9 ms·

" in OS X

469 points by 67726e 14y ago

lucb1e 14y ago
Sounds like an easter egg gone horribly wrong
andymcsherry 14y ago
Crashes search in iTunes
- lostlogin 14y ago
  Weird - doesn't for me, just asked me if I wanted to search App Store. But kills finder, makes chrome do odd stuff etc.
radioxid 14y ago
System-wide means it's Spell-Checker's fault. I have a MBA '11 11 with 10.8.2 and Safari won't crash. I have disabled Spell-Checker from the start (annoying it).
0x0 14y ago
I wish they'd just fix the bug where typing "~" crashes Terminal.app (depending on your keyboard language) :(
- pivo 14y ago
  Have you tried iTerm?
  - 0x0 14y ago
    Maybe I should, but 10.8's Terminal.app seemed to have everything I need (well, except for the crash reporter ruining my work every time I forget and type ~)
    - artursapek 14y ago
      I switched to iTerm a long time ago and never looked back. I recommend it.
      - pidg 14y ago
        iTerm 2 is brilliant, I can't imagine using the default Terminal for anything, ever.
        veemjeem 14y ago
        I've found iTerm2 to be extremely slow on large buffers compared to Terminal.
        rsl7 14y ago
        Enlighten us. I have read the feature list over the years and don't see anything that really stands out enough.
        eropple 14y ago
        Panes and saved pane layouts are handy; I generally want to move all my terminals in a group and they're great for that. It also has great tmux support built into the client.
        mitchty 14y ago
        The only one that keeps me using it is mouse support. Terminal.app doesn't actually send any mouse events.
        colomon 14y ago
        You know, it's funny. I said the exact same thing you did, then a friend convinced me to try iTerm2 about a year ago. I still couldn't put my finger on what's better about it, exactly, but I've never considered going back after the first day. It just feels right. It's probably easier to try than it is to find out why to try it...
  - niggler 14y ago
    You mean iTerm or iTerm2 http://www.iterm2.com http://www.iterm2.com ?
    - grimgrin 14y ago
      He without a doubt means iTerm2.
      - justinhj 14y ago
        Looks like it is on github now... https://github.com/gnachman/iTerm2 https://github.com/gnachman/iTerm2
- derleth 14y ago
  > I wish they'd just fix the bug where typing "~" crashes Terminal.app (depending on your keyboard language) :( How did this bug survive the testing process? Wait. I think I just answered my own question.
  - 0x0 14y ago
    It's quite terrible. I even reported it on bugreport.apple.com on 10.8.0, but neither 10.8.1 nor 10.8.2 fixed it. I can't believe there's no-one at Apple using i18n keyboard layouts and Terminal.app. It's not like typing "~" is an uncommon event on the command line.... Meanwhile, VLC fixed the same bug (typing ~ in the VLC.app UI textfields) in about 30 minutes.
    - ricardobeat 14y ago
      Doesn't apply to US-International keyboards, I use "~" all the time.
      - 0x0 14y ago
        Did you try some other i18n keyboard layouts, like Norwegian or Swedish?
        Zirro 14y ago
        Mine is Swedish, and I am unable to reproduce it.
        0x0 14y ago
        It crashes with Swedish layout on 10.8.2 when I type Ctrl + ¨ on my computer. (Alt+~+space seems to work, though)
        Flow 14y ago
        Doesn't crash my Terminal.app. I use a swedish keyboard. Perhaps you could create a new clean account on your computer and try it there? You can always delete the account afterwards.
- AngryParsley 14y ago
  Can you give us the steps to reproduce? I googled around but couldn't find the bug. I also tried a few different languages and I can't get Terminal.app to crash.
  - 0x0 14y ago
    Set keyboard to Norwegian. Type Ctrl+"¨" (they key that is the dead-key for ñ, if you were to type Alt+"¨"+n) Crash. Edit: Here's the same bug in VLC: https://trac.videolan.org/vlc/ticket/7268 https://trac.videolan.org/vlc/ticket/7268
mmastrac 14y ago
This also happens in the address bar of Chrome. Great fun.
- 0x0 14y ago
  Wow, and it takes down the entire browser, too, and not just the tab!
- akadien 14y ago
  No crash for me. Google must have patched it.
  - akadien 14y ago
    Geesh, tough crowd. No sense of humor. (Chrome version 24.0.1312.57 really doesn't crash for me on Mac OS X Mountain Lion. Safari and TextEdit do, though.)
- niggler 14y ago
  What version of chrome? Does not happen with 24.0.1312.56 or 24.0.1312.57
  - 0x0 14y ago
    Happens with 24.0.1312.57 on osx 10.8.2.
    - niggler 14y ago
      Oh that may be a mountain lion issue. I tried with Snow Leopard 10.6.8 and Lion 10.7.5
      - deleted 14y ago
        [deleted]
    - TillE 14y ago
      I'm also running the latest version of Chrome on Mountain Lion on a current Macbook Air, and I can't reproduce this. Entering file:/// just shows me "Index of /" as expected. Tried it in Safari and Firefox too, no issues.
watmough 14y ago
Worst Easter Egg ever.
akadien 14y ago
Cool!
MBCook 14y ago
What an interesting bug. Just tried in Mobile Safari and Noted in iOS 6.1, no problems there.
- 0x0 14y ago
  The iOS Simulator's mobile safari seemed to survive OK on OS X too.
deleted 14y ago
[deleted]
- deleted 14y ago
  [deleted]
Fizzadar 14y ago
Spotlight, Finder, Chrome & Activity Monitor all crash; Terminal, Firefox & Sparrow are fine...
steeve 14y ago
And here I thought this was a Chrome bug...
niggler 14y ago
I think the title needs to be amended to say 'OS X Mountain Lion' because the bug is not reproducible in Lion or Snow Leopard ...
- deleted 14y ago
  [deleted]
  - niggler 14y ago
    I try to avoid upgrading OSX. When a new version comes out, I wait for a hardware refresh and just get a new Mac (Apple has a nasty habit of disregarding backwards compatibility, and it's really nice to be able to do stuff like run older powerpc programs) EDIT: the [deleted] comment was 'I miss snow leopard'
    - krickle 14y ago
      I'm not "upgrading" to Lion ever. Their next software update will determine whether or not I buy a Mac again.
    - lloeki 14y ago
      > Apple has a nasty habit of disregarding backwards compatibility On the hardware front, every single major update runs better than the one before here (Mid '09 MBP 13", originally under Leopard). Only issues were the battery on Lion an Mountain Lion on both .0 and .1 minors, which was a bug that affected everyone.
