The 25-year-old BSD bug

Today in 1983, "Beat It" by Michael Jackson may have topped the charts, but a slight bug in the *dir() library was found only a few days ago by OpenBSD developer Marc Balmer (no rela -- oh, wait). OS News has the entire amusing tale of the bug in BSD (the UNIX foundation of Mac OS X) that's been alive and kicking for nearly 25 years. Balmer contacted Marshall Kirk McKusick, the original developer of the *dir() library, who confirmed the error.

Thankfully, the fix was simple, but Balmer kidded, "[s]orry that it took us almost 25 years to fix it."

Thanks, Cameron!

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Source: http://osnews.com/story/19731/The-25-Year-Old-UNIX-Bug

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Humor UNIX / BSD

Today in 1983, "Beat It" by Michael Jackson may have topped the charts, but a slight bug in the *dir() library was found only a few days...

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bluemonq

The thing is, the Samba guys (networking, not dance) already pointed the bug out to the folks working on BSD a while ago. At the time the BSD guys were pretty much, "Yeah, sure, whatever," so the Samba team already had a workaround for it. So, -1 for the BSD folks, +1 for the Samba folks, and +1 for Marc Balmer.

May 13 2008 at 11:42 AM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

Kev Orng

You should have used a picture of one of those nasty mutant orange Asian ladybugs that bite.

I hate those guys

May 13 2008 at 10:58 AM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

matthew

Small correction: I believe his name is Marc Balmer with a c, not Mark with a k.

May 13 2008 at 9:30 AM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

1 reply to matthew's comment

Robert Palmer

Thanks Matthew -- good catch. :)

May 13 2008 at 9:56 AM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

Chris

So, assuming the bug was not entirely trivial, which is more embarrassing: that it took 25 years to find it, or that the functionality affected is so useless that no one had seriously used it in 25 years?
Otherwise I agree with Blaktornado :-)

BTW, if I'm showing my ignorance of BSD here and this *dir() library is important, please let me know (like I need to ask!). If that's the case however, was the bug really that serious?

http://about8.blogspot.com

May 13 2008 at 9:28 AM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

Blaktornado

Awww what a cute ladybird.

May 13 2008 at 9:10 AM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

1 reply to Blaktornado's comment

Rhywun

That bug is either really enormous (i.e. not so cute), or that's a tiny apple. Or it's fake!

May 13 2008 at 2:02 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply