Well the good news is that it seems as though my two Macs at my home have stabilized from the upgrade and I haven't had any lingering problems.
My Mac Pro at work still seems to be an issue though. I came in the other day and was continuing to have problems with the SMB share mounting. Someone on the Apple support forums said that the SMB stuff really wasn't the problem, but merely a symptom and that the real problem had to do with Kerberos authentication. He said that I could look in my log files to confirm. I did as was suggested and didn't see any kerberos messages. However, I did see a number of messages dealing starting out with DFX:. OK... not sure what that is. Still I continued to do research and someone said something about reinstalling any third-party apps that interacted with Finder. I only have one: Default Folder X (ah ha... DFX). So I removed it and reinstalled and all seemed to be well with the world.
Well that lasted for a week or so actually. Then yesterday I came in to work and was unable to mount any SMB shares... again. I stopped DFX... still no go. I finally unbound my Mac from AD and then rebound it and eventually SMB shares started working again. Now I've got DFX running again and all is good. This is frustrating because I don't have any direction to go in order to really solve the underlying issue. I'd like to think that it's fully fixed, but I don't have any great sense that it really is.
Tuesday, December 30, 2008
Thursday, December 18, 2008
10.5.6
Here's another update on my experiences with 10.5.6. So far, my initial problem "seems" fixed. But I do have a weird thing happening. When I originally bound my Mac to AD, I didn't set up the mobile user feature. So, when I would get the login screen, I would have two options: local user or Other. Other would prompt me for credentials, I would enter AD credentials and I was on. In the past several months with some testing I've been doing, I activated the mobile user feature so I now also have a login icon that has my AD user name in it. It allows me to login into AD with my AD credentials just like Other.
When I was having the trouble I documented in the previous post with even being able to connect to an SMB share, I was using the Other login. As I documented, I finally got it going. Today, for some reason, I logged in using the mobile user icon. I got onto the desktop without issue, but noticed that my SMB shares didn't mount in Finder. When I tried to do it manually I had the same issues that I had the day before. I immediately logged out and then back in using Other and the problem vanished. That's really odd, considering both icons take me to the same user profile and home folder...
When I was having the trouble I documented in the previous post with even being able to connect to an SMB share, I was using the Other login. As I documented, I finally got it going. Today, for some reason, I logged in using the mobile user icon. I got onto the desktop without issue, but noticed that my SMB shares didn't mount in Finder. When I tried to do it manually I had the same issues that I had the day before. I immediately logged out and then back in using Other and the problem vanished. That's really odd, considering both icons take me to the same user profile and home folder...
Wednesday, December 17, 2008
Holding My Breath and Knocking on Wood
Just installed 10.5.6. Of course scoured the update list looking for mention of anything to do with my SMB problem... nothing. Still I've had pretty good luck with Apple updates, so I bit the bullet and installed it. Nothing immediately seems wrong. So I go to run my test for the SMB problem... Hmmm... now I can't connect to any SMB share. This isn't good. When I attempt to do a Go To Server from Finder, I get nothing.. just the window that says it's trying to connect. Or I get a prompt for my credentials... weird since I'm using AD binding and an AD login... but anyway, I input my credentials and nothing.
I know that I may have complexed things because in the last day or two, I've done a sync on MobileMe and I'm wondering if things in my keychain may have gotten overwritten or ... I don't know... anyway. I unbind my Mac and then rebind it... still nothing. So I replace the keychain with a new one. This doesn't seem like the answer either. Finally, I am able to get "connected" to an SMB share when I do Go To Network and browse the network, but still can't when I do Go To Server... odd. So, I delete the "new" blank keychain and put the old one back. All of a sudden it's all working. Not sure if the keychain thing was the answer... shouldn't have been, but perhaps, or maybe OS X and AD just needed to get in sync again. At any rate I am good again, so I finally start my test.
As before I mount and unmount several SMB shares quickly in succession for about 7-8 times and no Kernel Panics. So, I take the big leap and add back in my AppleScript to my login items to mount the shares. This seems to work OK. Since doing all of this, I have logged out several items and rebooted my Mac as well as accessing several documents on these shares and so far (holding my breath and knocking on wood) it's working OK. I also had the weird video display problem and that too, hasn't reappeared. I'll reserve judgement until I run with this for a week or so, but right now it looks good.
I know that I may have complexed things because in the last day or two, I've done a sync on MobileMe and I'm wondering if things in my keychain may have gotten overwritten or ... I don't know... anyway. I unbind my Mac and then rebind it... still nothing. So I replace the keychain with a new one. This doesn't seem like the answer either. Finally, I am able to get "connected" to an SMB share when I do Go To Network and browse the network, but still can't when I do Go To Server... odd. So, I delete the "new" blank keychain and put the old one back. All of a sudden it's all working. Not sure if the keychain thing was the answer... shouldn't have been, but perhaps, or maybe OS X and AD just needed to get in sync again. At any rate I am good again, so I finally start my test.