      - niggler 14y ago
        Backwards compatibility refers to newer software/hardware not supporting older software/hardware. For example, Apple axed the rosetta powerpc support (which allowed you to run older software after apple switched to intel CPUs) in Leopard. I still keep a PowerBook G4 just for MacDraw.
        lloeki 14y ago
NelsonMinar 14y ago
Hilariously, this bug seems to also crash the Mac error reporter, maybe because it has the evil string in it. I did manage to copy and paste a crash dump before the crash reporter crashed: http://pastebin.com/UkhERvaA http://pastebin.com/UkhERvaA The underlying reported error is * Terminating app due to uncaught exception 'NSInternalInconsistencyException', reason: 'condition "wrong extraction: File:///"' Interesting that it's an asynchronous crash. What part of MacOS is paying such close attention to typed URLs?
- 0x0 14y ago
  From the openradar bug, it is obvious that the bug is inside the "Data Detectors" thing. Looks like it triggers on anything starting with file:// (+/) case-insensitive, but then something later in the data extraction makes the incorrect assumption that the string should start with file:// (+/) lowercase, and throws an assert. It's really quite bad that a bug inside the data detectors can bring down a whole app. Edit: some interesting links: http://support.apple.com/kb/PH4519 http://support.apple.com/kb/PH4519 ("This feature is called “data detectors.”") https://developer.apple.com/library/mac/#documentation/Foundation/Reference/NSDataDetector_Class/Reference/Reference.html https://developer.apple.com/library/mac/#documentation/Found...
  - X-Istence 14y ago
    The data detectors, at least in my TextEdit were turned off (never touched it before) so typing the aforementioned string doesn't cause any issues. However in my stupidity of attempting to tell you guys that I could type the aforementioned string, I caused Safari to hang. No crash, but it was complete and utterly useless.
    - X-Istence 14y ago
      Nevermind ... re-ran TextEdit and tried again, immediately crashes. data detectors are still turned off.
      - MBCook 14y ago
taf2 14y ago
so, uh anyone else sense a zero day exploit? <a href="File:///<insert code here>">click me</a>... not saying that will work, but usually if you can hard crash something you just found some corruption in memory maybe bad use of memcpy, sprintf instead of snprintf... something along those lines...
- czhiddy 14y ago
  Highly unlikely. If you look at the backtrace, it's dying on an assert, not some random memory dereference.
  - im3w1l 14y ago
    Seems to work in email though: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5154915 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5154915
  - KMag 14y ago
    A remote DoS isn't remote code execution, but it's still an exploit.
eyko 14y ago
Not for me http://cl.ly/image/2i0S3r2b3q0d http://cl.ly/image/2i0S3r2b3q0d
- delinka 14y ago
  OS X version? Bug report says 10.8.2. I don't see this problem on 10.7.5 as the addendum mentions no problem in Lion.
Vecrios 14y ago
I just did. I haven't seen a program crash this abruptly in a while, I'm happy.
JosephRedfern 14y ago
Tried to tweet about this - Twitter client for OSX crashed instantly. Strange that it's not been discovered before!
- JosephRedfern 14y ago
  Also crashes Alfred, Spotify, Calendar and Messages... It would probably be easier to make a list of un-affected apps.
zacharypinter 14y ago
Tried it out by sending an email to myself (from webmail) and opening the mail in Mail.app. Mail.app doesn't crash, but if you hit reply to the message and put the cursor on the "File:///" part, it does crash.
- zhoutong 14y ago
  Reproduced on Sparrow with success. Whenever you touch the line with File://(/) it will crash. In one instance the Sparrow crash caused the entire mail library to be corrupt and I have to download all my mails again.
- deleted 14y ago
  [deleted]
zbowling 14y ago
Everything crashing: - Skype (type and right mouse click) - Sparrow (type and wait) - Chrome (address bar) - Safari (address bar) - Tweetbot - Twitter.app - Mac App Store (search bar) - Base (any textbox) - terminal (in the preferences screen) Not crashing: - SublimeText Pretty much each and every text box on the entire system.
- mh- 14y ago
  Add Messages.app to that list, I discovered as I stupidly tried to explain how to repro it to someone..
  - jhenkens 14y ago
    The fun thing about having it in messages.app, is it is actually a bug on the RECEIVING end of messages.app. And I can't seem to delete the message before the app crashes again. I'm so happy I have nice friends.
    - mathrawka 14y ago
      Disable your spell checker and it will stop crashing. Then you can delete the message, and re-enable the spell checker.
      - pyre 14y ago
        Why would the spell checker be running against in-coming messages? So that you can be a grammar pedant and annoy your friends?
        bdash 14y ago
        My guess would be that data detectors are used to detect and format links in incoming messages.
        pyre 14y ago
peterkelly 14y ago
Can't reproduce it in Lion.
- deleted 14y ago
  [deleted]
suyash 14y ago
Did not crash on LION MAC OS X 10.7.5
MysticFear 14y ago
Quick everyone go to their respective Apple Stores around the world. We will then see how long it will be fixed then ...
ajaimk 14y ago
It crashes finder. WTH?
speeder 14y ago
I would appreciate if someone can explain to me why I am feeling a urge to visit the office tomorrow only to see stuff crashing on my OSX workstation.
- lostlogin 14y ago
  That feeling was me for 10+ years, mainly teenage ones. Not sure where it went, but I prefer working stuff these days.
gavinh 14y ago
LINUX
ajsharp 14y ago
This. IS. AWESOME.
michaeldoncillo 14y ago
w0w sana maging hacker dn ako balang araw.....
michaeldoncillo 14y ago
i want to bi a hacker
nK0de 14y ago
Crashes: XCode 4.5.2 TextEdit iTunes Preview I'm typing File:/// in every textbox I could find. This is some weird fun. Way to spend my Saturday morning.
mmastrac 14y ago
