17 years ago, C:\nul\nul crashed/BSOD Windows; now $MFT does for Windows < 10

Source:

History repeating itself: [Archive.is] 31607 – C:\nul\nul crashes/BSOD then, now it’s this:

• [WayBack] A bug in NTFS, or hang the entire system / Blog Aladdin RD / Habrahabr
• [WayBack] Баг в NTFS, или как подвесить всю систему / Блог компании Аладдин Р.Д. / Хабрахабр
• [WayBack] In a throwback to the ’90s, NTFS bug lets anyone hang or crash Windows 7, 8.1 | Ars Technica UK
• [WayBack] NTFS bug allows any website to crash Windows 7, 8.1

Via:

• [WayBack] NTFS bug allows any website to crash Windows 7, 8.1Users of older versions of Windows aren’t having the best time of it lately. Last week it was disco… – BetaNews – Google+
• [WayBack] Writing solid code is really hard these days … – Lars Fosdal – Google+

All versions prior to Windows 10 and Windows Server 2016 seem vulnerable.

So add $MFT to this list:

The following device names have been known to render a system unstable: CON,
NUL, AUX, PRN, CLOCK$, COMx, LPT1, and CONFIG$.

Oh BTW: history repeated itself this year too. With NUL

In short, Steven Sheldon created a rust package named nul which broke the complete package manager on Windows:

• [WayBack] How I Broke Rust’s Package Manager for All Windows Users – sasheldon.com
• [WayBack] I Broke Rusts Package Manager for Windows Users | Hacker News
• [WayBack] I think a crate called ‘nul’ is causing errors for cargo (windows).
• [WayBack] @bstrie: @sheldonut Hi Steven, Rust team here :) We’re having some technical difficulties with the name of one of your crates… feel free to DM
• [WayBack] Null character – Wikipedia
• [WayBack] IRC Logs for #rust-internals | BotBot.me [o__o] – 2017-04-30 – 84953638 – page 4
• [WayBack] List of software package management systems – Wikipedia: Application-level package managers
• [WayBack] I think the name of this project causes issues for windows users. · Issue #1 · SSheldon/nul
  • When cargo updates its crates.io registry, it creates a file for each crate, no extension, just the name.The name nul is not a valid name in windows 10, so cargo fails to update the registry, and then aborts whatever it was doing (building, searching, ect.).

    I think this project should be re-published to crates.io under a new name, something like null-strings perhaps?

• [WayBack] Fresh install unable to install anything · Issue #3982 · rust-lang/cargo
  • Here is what I see with verbose. I get this trying to install clippy or rustfmt. I assume I would get it with other crates.Updating registry https://github.com/rust-lang/crates.io-index
    error: [20/-1] Cannot checkout to invalid path ‘3/n/nul’
• [WayBack] IRC Logs for #rust | BotBot.me [o__o] – 2017-04-30 – msg 84953614 – page=19
• [WayBack] What’s the deal with those reserved filenames like NUL and CON? – The Old New Thing
• The solution: [WayBack] Reserve windows crate names. by withoutboats · Pull Request #695 · rust-lang/crates.io
• [WayBack] @withoutboats boats ✨ on Twitter: “I thought Rust was supposed to prevent nul errors! ;-)”

BTW: one of my gripes on learning new languages is that they come with a whole new idiom of their ecosystem: rust, cargo, crates, all sound like being a truck mechanic to me.

–jeroen