[OS X TeX] i-Installer 2.79 released. Bugfix for potential harmful bug

[David Watson]

Thank you so much. It is comforting that you give such prompt  
attention to correcting matters such as this.

On Sep 22, 2006, at 6:13 PM, Gerben Wierda wrote:

> I have just released version 2.79 of i-Installer. Both II2.dmg and  
> TeX-fat.dmg have been updated. The i-Installer i-Package has been  
> updated.
>
> i-Installer 2.78 and before (at least since Feb 2004 when it was  
> freshly checked in at sourceforge) had a potential harmful bug.
>
> When a new location is entered in Preferences for the Default Save  
> directory three things normally happen:
> 1. Create the new directory if necessary
> 2. Move all the i-Packages from old to new directory
> 3. Remove old directory unless something in it was not moved (e.g.  
> something else than an i-Package)
>
> As it turns out, when the move of any i-Package failed, the old  
> directory was removed nonetheless and in Cocoa this succeeds, even  
> if the directory is not empty (in unix, a remove of a directory  
> normally only succeeds if the directory is empty).
>
> So here is a scenario where this may lead to data loss:
> 1. Assume your Default Save Directory is ~/Documents/i-Packages
> 2. Copy one of these (say, bibtools.ii2) to a new location  
> (creating the directory first if necessary) , say ~/Library/i-Packages
> 3. Now, in i-Installer, open Preferences and change the Default  
> Save Directory location from ~/Documents/i-Packages to ~/Library/i- 
> Packages and hit Apply
> - The i-Packages in ~/Documents/i-Packages will be moved to ~/ 
> Documents/i-Packages.
> - As soon as the attempt to move bibtools.ii2 is made, the move  
> series stops and an alert sheet is shown on the Preferences window.  
> (This sheet contains noe missing string (displayed as "nil")  
> because there is a small bug in the Apple Frameworks).
> - The old directory with all its contents is removed as if all the  
> move operations was succesful (this is the bug)
>
> Normally, you will only lose data that has been downloaded from i- 
> Installer repositories and you will not lose personal data.
>
> But it *is* possible to lose other data. Everything that is in your  
> Deault Save Directory is lost and only the i-Packages in it have  
> been in an attempt to move to teh new location. Hence, in case you  
> have added personal stuff to ~/Documents/i-Package and you try to  
> change ~/Documents/i-Packages in i-Installer preferences to some  
> place where there already exists one of the i-Packages, the  
> personal stuff gets lost.
>
> A pretty horrible scenario I could dream up is:
> 	- Change your Default Save Location to ~ (home directory, all your  
> i-Packages move there)
> 	- Create a new directory (or use an existing one) and copy  
> (duplicate) one of the i-Packages from ~ to the new location
> 	- Open Preferences in i-Installer and change ~ into that new  
> directory
> If you do that with any version of i-Installer before 2.79, you  
> will lose your entire home directory.
>
> I must add that you need to make a very special set of  
> circumstances to get data loss of i-Packages only, let alone what  
> you have to do to lose anything else. Still, it is possible and I  
> suspect of at least one case where someone was hit by this and lost  
> his already downloaded i-Packages. Hence, I have repaired this  
> immediately.
>
> Note: unless you run i-Installer as root (which is a bad idea for  
> most programs), operations like moving the Default Save Directory  
> run with normal user privileges and it is therefore not possible  
> you damage anything on your system except personal data.
>
> I will also update al the i-Packages such that they will require at  
> least version 2.79, just to force people to upgrade i-Installer.  
> This will take some time.
>
> G
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