Fun exploit of this - you can use it to lock up Safari hard: http://grack.com/hangsafari.html http://grack.com/hangsafari.html (not a reduced testcase - it's more of a brute force) You can also trigger a mailto: link that crashes Mail: mailto:pete@bar.com?subject=File:///&body=File:///
- ubershmekel 14y ago
  Welp, sadly, Safari on Windows isn't affected.
antics 14y ago
The cause of this bug seems to be the OSX system spell checker; I've crashed a few applications to take a look at the dumps, and so far they common point of failure seems to be that they all have some call to something like `NSSpellChecker`. In the OP for example: 6 AppKit 0x00007fff921dbd1a checkDataDetectors + 536 7 AppKit 0x00007fff921d9429 NSSpellCheckerCheckString + 13334 8 AppKit 0x00007fff921d5f9f -[NSTextCheckingOperation main] + 152 7 AppKit 0x00007fff921d9429 NSSpellCheckerCheckString + 13334 This explanation makes sense to me because the spell checker is integrated very tightly into the user-facing text entry experience across the board in OSX. It is one of the few bits of code that could explain reliable failures across applications that we've been seeing.
- sgt 14y ago
  I've disabled the spell checker a long time ago, but it still happens. So NSSpellCheckCheckString is still being invoked even though the spell check is not running.
d0m 14y ago
It's a bug, it happens, let's move on.
gabrielgironda 14y ago
Figured you can crash Safari on page load with this. http://gironda.org/this_will_crash_safari.html http://gironda.org/this_will_crash_safari.html
jayferd 14y ago
File:///
jclem 14y ago
Does not crash: - 'File:///' typed slowly - 'File://a' typed slowly - 'File:// a' typed at any speed. Does crash: - 'File:///' typed quickly - 'File://X' (X being any non-whitespace character) quickly - 'File://X ' (any number of non-whitespace followed by any whitespace) at any speed
spiritplumber 14y ago
Fail:///
kc0bfv 14y ago
Several people have said that these apps are crashing at an assert. How did asserts make it into production code? Is it just a C thing to make them debug-only?
- lloeki 14y ago
  Sometimes (especially in dynamic-land) you assert stuff before doing some processing, so that stuff does not blow up halfway but upfront. "- but, it should never happen?!" "- so, make it not happen, ever"
  - kc0bfv 14y ago
    My understanding is that asserts are for debugging, and exceptions/more robust error handling are for production. Asserts make the code blow up, which can make a problem easier to spot in dev/testing. In production it seems better to throw an exception, even if the program can't handle it well and just has to quit nicely. I like your defensive programming strategy - see if the tires are flat before you get out on the highway.
- dspig 14y ago
  Maybe because of this: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/2035595/c-xcode-assert-evaluated-in-release http://stackoverflow.com/questions/2035595/c-xcode-assert-ev...
bsno 14y ago
Do not send this string in an iMessage, unless, of course, you're evil.
jensen2k 14y ago
I put ut a JSFiddle crashing Safari. This is fun. http://jsfiddle.net/EJzhH/3 http://jsfiddle.net/EJzhH/3
deleted 14y ago
[deleted]
deleted 14y ago
[deleted]
human_error 14y ago
I think it only affects 10.8. I have tried the suggested methods of this thread in Chrome, TextEdit, iTunes, terminal and Safari but nothing happened in 10.6.8.
kunai 14y ago
Hilarious. I pranked my friend with this, and now he's pissed. Oh well, it was certainly worth it. Interesting, though, what exactly causes this bug. It seems as if the built-in spellcheck seems to misinterpret the string "file:///" as some sort of alien construct, or perhaps false typed directories trigger some sort of lockdown. Either way, it's very puzzling how this sort of thing made it past the OS X developers, especially with Apple's level and standard of ultra-high quality control.
- omaranto 14y ago
  Doesn't Apple's quality control only apply to hardware? I hear people complain about bugs and just shear ugliness of their software pretty often.
  - kunai 14y ago
    Up until 10.6, actually, Apple used to produce very good, generally bug-free software. Starting with 10.7, they've begun to rush their software just because they have, say, 4 new "features". The yearly release cycle is partly to blame, but even then, iOS bugs are much more minor.
nukerhazz 14y ago
If you have Xcode you can reproduce the crash in a scratch Xcode project. Drop an NSSearchField into a window, run the app, enter you-know-what, and boom. (I used NSSearchField since that's what I found most easily crashes Finder, VoodooPad, and System Preferences. Maybe NSTextField works as well.) The assert that fails is this: assertion on /SourceCache/DataDetectorsCore/DataDetectorsCore-269.1/Sources/PushDown/DDResultExtraction.c:1576 "CFStringHasPrefix(urlVal, CFSTR("file://"))" failed :wrong extraction: File:// There's an extra slash at the end, but I left it out because it crashes Safari.
h4rrison 14y ago
It's definitely a spell check bug, I've got that feature turned off (always hated it) and none of this is doing anything for me.
- JeffKnol 14y ago
  How do you turn it off globally? Even removing the AppleSpell.service directory and quitting the accompanying process doesn't seem to work. Also, are you sure you're both affected and doing it right? It only affects 10.8.x and you have to capitalize the "F".
nukerhazz 14y ago
Binary patch, for entertainment purposes only, do not actually use: http://twitter.com/landonfuller/status/297592929923502080 http://twitter.com/landonfuller/status/297592929923502080
- danabramov 14y ago
  Landon is a really nice guy, by the way. He is the author of PLCrashReporter library and helped us out making it work with MonoTouch.
nu2ycombinator 14y ago
I never felt need to upgrade my snow leopard. This bug is not happening in Snow leopard. I am going to Apple store and try this on one of the display laptop. :)
lloeki 14y ago
The word is out so it's only a matter of minutes for people to come up with this Safari DOS in Javascript: https://gist.github.com/4696484 https://gist.github.com/4696484 (remember to change to File) Chrome survives, while Safari either crashes or behaves erratically up to being unusable. Firefox requires slight modifications to the event, but I'm bored.
