back to article 'Adobe Creative Cloud update ate my backup!'

How about this for bizarre bug of the week: the latest version of Adobe Creative Cloud deletes the first hidden directory in root directories on Macs. That's bad news for users of BackBlaze: the backup software stores a .bzvol folder in the top level of every drive it backs up, and uses these folders to store information about …

  1. ecofeco Silver badge

    FFS

    This shit is getting old. Time to sue. Or prosecute.

    1. Steve Davies 3 Silver badge

      Re: FFS

      Exactly. If this was Apple making this mistake at least 20 Class Actions would have been filed already. Each one claiming $5M in damages. Naturally $4.999M would go to the lawyers in the event of it being successful.

      1. Ole Juul

        Re: FFS

        This won't stop me from using it.

        (I've already got plenty of other reasons.)

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: FFS

      This shit is getting old. Time to sue and prosecute.

      FTFY ;)

  2. This post has been deleted by its author

  3. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    There are no words

    To describe just how f**king stupid this bug is.

    Did they let go their QA department or something? :(

    1. Captain DaFt

      Re: There are no words

      Has anyone ever seen any evidence of a QA dept. at Adobe?

      1. Richard Jones 1
        FAIL

        Re: There are no words

        I guess that QA in their speak means Question and Answer as in:

        'Please see the FAQ section'.

        FAQ

        Question: What is software testing?

        Answer: Not found

      2. P. Lee

        Re: There are no words

        >Has anyone ever seen any evidence of a QA dept. at Adobe?

        'Twas done on a clean install of the OS, with only adobe installed. Realistically, it would be a pretty hard bug to find by symptom outside beta test/general release.

        That doesn't excuse the coding flaw and (lack of) audit.

    2. SVV

      Re: There are no words

      The time to stop putting such faith in QA ihas long passed to prevent this sort of problem.

      The fact is that all unix based operating systems and whatever mish mash of stuff that currently constitutes Windows allows all the to happen has cost however many billions of hours and pounds in time spent resolving issues because users and applications can easily go in and dellete folders and files.

      All decent unix sysadmins know that you don't login or run as root unless you are doing specific admin work on the file system, and you are VERY careful when doing so : even if tthe change seems trivilal, you conciously take extra care. Everything ellse you do under a user account with appropriate privileges specifically to prevent these sort of "accidents".

      Time for Apple / MS / Linux distros that asprire to general desktop use by non IT people to enforce this model as the default configuration when installed. And installed application packages then get explicitly sandboxed so they can't touch anything else apartr from their own files in non-root user mode. And yes, it will be patronising, but when that OS boots up the first few times, the user has to sit and read a warning that root /administrator logins should only ever be done by experienced people to do specific cleanup and modifications, etc, but if you ignore this and run at this level of privilege out of laziness anything you screw up, you fix..

  4. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    More CloudFog...

    Subscription models suck....

    1. KeithR

      Re: More CloudFog...

      "Subscription models suck...."

      It's PRECISELY FUCK ALL to do with subscription licencing; and EVERYTHING to do with cheaping out on testing, governance, due diligence, in order to put more money into shareholders' pockets.

      The American Way, I believe it's called...

      1. waldo kitty
        Boffin

        Re: More CloudFog...

        The American Way, I believe it's called...

        no, it is not the American way... it is the greedy corporate way... it is not specific to America (or the USA) at all...

        1. @YevP

          Re: More CloudFog...

          Yev with Backblaze here => We're in America :P

          1. Anonymous Coward
            Terminator

            @@YevP

            Welcome to the machine

      2. Dan 55 Silver badge

        Re: More CloudFog...

        It is partly to do with subscription licencing... It doesn't matter whatever is shat out of Adobe's main branch onto people's computers at the end of the month, if there's a problem the fix is for the customer to stay subscribed for a month or two more until it magically fixes itself.

        If it were a software package they would have an alpha/beta test to detect it and they'd have to hold the release until it's fixed because it'd be a show stopper.

      3. dan1980

        Re: More CloudFog...

        @KeithR

        "It's PRECISELY FUCK ALL to do with subscription licencing . . ."