As before I mount and unmount several SMB shares quickly in succession for about 7-8 times and no Kernel Panics. So, I take the big leap and add back in my AppleScript to my login items to mount the shares. This seems to work OK. Since doing all of this, I have logged out several items and rebooted my Mac as well as accessing several documents on these shares and so far (holding my breath and knocking on wood) it's working OK. I also had the weird video display problem and that too, hasn't reappeared. I'll reserve judgement until I run with this for a week or so, but right now it looks good.
Monday, December 1, 2008
Is the Apple Green?
Just read a blog post over on MacWorld's MacUser blog about how Greenpeace is still giving Apple less than a green rating.
I'll be blunt... who cares what Geeenpeace thinks? Most, not all, but most of the whackos in the green movement have totally lost site of reality. Is Apple a totally green company... no, but they have made great strides towards that end.
I think that the main problem that green movement folks have is that none, or almost none, of them were alive during a time when things with the environment really were bad. I was alive during the 1960's and 1970's when air and water quality in the US was really bad. Back then, when the EPA got started and people really started to take a look at how we deal with our environment, we really did a fairly poor job of dealing with the land and the air and water. I don't have any numbers in front of me to share with you, but the reality of my experience says that water and air quality today is way improved over what it was 30-50 years ago.
Now, does that mean that we can't do any better, no, of course not. But my guess is that the collective inexperience of the whackos in the green movement keeps them from appreciating the great strides that we have made in the last 30-50 years. It's the same shortsightedness that keeps my kids from understanding that there was a time without computers and game systems.
There was a story that I heard several years ago about some body of water that was heavily polluted. Environmentalists got going and started a campaign to clean up this body of water. They succeeded and at the time of the story, it was estimated that the water in there was now somewhere around 95% clean. But that wasn't good enough for these folks... they wanted it to be something like 97% clean. It appears that they had no real appreciation for what had been done or to the fact that gaining that extra few percentage points of cleanliness would most likely be a massive financial burden to those responsible for the water and not really noticed by those using it.
Am I suggesting that Apple or we consumers should just ignore our environment just because we've made great strides? Of course not. but to be blunt... who is Greenpeace and who put them in charge of anything? Apple needs to keep doing what it can to be a good steward of the environment, as do we all. So I say let Greenpeace keep giving out their ratings and let's just ignore them and let's use our own good judgement to see if a company is doing due diligence in doing their part for the environment. If a company is not being a good steward of the environment then we can vote with our dollars. And if we ignore organizations such as Greenpeace... perhaps they'll just go away.
A respondent to the article on the blog about Greenpeace's rating of Apple said it best: "They won't be happy until Apple use tree limbs, leafs, and acorns for their products.
Personally, I'd like to know what kind of computers Greenpeace use that are so environmentally friendly."
I'll be blunt... who cares what Geeenpeace thinks? Most, not all, but most of the whackos in the green movement have totally lost site of reality. Is Apple a totally green company... no, but they have made great strides towards that end.
I think that the main problem that green movement folks have is that none, or almost none, of them were alive during a time when things with the environment really were bad. I was alive during the 1960's and 1970's when air and water quality in the US was really bad. Back then, when the EPA got started and people really started to take a look at how we deal with our environment, we really did a fairly poor job of dealing with the land and the air and water. I don't have any numbers in front of me to share with you, but the reality of my experience says that water and air quality today is way improved over what it was 30-50 years ago.
Now, does that mean that we can't do any better, no, of course not. But my guess is that the collective inexperience of the whackos in the green movement keeps them from appreciating the great strides that we have made in the last 30-50 years. It's the same shortsightedness that keeps my kids from understanding that there was a time without computers and game systems.
There was a story that I heard several years ago about some body of water that was heavily polluted. Environmentalists got going and started a campaign to clean up this body of water. They succeeded and at the time of the story, it was estimated that the water in there was now somewhere around 95% clean. But that wasn't good enough for these folks... they wanted it to be something like 97% clean. It appears that they had no real appreciation for what had been done or to the fact that gaining that extra few percentage points of cleanliness would most likely be a massive financial burden to those responsible for the water and not really noticed by those using it.
Am I suggesting that Apple or we consumers should just ignore our environment just because we've made great strides? Of course not. but to be blunt... who is Greenpeace and who put them in charge of anything? Apple needs to keep doing what it can to be a good steward of the environment, as do we all. So I say let Greenpeace keep giving out their ratings and let's just ignore them and let's use our own good judgement to see if a company is doing due diligence in doing their part for the environment. If a company is not being a good steward of the environment then we can vote with our dollars. And if we ignore organizations such as Greenpeace... perhaps they'll just go away.
A respondent to the article on the blog about Greenpeace's rating of Apple said it best: "They won't be happy until Apple use tree limbs, leafs, and acorns for their products.
Personally, I'd like to know what kind of computers Greenpeace use that are so environmentally friendly."
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