scottbartell 14y ago
Anyone else wasting a lot of time typing "File:///" into every input in every program...? Just because they were told not to.
VPrime 14y ago
I sent an iMessage (from iPhone) saying File:/// to my iMac and it crashed iMessage on the other end.. and now messages app crashes every time I try to launch! Also Sent myself an email (from the iPhone) with File:/// as the subject (and in the body for good measure). The Mail.app won't crash on the incoming email, but it won't open that message.
- 46Bit 14y ago
  Send yourself 80 messages and it'll open again, then delete the conversation the File:/// is in.
cranklin 14y ago
in other words, this would wreak a lot of havoc: window.location = "File:///"
- djbender 14y ago
  "Not allowed to load local resource: file:///"
- X-Istence 14y ago
  None of the browsers will redirect from the web to local, nor will they allow you to load images and whatnot from local either, so doing it that way won't work either.
lovamova 14y ago
Another reason to use Snow Leopard, best operating system until now.
- TallboyOne 14y ago
  Yes because every day one types "File:///". This seems like hardly something that outweighs the massive performance improvements.
  - Jyaif 14y ago
    improvements ?!
    - petercooper 14y ago
      Yes, now you too can drain your battery in just half the time as before! ;-)
TallboyOne 14y ago
Can someone explain this error to me simply, like one might talk to a golden retriever?
- iSnow 14y ago
  Somewhere in the system is a friendly program called "DataDetectors", which sniffes at text so find out if there are links in it which should be highlighted by the application handling the text. Now the programmer who developed DataDetectors wanted to make sure (maybe for tests) that a subcomponent was fed only valid file-urls (that is: file:/// is OK, File:/// not) and therefore inserted an assert-statement. Assertions stop the program flow if their condition is not met (an exception is thrown) and normally a code block upstream should handle this case. I can only speculate, but either the assertion was left in the code despite being only intended for debugging/testing (ie. it was meant to be there only temporarily) or the upstream code has a bug that causes it not to catch the exception. Either way, it is not handled and therefore bubbles up the whole code chain until some monitor in OS X or Objective C terminates the program because it sees a program error. Someone at Apple forgot a test case feeding text with File:/// to DataDetectors.
  - TallboyOne 14y ago
    Thank you, iSnow! Makes perfect sense.
  - martinced 14y ago
    "Someone at Apple forgot a test case feeding text with File:/// to DataDetectors." There's obviously and blatantly a combinatorial explosion of possible inputs into a textbox so it's physically impossible ("physically" as in: "there aren't enough atoms in the universe to build a machine able to handle this) to test all the possible inputs. By your logic when the terrible endless loop in the Java floating-point parsing library (you could stuck any JVM by trying to parse: 2.2250738585072012e-308) was discovered, it's because: "Someone forgot to write a test case trying to parse 2.2250738585072012e-308" Yeah. Sure.
    - 14y ago
za1363 14y ago
841056245612564
sly010 14y ago
There was an x-ray machine called "Therac-25" which had a chance of killing you if the operator typed a specific (non-lethal) configuration too fast. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Therac-25 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Therac-25 That was a disaster. This is a bug.
- smtddr 14y ago
  This is why I never want to work in dev or qa for medical machines. If I were involve in this product's design, the guilt would destroy me.
stallmanuu 14y ago
irc.mactalk.com final solution! room cleared
emehrkay 14y ago
Seems to crash just about everything except Textmate 1&2 which is strange because they both use the built-in spellchecker
deleted 14y ago
[deleted]
quasque 14y ago
This is a bit nostalgic. Back in the day, Opera used to crash if you typed http:/// http:/// into the address bar. (Edit: talking about bugs, HN formatting won't let me put http:/// http:/// in double quotes - it eats the closing quote.)
maximem 14y ago
Now when I try to acces F ...acebook it crashes... calling File://[.]
bla2 14y ago
This is the original discovery, before shess copied it into openradar: http://crbug.com/173405#c17 http://crbug.com/173405#c17
- smackfu 14y ago
  Original bug report was interesting, just typing "F" in the address bar and getting a reproducible crash that no one else could repro.
  - bla2 14y ago
    "F" probably autocompleted to "File:///" on that person's profile.
agracey 14y ago
It just crashed an App that I was working on and then crashed XCode itself.
philfreo 14y ago
iMessage your friends with this string and their Messages app will start crashing. Fun!
zero_z3r0 14y ago
For the impatient among us... A shell script that patches the offending binary and bypasses the issue: http://pastebin.com/pqyePXqa http://pastebin.com/pqyePXqa Copy script contents to a file, then execute (using sudo) This has been tested by others with positive results. It is however a community provided fix. Original file is backed up before patching.
TvFreak 14y ago
File:///
frostnovazzz 14y ago
Works fine in sublime text 2
josteink 14y ago
Also, do not send file:/// to anyone using iMessage on their computer.
elptacek 14y ago
ETA: Yeah... I can't make this stick. So it kinda-sorta works, but is not a real workaround. Guess I'm glad I kept testing it... I found a workaround: defaults write $DOMAIN DisableDataDetectors YES Credit goes to: http://www.macosxtips.co.uk/index_files/data-detectors-in-mail.php http://www.macosxtips.co.uk/index_files/data-detectors-in-ma... The following works for Adium: defaults write com.adiumX.adiumX DisableDataDetectors YES ETA: Doesn't seem to persist. Might be sleep/awake or some sort of refresh/timeout. Investigating...
- elptacek 14y ago
  Tested this a bit more. It seems to work on Adium "only some of the time." I am told it works for Colloquy. It does not work for the Google Chrome Browser, TextEdit or Mail.

