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05.16.08 Ancient BSD Unix Bug Fixed  By Doug Caverly A Unix developer recently found and fixed what was probably the world's oldest bug, and we don't mean that in the amber-encased insect sense. Instead, a 25-year-old flaw in Berkeley Software Distribution came to light. It's almost hard to believe that such a thing could exist, and after a BSD user informed him of a problem, Marc Balmer apparently needed to do a few double takes and lots of research. Balmer then went about the correction process.
The details are listed on the vnode.ch site. In the end, Balmer concluded, "The fix is surprisingly simple, not to say trivial: _readdir_unlocked() must not skip directory entries with inode set to zero when it is called from __seekdir()." Obviously the bug would have been discovered sooner if it was fouling up too many vital operations, so users' experiences will probably go unchanged. Still, the story serves as a credit to Balmer, a cautionary tale to other developers, and a point of interest to just about everybody. Hat tip goes to Egan Orion. About the Author: Doug is a staff writer for WebProNews. Visit WebProNews for the latest eBusiness news. |
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