        Yes, the BUG itself has nothing to do with subscription licensing but its impact absolutely does because one of the the things with subscription-licensed, cloud-activated software is the automatic updating.

        It's the difference between the user controlling the software on their machine and the vendor controlling it. The users are at their mercy.

  5. Mark 85
    Facepalm

    The Facepalm of the Week Award

    I do believe Adobe wins again.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: The Facepalm of the Week Award

      Given this latest jewel in the crown of excrement that adorns said company, imagine the shame of working in any capacity at Adobe. I'll wager even the outsourced office cleaners tell their families that they play the piano in a brothel.

      1. Blitterbug
        Thumb Up

        Re: crown of excrement

        Ah, le mot juste....

  6. allthecoolshortnamesweretaken

    "One way to stop this from happening is to run sudo mkdir /.adobedontdeletemybzvol in a Terminal and enter your administrator password. This will create a sacrificial file for Creative Cloud to eat."

    Sure. Easy-peasy for the garden variety mac user.

    1. Ken Moorhouse Silver badge

      Re: Sure. Easy-peasy for the garden variety mac user.

      This time round, yes, but next time CC wants a munch then what's next on the menu?

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: Sure. Easy-peasy for the garden variety mac user.

        Next to go will be the last hidden file, natch. After that, oh I don't know, all hidden files that start with a vowel? Most recently modified? All of them?

  7. Tringle

    Only affects Macs . .

    Haven't stopped laughing yet.

  8. Christoph

    So who first told Adobe about this bug, and have Adobe had them thrown in jail yet?

  9. jake Silver badge

    That is not "bizarre" ...

    ... That is a total, utter, complete lack of QA/QC.

    If that doesn't permanently shutter Adobe, it will prove that the proles are even stupider than I had feared ... maybe I should put aside my scruples & start separating fools from their money.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: That is not "bizarre" ...

      I canceled my Adobe "agreement" two months ago, feeling really good about it!

      Funny thing, their call centre tried to claim that because I had allowed two automatic payments to occur (beyond the one-year contract), I had therefore also automatically re-upped for a second year's contract. Meaning, I was now auto-obligated to rent their stuff for another full year.

      I made loud noises like "theft" and "actionable." They quickly changed their tune and made a "special exception" just for me. Weasels.

  10. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    What I find funniest about this, is how badly the coders must cock up for this to happen.

    You don't 'accidentally' delete the *contents* of the first hidden folder *in alphabetical order*.

    How do they even find the folder they want to delete? Do they just go into the file system and take the list of folders contained in / and then iterate through them to find the first hidden folder? Who codes like that? I mean "first hidden folder" is really specific. Even if they did want to delete a folder in /tmp/adobe_installer/ or something, just using the first random thing that pops up and then deleting that? I mean I'm a shit programmer but even I don't do that...

    1. Michael B.

      I'm assuming that they must create a hidden folder as part of the installation process and in the cleanup process they grab the directory listing, filter it for the relevant temp folder and then pass it as a list through to a generic cleanup routine that thankfully is just popping off the first folder in the list.

      My assumption is that the filter routine is broken so we should be thankful that the CC installer doesn't delete the entire hard drive. Perhaps Adobe's QA team might have spotted that one.

    2. Fibbles

      Hidden folder names start with a fullstop (period) and will always appear before none hidden folders in an alphabetical directory listing. They're really just deleting the 'first folder'.

  11. Jaxn

    Something more

    In our case it deleted every project work directory on the effected Mac; maybe a Gig of files. We watched them disappear slowly but surely over an hour or so.

    1. Tom 7

      Re: Something more

      You watched them disappear?

      Over an hour?

      1. allthecoolshortnamesweretaken

        Re: Something more

        "You watched them disappear?"

        More interesting than the screen saver, I guess...

  12. Tromos

    "while it investigates the programming cockup"...

    ...and comes to the conclusion that it is caused by using code provided by Adobe.

    Note to Adobe: maybe stop hiring programmers whose previous job involved wearing metre long shoes and sporting a red nose.

    1. Lysenko

      Nooooo....

      You're so 20th century!!!

      This is DevOps! The goal is continuous delivery, the metric is MTTR[1] (Mean Time to Remediate) and the strategy is BTIP[2] (Beta Test in Production).