469 points by 67726e 14y ago

lucb1e 14y ago

Sounds like an easter egg gone horribly wrong

andymcsherry 14y ago

Crashes search in iTunes

lostlogin 14y ago
Weird - doesn't for me, just asked me if I wanted to search App Store. But kills finder, makes chrome do odd stuff etc.

radioxid 14y ago

System-wide means it's Spell-Checker's fault. I have a MBA '11 11 with 10.8.2 and Safari won't crash. I have disabled Spell-Checker from the start (annoying it).

0x0 14y ago

I wish they'd just fix the bug where typing "~" crashes Terminal.app (depending on your keyboard language) :(

pivo 14y ago
Have you tried iTerm?
- 0x0 14y ago
  Maybe I should, but 10.8's Terminal.app seemed to have everything I need (well, except for the crash reporter ruining my work every time I forget and type ~)
  - artursapek 14y ago
    I switched to iTerm a long time ago and never looked back. I recommend it.
    - pidg 14y ago
      iTerm 2 is brilliant, I can't imagine using the default Terminal for anything, ever.
      - veemjeem 14y ago
        I've found iTerm2 to be extremely slow on large buffers compared to Terminal.
      - rsl7 14y ago
        Enlighten us. I have read the feature list over the years and don't see anything that really stands out enough.
        eropple 14y ago
        Panes and saved pane layouts are handy; I generally want to move all my terminals in a group and they're great for that. It also has great tmux support built into the client.
        mitchty 14y ago
        The only one that keeps me using it is mouse support. Terminal.app doesn't actually send any mouse events.
        colomon 14y ago
        You know, it's funny. I said the exact same thing you did, then a friend convinced me to try iTerm2 about a year ago. I still couldn't put my finger on what's better about it, exactly, but I've never considered going back after the first day. It just feels right. It's probably easier to try than it is to find out why to try it...
- niggler 14y ago
  You mean iTerm or iTerm2 http://www.iterm2.com http://www.iterm2.com ?
  - grimgrin 14y ago
    He without a doubt means iTerm2.
    - justinhj 14y ago
      Looks like it is on github now... https://github.com/gnachman/iTerm2 https://github.com/gnachman/iTerm2
derleth 14y ago
> I wish they'd just fix the bug where typing "~" crashes Terminal.app (depending on your keyboard language) :( How did this bug survive the testing process? Wait. I think I just answered my own question.
- 0x0 14y ago
  It's quite terrible. I even reported it on bugreport.apple.com on 10.8.0, but neither 10.8.1 nor 10.8.2 fixed it. I can't believe there's no-one at Apple using i18n keyboard layouts and Terminal.app. It's not like typing "~" is an uncommon event on the command line.... Meanwhile, VLC fixed the same bug (typing ~ in the VLC.app UI textfields) in about 30 minutes.
  - ricardobeat 14y ago
    Doesn't apply to US-International keyboards, I use "~" all the time.
    - 0x0 14y ago
      Did you try some other i18n keyboard layouts, like Norwegian or Swedish?
      - Zirro 14y ago
        Mine is Swedish, and I am unable to reproduce it.
        0x0 14y ago
        It crashes with Swedish layout on 10.8.2 when I type Ctrl + ¨ on my computer. (Alt+~+space seems to work, though)
        Flow 14y ago
        Doesn't crash my Terminal.app. I use a swedish keyboard. Perhaps you could create a new clean account on your computer and try it there? You can always delete the account afterwards.
AngryParsley 14y ago
Can you give us the steps to reproduce? I googled around but couldn't find the bug. I also tried a few different languages and I can't get Terminal.app to crash.
- 0x0 14y ago
  Set keyboard to Norwegian. Type Ctrl+"¨" (they key that is the dead-key for ñ, if you were to type Alt+"¨"+n) Crash. Edit: Here's the same bug in VLC: https://trac.videolan.org/vlc/ticket/7268 https://trac.videolan.org/vlc/ticket/7268

mmastrac 14y ago

This also happens in the address bar of Chrome. Great fun.

0x0 14y ago
Wow, and it takes down the entire browser, too, and not just the tab!
akadien 14y ago
No crash for me. Google must have patched it.
- akadien 14y ago
  Geesh, tough crowd. No sense of humor. (Chrome version 24.0.1312.57 really doesn't crash for me on Mac OS X Mountain Lion. Safari and TextEdit do, though.)
niggler 14y ago
What version of chrome? Does not happen with 24.0.1312.56 or 24.0.1312.57
- 0x0 14y ago
  Happens with 24.0.1312.57 on osx 10.8.2.
  - niggler 14y ago
    Oh that may be a mountain lion issue. I tried with Snow Leopard 10.6.8 and Lion 10.7.5
    - deleted 14y ago
      [deleted]
  - TillE 14y ago
    I'm also running the latest version of Chrome on Mountain Lion on a current Macbook Air, and I can't reproduce this. Entering file:/// just shows me "Index of /" as expected. Tried it in Safari and Firefox too, no issues.

watmough 14y ago

Worst Easter Egg ever.

akadien 14y ago

Cool!

MBCook 14y ago

What an interesting bug. Just tried in Mobile Safari and Noted in iOS 6.1, no problems there.

0x0 14y ago
The iOS Simulator's mobile safari seemed to survive OK on OS X too.

deleted 14y ago

[deleted]

deleted 14y ago
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Fizzadar 14y ago

Spotlight, Finder, Chrome & Activity Monitor all crash; Terminal, Firefox & Sparrow are fine...

steeve 14y ago

And here I thought this was a Chrome bug...

niggler 14y ago

I think the title needs to be amended to say 'OS X Mountain Lion' because the bug is not reproducible in Lion or Snow Leopard ...

deleted 14y ago
[deleted]
- niggler 14y ago
  I try to avoid upgrading OSX. When a new version comes out, I wait for a hardware refresh and just get a new Mac (Apple has a nasty habit of disregarding backwards compatibility, and it's really nice to be able to do stuff like run older powerpc programs) EDIT: the [deleted] comment was 'I miss snow leopard'
  - krickle 14y ago
    I'm not "upgrading" to Lion ever. Their next software update will determine whether or not I buy a Mac again.
  - lloeki 14y ago
    > Apple has a nasty habit of disregarding backwards compatibility On the hardware front, every single major update runs better than the one before here (Mid '09 MBP 13", originally under Leopard). Only issues were the battery on Lion an Mountain Lion on both .0 and .1 minors, which was a bug that affected everyone.
    - niggler 14y ago
      Backwards compatibility refers to newer software/hardware not supporting older software/hardware. For example, Apple axed the rosetta powerpc support (which allowed you to run older software after apple switched to intel CPUs) in Leopard. I still keep a PowerBook G4 just for MacDraw.
      - lloeki 14y ago

NelsonMinar 14y ago

Hilariously, this bug seems to also crash the Mac error reporter, maybe because it has the evil string in it. I did manage to copy and paste a crash dump before the crash reporter crashed: http://pastebin.com/UkhERvaA http://pastebin.com/UkhERvaA The underlying reported error is * Terminating app due to uncaught exception 'NSInternalInconsistencyException', reason: 'condition "wrong extraction: File:///"' Interesting that it's an asynchronous crash. What part of MacOS is paying such close attention to typed URLs?

0x0 14y ago
From the openradar bug, it is obvious that the bug is inside the "Data Detectors" thing. Looks like it triggers on anything starting with file:// (+/) case-insensitive, but then something later in the data extraction makes the incorrect assumption that the string should start with file:// (+/) lowercase, and throws an assert. It's really quite bad that a bug inside the data detectors can bring down a whole app. Edit: some interesting links: http://support.apple.com/kb/PH4519 http://support.apple.com/kb/PH4519 ("This feature is called “data detectors.”") https://developer.apple.com/library/mac/#documentation/Foundation/Reference/NSDataDetector_Class/Reference/Reference.html https://developer.apple.com/library/mac/#documentation/Found...
- X-Istence 14y ago
  The data detectors, at least in my TextEdit were turned off (never touched it before) so typing the aforementioned string doesn't cause any issues. However in my stupidity of attempting to tell you guys that I could type the aforementioned string, I caused Safari to hang. No crash, but it was complete and utterly useless.
  - X-Istence 14y ago
    Nevermind ... re-ran TextEdit and tried again, immediately crashes. data detectors are still turned off.
    - MBCook 14y ago

taf2 14y ago

so, uh anyone else sense a zero day exploit? <a href="File:///<insert code here>">click me</a>... not saying that will work, but usually if you can hard crash something you just found some corruption in memory maybe bad use of memcpy, sprintf instead of snprintf... something along those lines...

czhiddy 14y ago
Highly unlikely. If you look at the backtrace, it's dying on an assert, not some random memory dereference.
- im3w1l 14y ago
  Seems to work in email though: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5154915 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5154915
- KMag 14y ago
  A remote DoS isn't remote code execution, but it's still an exploit.

eyko 14y ago

Not for me http://cl.ly/image/2i0S3r2b3q0d http://cl.ly/image/2i0S3r2b3q0d

delinka 14y ago
OS X version? Bug report says 10.8.2. I don't see this problem on 10.7.5 as the addendum mentions no problem in Lion.

Vecrios 14y ago

I just did. I haven't seen a program crash this abruptly in a while, I'm happy.

JosephRedfern 14y ago

Tried to tweet about this - Twitter client for OSX crashed instantly. Strange that it's not been discovered before!

JosephRedfern 14y ago
Also crashes Alfred, Spotify, Calendar and Messages... It would probably be easier to make a list of un-affected apps.

zacharypinter 14y ago

Tried it out by sending an email to myself (from webmail) and opening the mail in Mail.app. Mail.app doesn't crash, but if you hit reply to the message and put the cursor on the "File:///" part, it does crash.

zhoutong 14y ago
Reproduced on Sparrow with success. Whenever you touch the line with File://(/) it will crash. In one instance the Sparrow crash caused the entire mail library to be corrupt and I have to download all my mails again.
deleted 14y ago
[deleted]

zbowling 14y ago

Everything crashing: - Skype (type and right mouse click) - Sparrow (type and wait) - Chrome (address bar) - Safari (address bar) - Tweetbot - Twitter.app - Mac App Store (search bar) - Base (any textbox) - terminal (in the preferences screen) Not crashing: - SublimeText Pretty much each and every text box on the entire system.

mh- 14y ago
Add Messages.app to that list, I discovered as I stupidly tried to explain how to repro it to someone..
- jhenkens 14y ago
  The fun thing about having it in messages.app, is it is actually a bug on the RECEIVING end of messages.app. And I can't seem to delete the message before the app crashes again. I'm so happy I have nice friends.
  - mathrawka 14y ago
    Disable your spell checker and it will stop crashing. Then you can delete the message, and re-enable the spell checker.
    - pyre 14y ago
      Why would the spell checker be running against in-coming messages? So that you can be a grammar pedant and annoy your friends?
      - bdash 14y ago
        My guess would be that data detectors are used to detect and format links in incoming messages.
        pyre 14y ago

peterkelly 14y ago

Can't reproduce it in Lion.

deleted 14y ago
[deleted]

suyash 14y ago

Did not crash on LION MAC OS X 10.7.5

MysticFear 14y ago

Quick everyone go to their respective Apple Stores around the world. We will then see how long it will be fixed then ...

ajaimk 14y ago

It crashes finder. WTH?

speeder 14y ago

I would appreciate if someone can explain to me why I am feeling a urge to visit the office tomorrow only to see stuff crashing on my OSX workstation.

lostlogin 14y ago
That feeling was me for 10+ years, mainly teenage ones. Not sure where it went, but I prefer working stuff these days.

