iSteve

If you're booting off the CD, have you gone to Disk Utility and formatted the drive?

You can't. You have to use Firefox's built in admin stuff inside the app (right click the app > show package contents etc) You can hard code the home page, then push out the app using Apple Remote Deskop if you have it, or SSH or whatever. If you have a proxy, you can install the switch proxy extension to the app and have it copy the Mac OS X proxy set via WGM.

For ease of use, buy Mac OS X Server unlimited. It's only around £250 and a Mac Mini can easily cope with dishing out managed preferences. Depending on the number of macs you have, you could have it host NetBoot / Netinstall images for OS deployment too...

We've had this a few times and it's been to do with corrupt fonts (if my memory serves me correctly). We used Font Fiangler/Fangler (?) to sort things out. This was back in the day of 10.4.3 though.

We run Final Cut Express but I assume there will be similarities.... We have our machines set to create a local home folder for the network user on the local hard disk of the computers. Final Cut will put various working folders in the user's home folder - this is a bad idea if you are running network homes. Also, you cannot capture video over the network. The rule we use is that if you are working with video in iMovie, or FC Express, you must work locally, even if you save projects to a global read/write folder on the local hard drive.

Doesn't that just allow playback of a file, rather than true streaming?

Turns out this issue was due to a flakey AD plugin with 10.5.4 and the way we'd joined machines using a script to bodge binding. The machine looses it's bindings on and off, meaning it doesn't know who's logged in, and refuses access randomly to shares and so forth. Problem is resolved with a new plug in in 10.5.5. We're aiming to push out a new image to our Macs over Xmas so this will solve our problem!

Wondering if anyone on here is using Adobe Flash Streaming Server to stream video files (.flv) around their school. I've set up a video on demand system here, and my files are progressive download instead of true streaming. We found flash gave better quality encodes over QuickTime streaming. If anyone is using Flash Streaming, how easy is it to get set up and running?

Here's our script: #!/bin/bash # Leopard Localhomes script July 2008 homePath=`/bin/ls /Volumes/ | /usr/bin/grep "NetworkHomes\|year\|extra"` if [ "$homePath" ]; then ######## Softlink homefolder # Remove the dummy desktop if it's there /bin/rm -rf /Users/${USER}/Desktop # Check the Desktop folder exists then softlink if [ ! -d /Volumes/$homePath/$USER/Desktop ]; then mkdir /Volumes/$homePath/$USER/Desktop fi /bin/ln -Fs /Volumes/$homePath/$USER/Desktop ~/Desktop # Check the Documents folder exists then softlink if [ ! -d /Volumes/$homePath/$USER/Documents ]; then mkdir /Volumes/$homePath/$USER/Documents fi /bin/ln -fs /Volumes/$homePath/$USER/Documents ~/Documents # Check the Pictures folder exists then softlink if [ ! -d /Volumes/$homePath/$USER/Pictures ]; then mkdir /Volumes/$homePath/$USER/Pictures fi /bin/ln -fs /Volumes/$homePath/$USER/Pictures ~/Pictures # Check the Music folder exists then softlink if [ ! -d /Volumes/$homePath/$USER/Music ]; then mkdir /Volumes/$homePath/$USER/Music fi /bin/ln -fs /Volumes/$homePath/$USER/Music ~/Music /bin/rm ~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.sidebarlists.plist /bin/chmod a-w /Users/$USER ###### Create C13 SMHF subfolders # Check we are in C13 if [ `hostname | grep C13` ]; then # Check that the folder doesn't already exist if [ ! -d /Save\ Movie\ Here\ First/${USER} ]; then mkdir /Save\ Movie\ Here\ First/${USER} chmod -R 770 /Save\ Movie\ Here\ First/${USER} fi fi # Restart Finder killall Finder # Inform User config is done osascript -e 'tell application "Finder"' -e 'display dialog "This Mac OS X Leopard Computer is now ready for you to enjoy" buttons {"OK"} default button 1' -e 'end tell' else osascript -e 'tell application "Finder"' -e 'display dialog "Unable to connect to homefolder"' -e 'end tell' fi Linking to documents works, as does everything else. It just WON'T do the desktop! It leaves the user's local desktop folder in place like it's ignoring that part. We found Mike Bombich's scripts useful on his site, if that helps with your mandatory profiles set-up.

