The Cat Convention http://www.catconventionshow.com Everything about Apple in the enterprise Mon, 06 Feb 2012 19:44:45 +0000 en hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.3.1 VPN Service in 10.7.3 Fix http://www.catconventionshow.com/2012/02/06/vpn-service-in-10-7-3-fix/ http://www.catconventionshow.com/2012/02/06/vpn-service-in-10-7-3-fix/#comments Mon, 06 Feb 2012 19:44:44 +0000 Jason Miller http://www.catconventionshow.com/?p=242 Those of you who have taken the plunge into 10.7.3 on your server may have discovered (much to your dismay) that the VPN is broken.

There’s a support article on the Apple support site that will bring your VPN service back to life. Basically, you need to flip a bit on the system VPN account.

This applies to any server that was running VPN prior to the 10.7.3 update, which would be a great deal of us. The good news is… PPTP is now supposedly working. I primarily use L2TP, so I didn’t care so much about that one. But when L2TP was also broken after the 10.7.3 update, I was flummoxed.

]]> http://www.catconventionshow.com/2012/02/06/vpn-service-in-10-7-3-fix/feed/ 0 Lion L2TP VPN Service With Windows 7 http://www.catconventionshow.com/2011/11/10/lion-l2tp-vpn-service-with-windows-7/ http://www.catconventionshow.com/2011/11/10/lion-l2tp-vpn-service-with-windows-7/#comments Thu, 10 Nov 2011 15:27:30 +0000 Jason Miller http://www.catconventionshow.com/?p=239 If you have a Lion server behind a NAT router (for example, an Airport Extreme or Time Capsule) that is running a VPN service you may have difficulties connecting to it with Windows 7 using L2TP despite the correct setup.

I won’t go into the deep dive on this now, but just a total quick tip. You need to change the encapsulation parameters on Windows 7. Do that by setting a registry key:

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\services\PolicyAgent]

…add a new DWORD value:

“AssumeUDPEncapsulationContextOnSendRule”=dword:00000002

]]> http://www.catconventionshow.com/2011/11/10/lion-l2tp-vpn-service-with-windows-7/feed/ 0 Goodbye. http://www.catconventionshow.com/2011/10/05/goodbye/ http://www.catconventionshow.com/2011/10/05/goodbye/#comments Thu, 06 Oct 2011 02:57:47 +0000 Jason Miller http://www.catconventionshow.com/?p=238

This world still needs you. I hope we can make it without you.

]]> http://www.catconventionshow.com/2011/10/05/goodbye/feed/ 0 “…only one installed copy of Final Cut Pro can use a SAN location at a time.” http://www.catconventionshow.com/2011/09/23/%e2%80%a6only-one-installed-copy-of-final-cut-pro-can-use-a-san-location-at-a-time/ http://www.catconventionshow.com/2011/09/23/%e2%80%a6only-one-installed-copy-of-final-cut-pro-can-use-a-san-location-at-a-time/#comments Fri, 23 Sep 2011 05:03:58 +0000 Jason Miller http://www.catconventionshow.com/?p=237 “Although you can access SAN locations from different computers on a network, only one installed copy of Final Cut Pro can use a SAN location at a time.”

http://help.apple.com/finalcutpro/mac/10.0.1/#verdbd6b23

I’d hardly call that SAN support. One of the points of using a SAN in a video workflow is so multiple people can use it at the same time.

]]> http://www.catconventionshow.com/2011/09/23/%e2%80%a6only-one-installed-copy-of-final-cut-pro-can-use-a-san-location-at-a-time/feed/ 0 Shared Contacts in Lion Server http://www.catconventionshow.com/2011/09/08/shared-contacts-in-lion-server/ http://www.catconventionshow.com/2011/09/08/shared-contacts-in-lion-server/#comments Thu, 08 Sep 2011 05:41:57 +0000 Jason Miller http://www.catconventionshow.com/?p=236 There seems to be a great deal of misunderstanding around Apple’s “shared contacts” feature in Lion. If you spend some time searching the Apple Community forums and blogs, lots of folks are claiming that Apple has performed a feat of false advertising over this need.

Indeed, sharing contacts across an organization is a pretty big requirement. Not just do you want to share the contact info of the users in your directory, it would be more than beautiful if you could add shared contacts that everyone could search against.

I’ve published a screencast on how to do this. Here’s a hint: it involves a checkbox in your Lion server setup and some TLC with your Open Directory. Basically, you’ll make your Open Directory searchable by the Address Book Server and use the Directory Utility to put the shared contacts into your OD setup. It works like a charm and there’s no need to share a username and password amongst your users.

Sorry I spoiled the ending for you, but for details on this please watch the screencast. Comment below or contact me if you have any questions, comments or suggestions. I love to hear from folks!

Have any other heavy tips or requirements out of Mac OS X and you just can’t figure it out? Let me know and I’ll see if I can unravel it for you.