gavinh 14y ago

LINUX

ajsharp 14y ago

This. IS. AWESOME.

michaeldoncillo 14y ago

w0w sana maging hacker dn ako balang araw.....

michaeldoncillo 14y ago

i want to bi a hacker

nK0de 14y ago

Crashes: XCode 4.5.2 TextEdit iTunes Preview I'm typing File:/// in every textbox I could find. This is some weird fun. Way to spend my Saturday morning.

mmastrac 14y ago

Fun exploit of this - you can use it to lock up Safari hard: http://grack.com/hangsafari.html http://grack.com/hangsafari.html (not a reduced testcase - it's more of a brute force) You can also trigger a mailto: link that crashes Mail: mailto:pete@bar.com?subject=File:///&body=File:///

ubershmekel 14y ago
Welp, sadly, Safari on Windows isn't affected.

antics 14y ago

The cause of this bug seems to be the OSX system spell checker; I've crashed a few applications to take a look at the dumps, and so far they common point of failure seems to be that they all have some call to something like `NSSpellChecker`. In the OP for example: 6 AppKit 0x00007fff921dbd1a checkDataDetectors + 536 7 AppKit 0x00007fff921d9429 NSSpellCheckerCheckString + 13334 8 AppKit 0x00007fff921d5f9f -[NSTextCheckingOperation main] + 152 7 AppKit 0x00007fff921d9429 NSSpellCheckerCheckString + 13334 This explanation makes sense to me because the spell checker is integrated very tightly into the user-facing text entry experience across the board in OSX. It is one of the few bits of code that could explain reliable failures across applications that we've been seeing.

sgt 14y ago
I've disabled the spell checker a long time ago, but it still happens. So NSSpellCheckCheckString is still being invoked even though the spell check is not running.

d0m 14y ago

It's a bug, it happens, let's move on.

gabrielgironda 14y ago

Figured you can crash Safari on page load with this. http://gironda.org/this_will_crash_safari.html http://gironda.org/this_will_crash_safari.html

jayferd 14y ago

File:///

jclem 14y ago

Does not crash: - 'File:///' typed slowly - 'File://a' typed slowly - 'File:// a' typed at any speed. Does crash: - 'File:///' typed quickly - 'File://X' (X being any non-whitespace character) quickly - 'File://X ' (any number of non-whitespace followed by any whitespace) at any speed

spiritplumber 14y ago

Fail:///

kc0bfv 14y ago

Several people have said that these apps are crashing at an assert. How did asserts make it into production code? Is it just a C thing to make them debug-only?

lloeki 14y ago
Sometimes (especially in dynamic-land) you assert stuff before doing some processing, so that stuff does not blow up halfway but upfront. "- but, it should never happen?!" "- so, make it not happen, ever"
- kc0bfv 14y ago
  My understanding is that asserts are for debugging, and exceptions/more robust error handling are for production. Asserts make the code blow up, which can make a problem easier to spot in dev/testing. In production it seems better to throw an exception, even if the program can't handle it well and just has to quit nicely. I like your defensive programming strategy - see if the tires are flat before you get out on the highway.
dspig 14y ago
Maybe because of this: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/2035595/c-xcode-assert-evaluated-in-release http://stackoverflow.com/questions/2035595/c-xcode-assert-ev...

bsno 14y ago

Do not send this string in an iMessage, unless, of course, you're evil.

jensen2k 14y ago

I put ut a JSFiddle crashing Safari. This is fun. http://jsfiddle.net/EJzhH/3 http://jsfiddle.net/EJzhH/3

deleted 14y ago

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deleted 14y ago

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human_error 14y ago

I think it only affects 10.8. I have tried the suggested methods of this thread in Chrome, TextEdit, iTunes, terminal and Safari but nothing happened in 10.6.8.

kunai 14y ago

Hilarious. I pranked my friend with this, and now he's pissed. Oh well, it was certainly worth it. Interesting, though, what exactly causes this bug. It seems as if the built-in spellcheck seems to misinterpret the string "file:///" as some sort of alien construct, or perhaps false typed directories trigger some sort of lockdown. Either way, it's very puzzling how this sort of thing made it past the OS X developers, especially with Apple's level and standard of ultra-high quality control.

omaranto 14y ago
Doesn't Apple's quality control only apply to hardware? I hear people complain about bugs and just shear ugliness of their software pretty often.
- kunai 14y ago
  Up until 10.6, actually, Apple used to produce very good, generally bug-free software. Starting with 10.7, they've begun to rush their software just because they have, say, 4 new "features". The yearly release cycle is partly to blame, but even then, iOS bugs are much more minor.

nukerhazz 14y ago

If you have Xcode you can reproduce the crash in a scratch Xcode project. Drop an NSSearchField into a window, run the app, enter you-know-what, and boom. (I used NSSearchField since that's what I found most easily crashes Finder, VoodooPad, and System Preferences. Maybe NSTextField works as well.) The assert that fails is this: assertion on /SourceCache/DataDetectorsCore/DataDetectorsCore-269.1/Sources/PushDown/DDResultExtraction.c:1576 "CFStringHasPrefix(urlVal, CFSTR("file://"))" failed :wrong extraction: File:// There's an extra slash at the end, but I left it out because it crashes Safari.

h4rrison 14y ago

It's definitely a spell check bug, I've got that feature turned off (always hated it) and none of this is doing anything for me.

JeffKnol 14y ago
How do you turn it off globally? Even removing the AppleSpell.service directory and quitting the accompanying process doesn't seem to work. Also, are you sure you're both affected and doing it right? It only affects 10.8.x and you have to capitalize the "F".

nukerhazz 14y ago

Binary patch, for entertainment purposes only, do not actually use: http://twitter.com/landonfuller/status/297592929923502080 http://twitter.com/landonfuller/status/297592929923502080

danabramov 14y ago
Landon is a really nice guy, by the way. He is the author of PLCrashReporter library and helped us out making it work with MonoTouch.

nu2ycombinator 14y ago

I never felt need to upgrade my snow leopard. This bug is not happening in Snow leopard. I am going to Apple store and try this on one of the display laptop. :)

lloeki 14y ago

The word is out so it's only a matter of minutes for people to come up with this Safari DOS in Javascript: https://gist.github.com/4696484 https://gist.github.com/4696484 (remember to change to File) Chrome survives, while Safari either crashes or behaves erratically up to being unusable. Firefox requires slight modifications to the event, but I'm bored.

scottbartell 14y ago

Anyone else wasting a lot of time typing "File:///" into every input in every program...? Just because they were told not to.

