The 25-year-old BSD bug
Posted May 13th 2008 9:00AM by Robert Palmer
Filed under: 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 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!
Tags: bsd, bug, dir, unix
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
5-13-2008 @ 9:10AM
Blaktornado said...
Awww what a cute ladybird.
Reply
5-13-2008 @ 2:02PM
Rhywun said...
That bug is either really enormous (i.e. not so cute), or that's a tiny apple. Or it's fake!
5-13-2008 @ 9:29AM
Chris said...
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
Reply
5-13-2008 @ 9:30AM
matthew said...
Small correction: I believe his name is Marc Balmer with a c, not Mark with a k.
Reply
5-13-2008 @ 9:56AM
Robert Palmer said...
Thanks Matthew -- good catch. :)
5-13-2008 @ 11:01AM
Kev Orng said...
You should have used a picture of one of those nasty mutant orange Asian ladybugs that bite.
I hate those guys
Reply
5-13-2008 @ 11:44AM
firefirepantsareliars said...
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.
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