Snow Leopard ‘Guest Bug’ Redux: Now Accidents Even Hurt

There’s a new twist on the “Guest Account” bug with Snow Leopard updates. Along with all /user files vanishing if you have the “Guest” account active when upgrading, if you accidently use the guest account mass file deletions could happen, reports said Monday.

“So I restarted my computer and logged on again, it was exactly the same, everything gone. At which point I looked in the Users folder to find that my User profile had been removed and replaced with a fresh one with the same name,” a user calling himself dbferrari wrote Sunday on the Apple Discussion board. The person said he had accidently selected the “guest” account rather than his personal account at the login screen of OS X 10.6.1.

Friday we wrote about similar reports of data deleted after being logged into the “guest” after an upgrade.

The cure until Apple addresses the bug: disable your Guest account.

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[Via Apple Discussions and Engadget]

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Bozo
It’s hard to understand what the actual problem is here due to the lack of actual reporting. The reported “I looked in the Users folder to find that my User profile had been removed and replaced” doesn’t really mean anything because he’s mixing terminology. Does he mean that he “looked in the Users folder to find that his home directory had been removed and replaced”? Is the issue that the use of the Guest account causes files in *other accounts* to be deleted or is the issue that using the Guest account as one’s main login causes problems?
Or is the real issue that some people creatively screwed up an update and are trying to blame Apple to avoid looking stupid?
Julian Delphiki
No: The real issue is that Apple, not its customers, ‘creatively’ screwed up Snow Leopard such that it causes data destruction on an unprecedented scale when a user who has upgraded to from 10.5 to 10.6 with the Guest account enabled logs into the aforementioned account.
Mac is a brand, not a cult. Steve Jobs is a businessman, not a god. And we are consumers, not acolytes.
Or hast thou forgotten, Bozo? Is that why it’s better to blame the blameless than the blameworthy?
Charli
sounds more like folks are just confused. cause the nature of a guest account is that everything is deleted when you log out or restart. it even says so on the pref pane where you activate guest access.
so if one were to upgrade to Snow Leopard while in a guest account, it would empty all user files every time you restart or log off. including the files you transferred in from your backup.
Munster
Why the hell has it even got guest account enabled anyways?! If you don’t need it open, close it. If you need it secure, encrypt it. If you ever want to make sure you see it again if you boo-boo, back it up!
“Security is not a dirty word Blackadder! Big-Jobs is positively filthy! Security isn’t!”
Gazzer
Bad bug if it’s the case. Remember to back up.
If you’re going to use a technical description:
/user
then get it right:
/Users