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posted by janrinok on Monday September 26 2016, @02:21PM   Printer-friendly
from the all-or-nothing dept.

The convoluted method Microsoft used to fix the MS16-098 double-printing bug is a harbinger of screw-ups to come with the new all-or-nothing approach to patching

http://www.infoworld.com/article/3123670/microsoft-windows/microsoft-finally-fixes-double-print-bug-but-more-patching-problems-loom.html

Microsoft finally acknowledged yesterday that it has fixed the bug that breaks certain kinds of print jobs. The problem was created by a security patch issued on Aug. 9, and in the intervening six weeks the company offered a rat's nest of partial fixes, preferential treatment, and botched communications that don't bode well for Windows 10 forced patching. It's also bad news for the anticipated October patchocalypse, when Windows 7 and 8.1 customers will start being treated to a new all-or-nothing approach to patching.

The double-print bug was distributed to every version of Windows. Those users who updated earlier versions of Windows (Vista, Windows 7, 8.1, RT 8.1, as well as Server 2008, 2008 R2, 2012, and 2012 R2) got bit by the patch known as KB 3177725. If those users wanted to get rid of the bug, they only had to uninstall KB 3177725. Of course, Microsoft has dire warnings about uninstalling security patches, but if you fell victim to this particular bug (as was the case if you use, among many, the Seagull Scientific bar-code printing package BarTender), you could back it out by uninstalling the faulty patch. When the patch went away, the bug did, too.

That's been pretty much standard procedure for a decade or two.

Windows 10 users weren't so lucky. With Windows updating-as-a-service, the only option for uninstalling the buggy patch was to unwind all of the Aug. 9 patches -- all of the security patches and all of the other patches -- then use wushowhide to hide the bad patch until a bug-free version rolled around. That's not an easy task.

And from http://www.infoworld.com/article/3122260/microsoft-windows/gwx-swept-away-as-pattern-emerges-in-windows-updates.html there is this snippet:

All of the patches are optional and will thus appear in Windows Update as unchecked -- except the time zone change. It still amazes me that Microsoft hasn't implemented a more elegant way to change time zones. Guess they've been too busy with GWX.

There's a pattern emerging ... a harbinger, if you will. KB 3185278 and KB 3185279 -- the two September update rollups -- follow the pattern that I expect we'll see starting in October. Microsoft has released the September update rollups this month as Optional/unchecked, so they won't be automatically installed. My guess is we'll see those patches changed to Recommended in October.

-- submitted from IRC


Original Submission #1Original Submission #2

 
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  • (Score: 2, Interesting) by kurenai.tsubasa on Monday September 26 2016, @05:29PM

    by kurenai.tsubasa (5227) on Monday September 26 2016, @05:29PM (#406702) Journal

    You're right. Wrong unit. My bad. I think I had a system whose epoch is 1899-12-31 0:00 of all things and uses milliseconds confused with Unix time. No leap seconds there either.

    (I have no idea what the logic behind choosing midnight on the last day of 1899 could be, but like I wrote, there are worse systems than Windows. That one in particular suffers from a chronic case of NIH syndrome on the part of the vendor.)

    Leap seconds are included in the Olson/tz database, but I haven't worked with an application like communicating with GPS where leap seconds matter. At any rate, further [wikipedia.org] reading [wikipedia.org] for the peanut gallery. Time is hard!

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