Cannot move viruses to chest on 10.5.x

Avast Mac Security
1

Hallo,
few similar reports have been seen in the past, and now, while testing the new version, the culprit was found:

  • all those users accounts have been generated by Active Directory binding, and their UID was set to something insane, above 2^15.

Although Apple’s UniqueID is 32-bit, there are many parts of the system that are simply sensitive for such nonsensual IDs. You can expect archivers (tar, pax…) to stop working, logging to cause problems, semaphores to stop working (!), su - to cause problems, and many other flaws.

Solution? Create new user account from Preferences, or convert the active one to new UID/GID (just changing it in Preferences would render your data inaccessible), or make sure, when creating the AD binding, that the UID/GID numbers are sane.

Interesting reading:
http://www.makemacwork.com/bind-to-active-directory.htm
http://forums.macosxhints.com/archive/index.php/t-12077.html
http://www.afp548.com/articles/Panther/mcx2.html
http://lists.ximian.com/pipermail/mono-osx/2007-June/000936.html

regards,
pc

2

… also have a look here: http://blogs.sun.com/yongsun/entry/changing_uid_and_gid_on

next version ov avast will be ready for such strange system state, where uid aren’t in acceptable range - but, it’s better to use POSIX compliant IDS.
pc

3

I Really wish Apple would get Active Directory Binding right for once. Some releases it improves while other releases just mess it up again(The Bonjour service in particular makes it a pain). I mean its no secret that they want you to use OS X Server and Open Directory, but After 6 major releases of OS X you would think they would have it right by now.