https://numi.st/post/2022/facepalm/

numist log

<!--  -->

When we were first adding Mac OS X guest support at ware, we had to
inject some XML into the operating system during early boot so the
kernel would load kexts we needed to support our existing virtual
hardware (like the PS/2 driver, since I hadn't finished writing the
virtual USB keyboard yet). The year was 2009.

2019 comes around and I, along with many of my old coworkers, have
moved on to Apple. One of them reaches out to me about a panic that's
only happening on virtual machines. Investigation has revealed some
weird XML corruption in a system file, and he thought I might have
some clues. Realizing immediately what was happening, I came over and
confessed my sins to a group of suitably-horrified^1 kernel
engineers.

Luckily these shenanigans weren't actually necessary anymore, so
there is now an XML comment (containing a certain emoji) at a
specific offset in that system file.

 1. And amused! -

Page created Nov 12 2022
Comments welcome by email, corrections on GitHub