      Shipping junk doesn't matter. What counts is you pass the unit tests, ship to schedule, and then clean up the mess in the next iteration (of junk).

      [1] No, I'm not making that up:

      http://m.theregister.co.uk/2016/01/27/devops_bs_detector/

      [2] That one I made up.

    2. allthecoolshortnamesweretaken

      Re: "while it investigates the programming cockup"...

      ...maybe stop hiring programmers whose previous job involved wearing metre long shoes and sporting a red nose."

      Depends. Those guys are the best for compression algorithms.

  13. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    DevOps in action.

    1. GrumpenKraut

      > DevOps in action.

      It's hyperagile deletion. Hectic removal is so yesterday!

    2. allthecoolshortnamesweretaken

      Yeah. No way this would have happened using the brisk OpsDev approach...

  14. picturethis
    Thumb Down

    Ironic...

    That a cloud-based piece of software is responsible for destroying local data... If the "Cloud" (sic) is such a good idea, why is there any need for using a local drive at all?

    In fact, I think it should be required that there should be no drive installed for cloud-based software to work - let's see how well it works then. :)

    WTF adobe..

    I stopped upgrading Adobe CC after (11,12?) - whatever the last version was that I could still purchase.

    FU adobe ( I haven't said that in a while and they need to hear it). They haven't produced a product that I use in many years now.

    (I've been getting downvoted a lot lately, my guess is that this post will continue that trend.. Now, get off my lawn).

    1. KeithR

      Re: Ironic...

      "That a cloud-based piece of software is responsible for destroying local data... If the "Cloud" (sic) is such a good idea, why is there any need for using a local drive at all?"

      OK, it's obvious that you don't understand Creative Cloud.

      At all.

    2. Alumoi Silver badge

      Re: Ironic...

      "Ironic...

      That a cloud-based piece of software is responsible for destroying local data... "

      But that's the ideea, since you've moved your data into the cloud your local data is redundant so we'll delete it for you. For your convenience, if you ask why.

  15. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    A classic tale...

    ... of lazy developer and flawed OS design.

    The lack of attributes on files and proper permissions by *nix systems in 2016 is truly incredible. And of course lazy developers will write stupid software that will create havoc on designs forty years too old.

    Proper permissions on properly hidden folders would have forbidden bad developers to delete what they should have not.

    1. KeithR

      Re: A classic tale...

      "A classic tale...

      ... of lazy developer and flawed OS design."

      Yep. Nothing to do with "the cloud", or SAAS; just bad business/development practices.

      1. GrumpenKraut

        Re: A classic tale...

        > of lazy developer

        indeed, but

        > and flawed OS design

        what? How and why could or should the O/S stop the deletion of files?

        1. This post has been deleted by its author

    2. Roo

      Re: A classic tale...

      "The lack of attributes on files and proper permissions by *nix systems in 2016"

      xattr & acls not enough for you ?

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Linux

        Re: A classic tale...

        Leave the man alone, he is after all working from a decades old fud manual.

        "ACLs .. were added to version 2.5.46 of the Linux kernel in November 2002" ref

  16. RealityisntReal

    But if it only affects Macs who cares?

    1. GrumpenKraut
      Trollface

      > But if it only affects Macs who cares?

      PETA

  17. channel extended
    Trollface

    So now I know....

    When I heard that Flash was finally dead I rejoiced!!! Now that I know where the programmers went I am sad. Adobe, crap is crap, test longer than 2 hours and on more than one machine.

    SaaS =-> Shite as a (Adobe)Service

  18. Giles C Silver badge

    Hmm, after this I am proud to say my Mac is an adobe free zone.

    No flash

    No acrobat

    No photoshop

    Or anything else made by that company

    Might be due to an argument with cancelling a CC subscription though....

    Also get regularly spammed on the email address that was only ever used for creative cloud login....

  19. RISC OS

    Probably caused by adobe

    incorporating the latest patch from the NSA

POST COMMENT House rules

Not a member of The Register? Create a new account here.

  • Enter your comment

  • Add an icon

Anonymous cowards cannot choose their icon

Other stories you might like