[Tomster]

So is anyone using FileVault with 10.3.1? After the mayhem and destruction FileVault did to my 10.3 install, I'm a bit paranoid.

Have the problems been truly fixed? Also, is it really a good idea to continuously read and write to a sparse image?

[timmerk]

Still working fine with me.

[Steven_Chow]

I turned FileVault ON after 10.3.1 update, so far so good.
Btw: I haven't had any problem with FileVault on 10.3.

[redwood]

There's no way in hell I'm turning file vault on for at least another two weeks. After losing my files over five times I'm sick and tired of it. The update from apple so far has not indicated any technical description of exactly what and how they fixed. No way. no way no way.

I'm backing up at least once a day too. Too paranoid.

[mcsjgs]

I am going to wait about six months after having a lot of things trashed by File Vault.

[Nep2ne]

Originally posted by redwood:
There's no way in hell I'm turning file vault on for at least another two weeks. After losing my files over five times I'm sick and tired of it. The update from apple so far has not indicated any technical description of exactly what and how they fixed. No way. no way no way.

I'm backing up at least once a day too. Too paranoid.

Wow, what on EARTH are you so paranoid about?

[kupan787]

So what was the issue with FileVault some people had? How did it erase your data, and why does it seem to only have affected some?

[mcsjgs]

Originally posted by kupan787:
So what was the issue with FileVault some people had? How did it erase your data, and why does it seem to only have affected some?

Many people, myself included, lost data during "reclaim disk sapce" operations by File Vault.

[redwood]

The issue was one fine night I put my TiBook to sleep. The next fine morning I awoke my TiBook from sleep.

"Hmm" I thought to myself. My background is gone, that's strange. Hmm, my dock has reverted to normal. That's strange.

"Oh, look most of my preferences are wiped out, including date and time, keyboard, who knows what else." Hmm, I will restore my faithful backup that I made right before upgrading to panther on my iDisk.

"Oh, hmm" I say to myelf as I realize that I can't log into iDisk because my keychain is corrupted. I've lost every password, certificate and everything else.

<Many hours of hasseling later get it back to normal>

Put computer to sleep, wake computer next day. "Oh, hmm" I say to myself, "it's done it again.

This time, my mail is reset, my iChat settings are all gone, all my safari cookies are gone, programs are crashing.

Try to turn off filevault, oh yeah that takes anywhere from 4 to 5 hours and multiple tries as it keeps failing.

Oh Yeah, filevault is not my friend. No sir-e-bob.

[Morenix]

why people don't sue apple with the filevault issue?

[msuper69]

Originally posted by Morenix:
why people don't sue apple with the filevault issue?

When one installs Panther and clicks on the "agree" button, one accepts the terms of the license and can't hold Apple responsible for data loss caused by defects in the software. Nothing new here. All software licenses have that disclaimer in it.

[nsxpower]

I thank the people who are brave enough to act as guinea pigs for the rest of the community .

FileVault is a nice idea and although it did not destroy any of my data/preferences, I am keeping it off. I do not like the current implementation that slows down some of the basic operations (on GigaTiBook). Waiting for FileVault v. 2.0, I guess.

[elmer]

I tried it just for fun when Panther came out - it changed the ownership of most files in my home directory to root. I'm not sure I have enough need for it to try it again right away. Besides, Apple says it affects iMovie performance.

[Gee4orce]

Why don't people take backups ? Or is the temptation to click that 'Whizzbang new feature (warning - may trash all your data)' button just too great ?

[Arkham_c]

Originally posted by Morenix:
why people don't sue apple with the filevault issue?

THAT my friends is what is wrong with our culture. "I'm stupid and didn't back up like I was advised to do, who can I sue?"

People who bring frivolous lawsuits deserve what they get and worse.

[Eug]

I NEED FileVault, but I won't use it just yet, even with the X.3.1 update.

The networking issues have shown me that what has been working can be broken later, and certainly Apple doesn't have a very good record with FileVault this far anyways.

With the bazillion problems, Apple certainly isn't winning any converts from me. (I was recommending "switching" by the later iterations of X.2, but I am no longer with X.3 because of these fairly serious issues. Maybe by X.3.3?)

[NeXTLoop]

Originally posted by Arkham_c:
THAT my friends is what is wrong with our culture. "I'm stupid and didn't back up like I was advised to do, who can I sue?"

People who bring frivolous lawsuits deserve what they get and worse.

Arkham_c, I'm with you on this one. Sure, there are some cases when a lawsuit is certainly very deserved. But to sue over every LITTLE thing??? Come on. That's ridiculous.

We use computers. Computers don't always work perfectly. Get used to it....... or don't use them. Granted, Macs work 100 times better than most computers. But they're still very complicated machines, which means that at times they're going to mess up.

[redwood]

I'd like to note that I _DID_ take multiple backups. But data loss is data loss, you still have to massage everything back into place. The funny thing is, normally you backup your data, not your preferences, but I guess both are important if you want your system to be "back to normal." It's the TIME LOST that's annoying.