Hello again! We are experimenting with setting our 10.5.5 iMacs to run a 'localhomes' set-up. This means that when a user logs in they are given a fresh home folder from a template, with links made to their documents on the network. A script performs the template copying and redirection on login. This works perfectly on our 10.4.11 machines, but under 10.5 the 'Desktop' folder will not redirect! I was looking at cache redirection on the forums here, and was thinking if there was a way to delete the /Users/%@/Desktop folder, and make it link to their Desktop on the network? Is there are variable like '%@' for user, for the home path? Thanks!

I've checked through the perms, and reset them, even to global RW for testing to no avail. Someone also suggested checking permissions to the user's Caches folder, but they were fine. I'll probably end up setting the user back up as a local user as they need to get on with their day-job without my fiddling!

Hello, I have another Mac problem! We have a machine with InDesign CS3 installed on Mac OS 10.5.5. The user used to have a portable home folder, but the benefits were outweighed by the number of sync errors she received, so she has been switched back to network homes. A result of this is that Adobe InDesign stops working. It gives an error that it can't find ROMAN.TXT, which lives in /Library/App Support/Adobe..... and that the software needs reinstalling. I have tried this to no avail. Some other web users have posted on forums with the same problem but I can't find any answers. I've made sure she has read and write permission to the folders in question, and, the file is there. Any ideas? I'd like to keep her on network homes if possible, but if there is no work around I will have to move her to portable or local homes Thanks again guys!

You should also be able to export to QuickTime and chose "expert settings". This will allow you to export to a variety of formats. This is built in to iMovie.

Thanks for your replies on this. Our 2008 software has arrived for some in-house testing now. Just wanted to check here incase there were any common problems of anything! Cheers!

Blocking edgefcs.net works a treat! Thanks!

I'm assuming this is a Windows only suggestion? We run Mac and Win clients so I guess we'd need something more 'network' based.

Hello, We have a 'cachebox' filtering appliance provided by our LEA. We use this to block unsuitable websites so that our students don't waste time playing Flash games instead of doing their work. The problem is, we cannot seem to block the BBC iPlayer with this appliance. We enter the iPlayer URL as normal to block it, but it still loads for the kids. Is there are more cunning way I can prevent access? Can I do something with DNS that will point the iPlayer domain to our school home page, for example? Any ideas welcome, as usual!

Sounds like the analogue board - typical fault with the tray load iMacs

Over the past 3 years we've had 3 eMacs with Capacitor faults, one iMac ship with a dead optical drive, 2 MacBooks with screen issues on arrival and 2 iMacs with vertical LCD lines. Out of 300 Macs, I guess we're lucky!

Hello, Over this year, we are looking at upgrading our Windows 2000 servers to Server 2008. Before we start our preliminary testing, has anyone had any issues or problems binding Mac OS 10.4.11 or 10.5 clients to 2008's Active Directory? Any other interoperability issues I should be aware of? We also have home folder storage on a 10.4.11 XServe server - I assume this, once rebound to the new 2008 server should continue to work as normal.... If anyone is running a similar set-up, any advice would be very welcome. Thanks!

Hello again We're using Mac OS 10.5.4 in one of our IT suites, with preferences managed by a 10.5.4 server. Our set-up in this room is experiencing some strange issues.... A student will log in, but have a no entry sign on their Applications folder on the local machine. This only happens to a few students, but is not tied to a particular kid or particular machine! The permissions of the folder are as you would expect - everyone can read but not write. Some students can work on the machine, then 30 mins later, they get a no entry sign on the Apps folder. Has anyone seen this happen before? We're at a bit of a loss here as we cannot make it happen consistently and permissions etc are fine?

Thanks! I know this is a basic question - will it search inside compressed/zip files?

I have a Dual 1.8GHz G5 tower, 3GB, 500GB and a 20" TFT. It works for me!

Hello, I need to search through an email archive on our system to find any messages containing a particular user's name. All of our email is archived into a folder, and each message is a simple .eml file. Does anyone know of a utility, or command line option that will search through these .eml files for a string of text?

One of my users uses Entourage 2004 to access his email, in fact, he's the only member of staff who does. He's on Mac OS 10.4.11, and our mail is IMAP based. He's moved from an eMac, to an iMac over the summer and now when he accesses his email, it doesn't show two sub folders from his mailbox folders. If he logs in to our email system with our web interface, they are there....using Entourage, they are not! I think this behaviour is slightly strange as all the mail is all held on the server and the mail client just 'reads' it from the server. All other folders and sub folders he has created are there. All folders were created before he moved machines. Any ideas?