If the embed does not work for you, you can see the video here: http://www.youtube.com/embed/_5NctchJ8s

]]> http://www.catconventionshow.com/2011/09/08/shared-contacts-in-lion-server/feed/ 8 Protecting Your Mac From the DigiNotar Compromise http://www.catconventionshow.com/2011/09/07/protecting-your-mac-from-the-diginotar-compromise/ http://www.catconventionshow.com/2011/09/07/protecting-your-mac-from-the-diginotar-compromise/#comments Wed, 07 Sep 2011 13:33:25 +0000 Jason Miller http://www.catconventionshow.com/?p=235 By now you’ve surely heard of the nasty DigiNotar compromise that has resulted in 500+ fraudulent certificates being issued to some very high profile companies. The compromise has shaken the core of the PKI community.

There’s an excellent explanation of the issue on this website. As a bonus, Paul also provides methods to protect your Mac from the compromise until Apple takes action.

I can’t emphasize how important it is to look into this as soon as you can, especially if you’re responsible for protecting a desktop environment.

]]> http://www.catconventionshow.com/2011/09/07/protecting-your-mac-from-the-diginotar-compromise/feed/ 0 Thanks, Steve http://www.catconventionshow.com/2011/08/25/thanks-steve/ http://www.catconventionshow.com/2011/08/25/thanks-steve/#comments Thu, 25 Aug 2011 14:49:49 +0000 Jason Miller http://www.catconventionshow.com/?p=234 I’ve never known a computing family where all of the employees, consultants, fans and adorers consider themselves to be on a first name basis with someone like Steve.

I doubt it will happen again for a very, very long time.

I hope your health allows you to recover soon, Steve. We need you in our lives, even if you’re not the CEO of Apple. You’re still a visionary, genius and friend to us all.

 

]]> http://www.catconventionshow.com/2011/08/25/thanks-steve/feed/ 0 Finally, Lion Lives http://www.catconventionshow.com/2011/08/06/finally-lion-lives/ http://www.catconventionshow.com/2011/08/06/finally-lion-lives/#comments Sun, 07 Aug 2011 03:41:16 +0000 Jason Miller http://www.catconventionshow.com/?p=233 After a tremendous ordeal of trying to install OS X Lion on my January 2008 Mac Pro, I finally had a breakthrough. I discovered what appears to be a hardware incompatibility.

To properly tell this story we’ll have to go back in time.

In January of 2008 when this model of Mac Pro was available (version 3.1) it was definitely the cat’s meow. I bought a true boss of a system too. I picked up an 8-core 2.8ghz Mac Pro with 4gb of RAM. Later, I bought some third party RAM from Crucial to stuff it to the brim with 32gb.

I also visited Newegg.com to pick up three more hard drives. That was an easy decision. I picked up 3 more 750gb hard drives, all of them Seagate. When I was a PC guy Seagates or Maxtors were the only drives to buy.

I also picked up a Drobo. If you’ve read this blog for a while, you know what happened with the Drobo. To replace the Drobo I eventually purchased a Promise DS4600 and 4 Seagate ST31000340AS 1 terabyte drives.

The Promise unit had issues. It was finicky and liked to drop drives out of the array for no discernible reason. Oddly enough, the drive that failed out of the array most often was whatever drive was in bay 4. It didn’t have to be the same drive. You could literally swap the drives in and out of bay 4 and eventually it would fail. It was really bizarre. I opened numerous cases with Promise.

Promise finally came back with the information that this particular model of Seagate drives were not certified to work with the DS4600. Okie, I can handle that. No problem. I reviewed the compatibility list provided by Promise and selected a set of Hitachi 2TB drives.

I then moved on to fight the DS4600 again to make it work over eSATA. Only this weekend did that finally get resolved. But that’s another story for another day. If you want to hear it, let me know and I’ll be happy to tell it.

Anyway, back to the Seagate drives. After all of that drama and switching around, I now had a set of Seagate ST31000340AS 1tb drives… four of them to be exact. During this time I was also experiencing regular S.M.A.R.T. failures in the 750gb drives in the chassis of the Mac Pro. Those drives were being sent off and replaced on a fairly regular basis.

As these drives were replaced and rolled around, I decided that maybe I should move the 1tb drives into the Mac Pro and get 250gb of extra space. That’s kind of a no-brainer decision, right? I ended up with the original 750gb drive that shipped from Apple and three ST31000340AS drives in the other bays. I had the bright idea of creating a RAID-0 and installing Lion on it. I just knew it was going to scream.

…except that Lion wouldn’t install.

The install would always start off just fine. It would write files and then reboot. Then, somewhere in the next storage of the install it would just die. An error message popped up claiming that there was a problem and Lion couldn’t be installed.

how can this be? thought I. There’s no way Apple would release an operating system that has an incompatibility of this nature with a 2008 Mac Pro. this is insane.