In regards to suing... GET REAL!!! Sue apple? First of all, you give away all those rights as mentioned above in the license agreement. There are even some agreements that say "This software is not fit for ANY PURPOSE." Kind of funny, but a disclaimer non-the-less.
Second of all, if I should be suing anyone it should be Microsoft. My entire network was down at the office yesterday as the Nachi worm got in and effectively shut every host down.

I don't want to sue apple. It would cost way more than the time I already lost.

I would have been happy with a simple acknowledgement of the problem when I called in for AppleCare support or an apology. But I got nothing but "rebuild your permissions" and "Oh, we've never heard of any issues with filevault, absolutely not." Then when I posted about it on apple's discussion forum they deleted my post and all I did was warn people not to use filevault.

So, I'm not happy with the way they acted. There's nothing I can do about it, this is what trying new software is all about. And in the end, it's actually kind of fun and informational and a learning experience however losing data still sucks, rebuilding your machine over and over still sucks.

And as for long term fix, they say in the 10.3.1 update notes this morning:

Important: If the computer is force-restarted or power is lost while disk space is being reclaimed, data loss can occur. Mac OS X 10.3.1 does not address this type of data loss

So beware.

[elmer]

Originally posted by Gee4orce:
Why don't people take backups ? Or is the temptation to click that 'Whizzbang new feature (warning - may trash all your data)' button just too great ?

I think you misunderstand. The fact that I do take backups makes me all the more likely to click that button.

[Eug]

Originally posted by Gee4orce:
Why don't people take backups ? Or is the temptation to click that 'Whizzbang new feature (warning - may trash all your data)' button just too great ?

Backups? Not a problem.

However, backups are not a solution for a feature not working.

This is not a whizzbang new feature just for the hell of it. A lot of us use laptops, and security is important.

[Cop Rock]

My biggest problem with FileVault is that it does your entire Home directory or nothing and Apple encourages you to keep all your MP3s and pictures and movie files in your Home directory.
I don't really have a need to encrypt all of my iMovie projects or my iPhoto library or my iTunes library.

I'll be much more interested in FileVault if they ever offer more control over which parts of your Home directory are encrypted.

[mcsjgs]

Can anyone tell me what this means:

"FileVault normally asks to reclaim space before the computer sleeps, restarts, or shuts down. In some cases, you can lose some preference settings after space is reclaimed. Download and install Mac OS X 10.3.1 or later to avoid this issue.
_ Important: Turning off FileVault and/or installing Mac OS X 10.3.1 does not automatically recover lost settings. You should configure any incorrect preference settings manually after installing the update.
_ Important: If the computer is force-restarted or power is lost while disk space is being reclaimed, data loss can occur. Mac OS X 10.3.1 does not address this type of data loss."

What preference setings? File Vault doesn't have any.

[JKT]

Originally posted by mcsjgs:
What preference setings? File Vault doesn't have any.

It means that for those people who had prefs for other apps etc corrupted by FV under 10.3, that they will not magically be reset after installing 10.3.1 etc - you will have to go through and reset your app prefs manually.

For Cop Rock:

Apple already provided a means to encrypt just the data you wanted in Jaguar (and it still does in Panther) - simply create a password protected encrypted disk image and save your sensitive files to that. Unmount it when you want the data protected, remount it when you want to access the data again and stick the password in your Keychain if you don't want the hassle of entering your password all the time... and you have the equivalent of File Vault just for the files you want protected.

Edit: However, it would be much nicer if you could choose what to include and exclude in FV.

[msuper69]

Originally posted by mcsjgs:
Can anyone tell me what this means:

"FileVault normally asks to reclaim space before the computer sleeps, restarts, or shuts down. In some cases, you can lose some preference settings after space is reclaimed..."

What preference setings? File Vault doesn't have any.

Using FileVault has resulted in the loss of preferences for Mail, iChat, Safari, Dock and other programs. The reference in not to FileVault itself.

(Oops. Someone beat me to it.)

[Tomster]

Originally posted by Nep2ne:
Wow, what on EARTH are you so paranoid about?

Having all of my data and prefs corrupted. Did it once already and required a restore from backup. Plus random problems with the sustemuiserver.

[jrafter]

Did anyone answer the original question? Does the 10.3.1 update fix this or not?

[mcsjgs]

Originally posted by jrafter:
Did anyone answer the original question? Does the 10.3.1 update fix this or not?

Apple says it did in the release notes yesterday.

[Boondoggle]

I think a preference pane for selecting folders in the home folder that are included in the encrypted disk image for file vault is a great idea.

I don't need my music and movies in there. Just my email docs and pron.

by the way, it is working just spiffy here on 2 systems both before and after 10.3.1

bd

[Tomster]

Once bitten twice shy. I think everyone who had problems with FileVault are a bit apprehensive about reactivating it. As for those who have run it since day one with no problems at all, good for you.

Apple said all the problems were fixed in a press release? Maybe. One can never tell.

So anyone out there who had problems before give it another shot yet?