VPrime 14y ago

I sent an iMessage (from iPhone) saying File:/// to my iMac and it crashed iMessage on the other end.. and now messages app crashes every time I try to launch! Also Sent myself an email (from the iPhone) with File:/// as the subject (and in the body for good measure). The Mail.app won't crash on the incoming email, but it won't open that message.

46Bit 14y ago
Send yourself 80 messages and it'll open again, then delete the conversation the File:/// is in.

cranklin 14y ago

in other words, this would wreak a lot of havoc: window.location = "File:///"

djbender 14y ago
"Not allowed to load local resource: file:///"
X-Istence 14y ago
None of the browsers will redirect from the web to local, nor will they allow you to load images and whatnot from local either, so doing it that way won't work either.

lovamova 14y ago

Another reason to use Snow Leopard, best operating system until now.

TallboyOne 14y ago
Yes because every day one types "File:///". This seems like hardly something that outweighs the massive performance improvements.
- Jyaif 14y ago
  improvements ?!
  - petercooper 14y ago
    Yes, now you too can drain your battery in just half the time as before! ;-)

TallboyOne 14y ago

Can someone explain this error to me simply, like one might talk to a golden retriever?

iSnow 14y ago
Somewhere in the system is a friendly program called "DataDetectors", which sniffes at text so find out if there are links in it which should be highlighted by the application handling the text. Now the programmer who developed DataDetectors wanted to make sure (maybe for tests) that a subcomponent was fed only valid file-urls (that is: file:/// is OK, File:/// not) and therefore inserted an assert-statement. Assertions stop the program flow if their condition is not met (an exception is thrown) and normally a code block upstream should handle this case. I can only speculate, but either the assertion was left in the code despite being only intended for debugging/testing (ie. it was meant to be there only temporarily) or the upstream code has a bug that causes it not to catch the exception. Either way, it is not handled and therefore bubbles up the whole code chain until some monitor in OS X or Objective C terminates the program because it sees a program error. Someone at Apple forgot a test case feeding text with File:/// to DataDetectors.
- TallboyOne 14y ago
  Thank you, iSnow! Makes perfect sense.
- martinced 14y ago
  "Someone at Apple forgot a test case feeding text with File:/// to DataDetectors." There's obviously and blatantly a combinatorial explosion of possible inputs into a textbox so it's physically impossible ("physically" as in: "there aren't enough atoms in the universe to build a machine able to handle this) to test all the possible inputs. By your logic when the terrible endless loop in the Java floating-point parsing library (you could stuck any JVM by trying to parse: 2.2250738585072012e-308) was discovered, it's because: "Someone forgot to write a test case trying to parse 2.2250738585072012e-308" Yeah. Sure.
  - 14y ago

za1363 14y ago

841056245612564

sly010 14y ago

There was an x-ray machine called "Therac-25" which had a chance of killing you if the operator typed a specific (non-lethal) configuration too fast. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Therac-25 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Therac-25 That was a disaster. This is a bug.

smtddr 14y ago
This is why I never want to work in dev or qa for medical machines. If I were involve in this product's design, the guilt would destroy me.

stallmanuu 14y ago

irc.mactalk.com final solution! room cleared

emehrkay 14y ago

Seems to crash just about everything except Textmate 1&2 which is strange because they both use the built-in spellchecker

deleted 14y ago

[deleted]

quasque 14y ago

This is a bit nostalgic. Back in the day, Opera used to crash if you typed http:/// http:/// into the address bar. (Edit: talking about bugs, HN formatting won't let me put http:/// http:/// in double quotes - it eats the closing quote.)

maximem 14y ago

Now when I try to acces F ...acebook it crashes... calling File://[.]

bla2 14y ago

This is the original discovery, before shess copied it into openradar: http://crbug.com/173405#c17 http://crbug.com/173405#c17

smackfu 14y ago
Original bug report was interesting, just typing "F" in the address bar and getting a reproducible crash that no one else could repro.
- bla2 14y ago
  "F" probably autocompleted to "File:///" on that person's profile.

agracey 14y ago

It just crashed an App that I was working on and then crashed XCode itself.

philfreo 14y ago

iMessage your friends with this string and their Messages app will start crashing. Fun!

zero_z3r0 14y ago

For the impatient among us... A shell script that patches the offending binary and bypasses the issue: http://pastebin.com/pqyePXqa http://pastebin.com/pqyePXqa Copy script contents to a file, then execute (using sudo) This has been tested by others with positive results. It is however a community provided fix. Original file is backed up before patching.

TvFreak 14y ago

File:///

frostnovazzz 14y ago

Works fine in sublime text 2

josteink 14y ago

Also, do not send file:/// to anyone using iMessage on their computer.

elptacek 14y ago

ETA: Yeah... I can't make this stick. So it kinda-sorta works, but is not a real workaround. Guess I'm glad I kept testing it... I found a workaround: defaults write $DOMAIN DisableDataDetectors YES Credit goes to: http://www.macosxtips.co.uk/index_files/data-detectors-in-mail.php http://www.macosxtips.co.uk/index_files/data-detectors-in-ma... The following works for Adium: defaults write com.adiumX.adiumX DisableDataDetectors YES ETA: Doesn't seem to persist. Might be sleep/awake or some sort of refresh/timeout. Investigating...

elptacek 14y ago
Tested this a bit more. It seems to work on Adium "only some of the time." I am told it works for Colloquy. It does not work for the Google Chrome Browser, TextEdit or Mail.