I lost many countless hours of sleep to install attempts. I would try to install. I would watch it fail. I would research a little more. I’ve spent weeks trying to get through this. Nothing… and I mean NOTHING would get through with the install…

…until one time, it did.

Immediately, my trust level of the whole installation was suspect of course. Why would it fail to install so many times and then just out of the blue… it would work? It didn’t make sense. I had tried reseating hardware. I had tried pulling out the BlackMagic Intensity Card. I had tried pulling out the eSATA cards. I tried putting the stock RAM back in place. I tried everything. Nothing worked… until this time it did. Weird. It didn’t make sense.

I ran with Lion on the RAID-0 for a few days and happily thought I would go about the installation of Carbon Copy Cloner so I could set up clone tasks for the operating system disk.

cue music. It started to happen. Everything segfaulted. I could literally open the Console application and watch the crash reports roll in like a riot was going on in the Grid and reporters were on the air. No program was safe. Every one of them blew up. Sync your iPhone? Bam. iTunes died. Sync your iPod? SLAM. VTPCDecoder (or something) explodes. yeah, this OS is suspect.

I decided to whack the RAID-0 and try the install again on a single ST31000340AS drive. Guess what? The install failed… again and again.

I booked a Genius Bar appointment. Obviously, my logic board was bad.

I’m not sure what made me think to try it, but I did. One of the 1tb drives had died at some point and I received a replacement that was a completely different model. Also I ran across information on the net that a lot of people were having problems with ST31000340AS drives and certain versions of firmware. Those versions were SD1A and SD15. I looked over the drives I had. All of them had one of those two firmware revisions.

interesting.

I took one of the drives Seagate sent back that was a different model number. For the record, the drive was model ST31000528AS. I slapped it in the chassis and formatted it with HFS+. I fired up the Lion installer and hit go. I asked it to give me a full, fresh install of Lion on this disk. It worked the first time.

Not only did it work, it has been rock solid. Nothing is crashing like it was before on the other drives. Lion has become a joy to use the past two days. I stored away the Snow Leopard volume and kept it for emergencies.

I cancelled the Genius Bar appointment.

By now I think you can figure out what my conclusion. There’s something wrong with ST31000340AS Seagate drives. Don’t try to use them with Lion. Something about the kernel in Lion disagrees strongly with that model of drive. If you read around on the net you will find many, many horror stories with those drives.

Beware.

]]> http://www.catconventionshow.com/2011/08/06/finally-lion-lives/feed/ 0 My Advice on Lion Server (Based on Experience So Far) http://www.catconventionshow.com/2011/07/26/my-advice-on-lion-server-based-on-experience-so-far/ http://www.catconventionshow.com/2011/07/26/my-advice-on-lion-server-based-on-experience-so-far/#comments Wed, 27 Jul 2011 04:14:13 +0000 Jason Miller http://www.catconventionshow.com/?p=232 Wait.

]]> http://www.catconventionshow.com/2011/07/26/my-advice-on-lion-server-based-on-experience-so-far/feed/ 0 Quicktime Streaming Server and Mobile Access Gone from Lion Server http://www.catconventionshow.com/2011/07/20/quicktime-streaming-server-and-mobile-access-gone-from-lion-server/ http://www.catconventionshow.com/2011/07/20/quicktime-streaming-server-and-mobile-access-gone-from-lion-server/#comments Thu, 21 Jul 2011 04:50:13 +0000 Jason Miller http://www.catconventionshow.com/?p=231 Just a quick note. Tonight I was reading up on the migration document for OS X Lion Server and discovered this little tidbit:

Quicktime Streaming Server is not supported on OS X Lion Server.

There are some changes to wikis and mailing list support as well. Here’s a paste from page 17/18 of the guide:

Understanding what can be reused

When you upgrade from Mac OS X Server v10.6 or later, virtually all existing data and settings remain available for use, but note the following:

  • NetBoot images created using Mac OS X Server v10.5 or later can be reused. NetBoot images created using earlier versions cannot be used.
  • When upgrading to Lion Server, the launch daemons (/System/Library/ LaunchDaemons) are replaced by the Lion Server version of these daemons.
  • Open Directory on Lion Server cannot be configured as a primary domain controller (PDC) or a backup domain controller (BDC) using the SMB service.
  • Lion Server does not support Print service, MySQL, Mobile Access, Tomcat, Axis, or QuickTime Streaming Server (QTSS).
  • Wiki-based mailing list and archives are not available in Lion Server.
  • If you are using Mail service with Mac OS X Server v10.6 and are performing the upgrade to Lion Server, make sure your mail data partitions and the mail database are accessible during the upgrade process. This automates the mail migration process and requires you to have no interaction.

I’m a little surprised that Mobile Access is also gone. They were pretty proud of that feature in Snow Leopard Server.

Be aware before you jump, folks!

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