[Big Mac]

It is quite amazing to me that OS X's developer team decided to ship and bill FileVault as a major feature of 10.3-clearly it's far from being ready for prime time. I guess Jobs tied developers hands when he demoed the functionality, and that's too bad. When I first heard about it, I knew encrypting and decrypting one's entire home directory on the fly was a very poor idea. Another poster hit the nail on the head when he stated that FileVault should give the user control over which things are encrypted, since it's useless to encrypt a lot of the contents of Home. 10.3 definitely has a bunch of show-stopping bugs, and in my opinion it reinforces the perception that Apple's QA is sorely lacking.

Firewire drive corruption and filevault destruction aren't the only major issues Mac users have had to contend with. My "favorite" OS X bug of all time is still the PPP freeze fiasco, which Apple failed to correct far into the 10.1.x revisions. Users had to endure the bug for more than a year; certainly it turned many off to OS X. This bug would halt OS X completely while the modem waited for the other end, and it manifested itself on any subsequent dial-up attempts not punctuated by restarts. One retelling of the story states that when Apple engineers finally got around to fixing it, they said they had never run into the problem before because they always shut their machines down every night! If indeed that's true, Apple engineers could offer a defense for filevault's problems by claiming they never opted to let the OS reclaim disk space. . . If anything, 10.3 demonstrates that Apple still isn't committed to releasing basically stable, thoroughly tested OS revisions, and that's why I'm staying away from Panther for now.

[Cipher13]

It's incredible that some of the bugs that have manifested themselves in the various incarnations of OS X actually got through - I mean, seriously. It's almost as if there is NO testing at all.

It certainly seems no Apple employees understand the concept of sleeping their machines... there's always a freakin' sleep bug.

[kcmac]

by CopRock
"My biggest problem with FileVault is that it does your entire Home directory or nothing and Apple encourages you to keep all your MP3s and pictures and movie files in your Home directory.
I don't really have a need to encrypt all of my iMovie projects or my iPhoto library or my iTunes library.

I'll be much more interested in FileVault if they ever offer more control over which parts of your Home directory are encrypted."

This is dead on and why I wouldn't use it at this time. I have very little info on my laptop that I would have a need for secrecy.

All of my work files are in one folder. If I could encrypt that folder only, then I would give it a go. I see no need to protect my preference files, etc with FileVault.

Not using or liking FileVault shouldn't keep anyone from upgrading to Panther, however. You didn't have this feature before, it is not on by default and there are way too many good things about Panther over Jaguar.

[typoon]

Originally posted by redwood:
I'd like to note that I _DID_ take multiple backups. But data loss is data loss, you still have to massage everything back into place. The funny thing is, normally you backup your data, not your preferences, but I guess both are important if you want your system to be "back to normal." It's the TIME LOST that's annoying.

In regards to suing... GET REAL!!! Sue apple? First of all, you give away all those rights as mentioned above in the license agreement. There are even some agreements that say "This software is not fit for ANY PURPOSE." Kind of funny, but a disclaimer non-the-less.
Second of all, if I should be suing anyone it should be Microsoft. My entire network was down at the office yesterday as the Nachi worm got in and effectively shut every host down.

I don't want to sue apple. It would cost way more than the time I already lost.

I would have been happy with a simple acknowledgement of the problem when I called in for AppleCare support or an apology. But I got nothing but "rebuild your permissions" and "Oh, we've never heard of any issues with filevault, absolutely not." Then when I posted about it on apple's discussion forum they deleted my post and all I did was warn people not to use filevault.

So, I'm not happy with the way they acted. There's nothing I can do about it, this is what trying new software is all about. And in the end, it's actually kind of fun and informational and a learning experience however losing data still sucks, rebuilding your machine over and over still sucks.

And as for long term fix, they say in the 10.3.1 update notes this morning:

Important: If the computer is force-restarted or power is lost while disk space is being reclaimed, data loss can occur. Mac OS X 10.3.1 does not address this type of data loss

So beware.

This is WHY I Paid for .Mac. Because using Backup to do the backups for the files you just check the one for preferences and settings and for the other things you need and I even added in my documents folder. After I did a reformat and re-install of Panther All I did was just restore all my settings from my Backup. No loss of prefs or anything. It even backs up mail so you don't have to keep fighting to find where all these folders are. To me that and being able to view my addressbook and bookmarks on the internet from any computer is worth the price for me.

While I feel your pain about having to restore everything I don't feel your pain about restoring settings when there are very easy ways like Backup to keep save your self bundles of time.

Recently upgraded a friend to Panther with doing a full reformat and install just popped in his backups and from backup and restarted and his computer was like he had it originally.

[JKT]

Originally posted by Big Mac:
My "favorite" OS X bug of all time is still the PPP freeze fiasco, which Apple failed to correct far into the 10.1.x revisions. Users had to endure the bug for more than a year; certainly it turned many off to OS X. This bug would halt OS X completely while the modem waited for the other end, and it manifested itself on any subsequent dial-up attempts not punctuated by restarts.

OMG, don't remind me of that bug... here's a picture of my record length freeze (the diff between the two times in Console):



That bug was the pits. Angus_D - he was our hero for isolating that problem!