

Buy an iPod, get a free virus. - ericb
http://www.cnn.com/2008/TECH/ptech/03/13/factory.installed.virus.ap/index.html
Going forward, I'm wiping new machines and reinstalling from disk when they arrive.<p>Not to mention that the factory install of os X was seemingly screwed up on my MBP and missing tar and gnutar entirely.
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ericb
Going forward, I'm wiping new machines and reinstalling from disk when they
arrive.

Not to mention that the factory install of os X was seemingly screwed up on my
MBP and missing tar and gnutar and I'm still not sure what else.

~~~
eb
There was nothing wrong with your factory install. As I said in a previous
reply, gnutar is installed as part of Apple's Xcode Tools. It is not included
by default.

There is no reason to format every factory-new machine that you receive.
That's just paranoia. These incidents have been relatively rare.

~~~
ericb
And as I said in that post, I already had the Xcode Tools installed. In fact,
based on your advice, I reinstalled the Xcode Tools to be sure.

You're telling me that plain old tar should be missing, by default, on an OS X
machine? I ended up taking tar and gnutar from a buddy's machine who did not
have Xcode Tools installed. He's not a developer--he doesn't know what xcode
is! He had both files from a clean install of his shiny new Leopard install
disk.

It's not paranoia. You trust strangers in China? What's the downside to
reinstalling? Maybe an hour? The upside is reduced risk of someone emptying
out your bank account. For these factory workers, the contents of one US bank
account might be 5-10 years pay. If you think this is paranoia, hope you don't
manage any security functions. I think it's just being safe.

~~~
eb
If you installed Xcode Tools/Developer Tools, then you have a copy of gnutar.
Mac OS X, like other BSD systems, include their own version of userland tools
in the base system. If you want the GNU version of specific tools, you have to
install it separately. That's why gnutar is in MacPorts and that's why, if you
extract the Developer Tools package, you'll find gnutar. It's not there by
default.

I find your claim that somehow your factory install is incomplete very
unlikely. Your factory-new laptop is missing these specific files yet
everything else operates normally? No.

~~~
ericb
Forget gnutar, let's talk about tar which was also missing. Can you show me
that tar should be missing from a new os x install and is installed only with
xcode tools? The problem is, if you could, that still wouldn't explain things,
but I can tell you're dying to be right.

Unlikely stuff happens, just less often. I appreciate that you were trying to
be helpful and to you I'm just "random internet guy" but I'm being honest, I
already fixed the problem, and it was as I am stating. Telling someone staring
at a blue moon that "that's unlikely" is just going to piss them off. You've
squandered the goodwill and karma your original helpful comment in the other
thread merited. This conversation has nothing to do with xcode anymore, but a
lot to do with tool. Can we stop the "it works on my machine" BS now and move
on?

