jkorell / iperf

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mac os x filesystem corruption #148

Closed GoogleCodeExporter closed 9 years ago

GoogleCodeExporter commented 9 years ago
What steps will reproduce the problem?
1. compile program to run on mac os x (snow leopard or mavericks)
2. run program in server and client modes
3. wait a week with occasional operating system use

What is the expected output? What do you see instead?
the output is fine.

What version of the product are you using? On what operating system?
3.0.1

Please provide any additional information below.
My system files repeatedly became corrupted at least once on a MacBook Air and 
twice on a MacBook Pro (older models). Although the filesystem appeared okay, I 
could not boot into GUI or even re-install from the rescue partition. A clean 
wipe was required to get my macs running. I even swapped a hard-drive to rule 
out a bad HD. I believe iperf is responsible because this occurred always 
sometime after I installed and ran iperf3. I have no evidence or explanation 
beyond this but there it is. For those of you who wan to run it on os X, 
consider a virtual machine or backup your system before running.

Original issue reported on code.google.com by b...@mansubi.com on 27 Feb 2014 at 3:28

GoogleCodeExporter commented 9 years ago
It's unlikely this is an iperf3 problem.

There's not a lot of evidence here, particularly given the magnitude
of the issue that's being claimed.

In particular, we don't know how iperf3 was being run (client and
server command line arguments, superuser permissions or lack thereof,
and so on).  We don't know if during the "wait a week" part of the bug
report iperf3 was continuously running or if it had just been run a
few times.  We don't know if it was the client or server side that had
problems.

Nevertheless, a few technical points:

1.  If it was being run as an ordinary user (i.e. not root) iperf3
wouldn't even have the permissions to cause any damage to the
filesystem.  Note that iperf3 does *not* require superuser privileges
to run, in its default configuration.  The only reasons I can think of
for needing to be run as root would be if iperf3 needed to bind to a
low-numbered TCP port or if one of its options (such as -F or -I)
needed to read or write to a protected directory.

2.  In its default mode of operation, iperf3 creates (to the best of
my knowledge) exactly one file, in /tmp, which is used for a
memory-mapped file.  This file creation cannot under any reasonable
set of circumstances cause a system to be unbootable.

3.  I personally have run iperf3 on OS X as a part of development and
testing, on multiple machines (both 10.8 and 10.9), over the past
three months.  They have all survived without any issues like those
described here.  I know for a fact that iperf3 has been used by others
on OS X systems yet nobody else has reported this problem.

Given the lack of detail in the bug report, plus the points above,
it's extremely hard to connect iperf3 with the reported filesystem
corruption.  It's much more likely that it was caused by something
else.

Closing as invalid.

Original comment by bmah@es.net on 27 Feb 2014 at 6:39

GoogleCodeExporter commented 9 years ago
The error has since re-occurred without the use or installation of iperf3. 
Therefore, I must concede that my own report was invalid.

Original comment by b...@mansubi.com on 27 Mar 2014 at 3:29