y ago
  My thoughts exactly. I executed it just in case.
- evansj 9y ago
  According to configureLocalKDC(1): "The script is non-destructive and can be run multiple times."

107 points by kylesethgray 9y ago

excalibur 9y ago

Quick show of hands, who here is surprised that this patch broke something?

acoye 9y ago
I am not, Yet given the public disclosure and the criticality of the issue, they took the most pragmatic approach.
mikeash 9y ago
I’m a bit surprised that this is all it broke, given how quickly the patch was released.

pwinnski 9y ago

This is why it should take more than 24 hours to put out a patch for an operating system.

gpm 9y ago
When the choice is between "allow public, easy, possibly remote, root access" or "maybe deal with a bit of inconvenience fixing the fix" I'll take the second one.

nkkollaw 9y ago

What a mess.

yuhong 9y ago

I remember the emergency Java patch after Flashback. I think it also had an issue.

cmlndz 9y ago

I think this shows the poor state of Apple’s QA. Theorically there should be a list of predefined tests with a binary output, to pass the test or not. Before deploying anything, tests must be run and passed. It seems the procedure is very human-dependant.

eccstartup 9y ago

"If you experience issues with authenticating or connecting to file shares on your Mac after you install Security Update 2017-001 for macOS High Sierra 10.13.1" --Will I experience that? How can I tell before experiencing that?

bichiliad 9y ago

I seriously can't imagine how much pressure engineers at Apple were to ship this patch. Considering they tend to ship infrequently, I doubt they have the sort of QA turn-around that'd support emergency releases. Remember that: - They learned about this yesterday - They had as much heads up as the general public did - They are a large company. I don't disagree that the apparent QA quality from Apple software isn't what it used to be, but we all have to take these sorts of things with a grain of salt. I've certainly been in situations like this before.

roblabla 9y ago
The fact they learned this only yesterday is amazingly stupid to start with. People were talking about this weeks ago on the Apple Forums, as a "neat trick" : https://twitter.com/fristle/status/935670476214378496 https://twitter.com/fristle/status/935670476214378496. Surely a moderator should have noticed something was wrong at that point. This is a major fuckup the kind of which should be illegal.
- tzs 9y ago
  > People were talking about this weeks ago on the Apple Forums, as a "neat trick" Aren't Apple forums mostly meant as self-help forums, with minimal monitoring by Apple? It looks like one person posted it two weeks ago, not as a bug or security problem but as a solution to the problem that the original poster had, not realizing it was a bug. People didn't seem to notice it and start talking about it there until yesterday. I would guess that any developers at Apple that check the developer forums just look at the first post to see what problems people are reporting, and a few of the replies to see if others are seeing the problem and see what workarounds people have found. In this particular thread that first post was in June, and by early July someone had posted a fix. Some people had trouble with that and someone posted a more detailed fix in the middle of October. I doubt any developers would be still following that thread on November 13th, when the root bug was posted. As far as moderators go, I'd expect that they just skim the posts to make sure they don't violate any major rules.
  - 9y ago

nixpulvis 9y ago

I guess now we get to see where all the holes in apples fucking automated tests are... meanwhile I'm happily running Arch ;)

mberning 9y ago

From a quality standpoint Apple is a shadow of its former self. For me a large number of the more recent features in macOS and iOS don’t work reliably. Things like handoff, text message forwarding, enabling tethering from the Mac, etc. are 50/50. These kind of things used to be Apples bread and butter. Taking ideas like these and making them “just work”. And now the security regression are creeping in. I would love to see them get back to very simple product lines and a more minimalist approach to software features.

masterleep 9y ago
Handoff is definitely a weird one. I don't think I've ever gotten it to do anything useful. Its functionality is seemingly limited to popping up a random icon to the left of the dock from time to time to distract me.

LCDninja 9y ago

Seriously! I can’t even install 10.13.1 on my Mac Pro 2013 - computer acts like its bricked until rebooted a number of times (and when it finally boots we’re back at 10.13). This also means I can’t install the latest security update that fixes the root problem (and yes, i’ve changed the root password to mitigate). OSX is becoming more like Windows every day.

jason_slack 9y ago
Me too!!. I was almost ready to wipe and reload.

GirlsCanCode 9y ago

What a mess! I'm glad I run Windows10. There's only so far you can try to put a pretty face on a 1969-era Operating System (Unix).

k_sze 9y ago

The article says “if file sharing doesn’t work”, but is it ok to just run this command line fix anyway? I’m not sure if file sharing is broken for me. I don’t use it right now. But I’m afraid I might run into this bug in the future when I eventually use file sharing, and then I will have forgotten about this fix, and end up spending hours scratching my head and head-desking.

rbinv 9y ago
My thoughts exactly. I executed it just in case.
evansj 9y ago
According to configureLocalKDC(1): "The script is non-destructive and can be run multiple times."