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How OS X killed my TV

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sevenlayermuddle:
Yes, really  >:(

My TV viewing these days is all mythtv based, with diskless front ends, that boot from USB sticks.  The other day I was doing some maintenance, and plugged one of the boot sticks into my MAC to do some config edits.  Then I quickly changed my mind and unplugged it again.  Yes, I know I should have gone through the 'eject' sequence, and I forgot.  But I hadn't actually done anything to it, so what harm could it do?

Plenty.  Whenever you plug a USB stick into a bog standard OS X, it seems to write dozens of files to hidden folders, named .Spotlight-V100, .Trashes, and a few others.  I have no idea what they do, and no inclination to find out.  But  next time I rebooted the frontend, 'boot error', no TV, boot sector stuffed I guess.  I can think of no other explanation than that the damage was done by OS X writing these files, and me pulling the stick without proper eject. :(

Thankfully, I had a binary image backup and so was able to restore, but what a pain.  Why on earth would the authors of an OS assume I wanted it to write to a USB stick, just because I plugged it in  ???

roseway:
I suppose you might just have been unlucky, pulling the stick out just as the OS was writing something critical to it. But I agree with you that it seems a bit odd that it should write to the stick at all. I guess this is part of the automation built into OS X, but I know nothing about how the system works.

neilius:
The .Spotlight folder holds metadata for OS X's indexing service, Spotlight. It runs when a new drive is mounted and scans all the files on that device, building an index that is searchable through the spotlight button in the menu. As for .Trashes, that's created for when you delete files on the device in Finder. They actually get moved there and are only deleted when you empty the Trash in Finder. The . in front of each folder name is the normal Unix way of making a file or folder hidden and since OS X is basically Unix underneath...

sevenlayermuddle:

--- Quote from: neilius on September 22, 2013, 03:59:22 PM ---The .Spotlight folder holds metadata for OS X's indexing service, Spotlight. It runs when a new drive is mounted and scans all the files on that device, building an index that is searchable through the spotlight button in the menu. As for .Trashes, that's created for when you delete files on the device in Finder. They actually get moved there and are only deleted when you empty the Trash in Finder. The . in front of each folder name is the normal Unix way of making a file or folder hidden and since OS X is basically Unix underneath...

--- End quote ---

Thanks, yes - I realise that OS X is Unix underneath.  But having a spent  most of my career working on Unix systems, I'm not at all sure that 'behind the scenes' shenanigans such as writing data to a USB drive without being asked, is really in the spirit of Unix.  And it is asking for trouble - yes I should have 'ejected' the volume before removing it, but people make mistakes and it's too high a price to pay for such a simple mistake.

In my view simply plugging a USB stick into a PC, then immediately removing it without even browsing its contents, really should not corrupt the stick.

I also see no value in services like 'spotlight'.  If I put the files on the system then I know where they are, so  why would I want an index?  And for the rare occasions I may forget, there's always good old Unix 'find'.

GigabitEthernet:
You do know that you can change what Spotlight indexes right?

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