In the last couple of months we’ve acquired more iMacs and most of them came with Snow Leopard pre-installed and, being newer machines, will not take 10.5 system. Snow Leopard is great - quick, responsive but there are some challenges.

One of them was our Kerio Mail Server, which has been addressed in one of the Kerio updates. But most recent one, and more annoying is drivers for our Xerox 242 WorkCenter. Once drivers installed and user tries to print, it will give them error message saying that drivers might not be installed properly and require re-installation.

No matter how many times you try to reinstall, what user you install them as, or how many times you repair permissions on the drive, it seems not work properly.

Quick search on Apple Discussions leads to several similar problems with other printers’ drivers problems under Snow Leopard. Solution is repairing permissions, but not the usual way, actually, but using sudo

sudo chown -R root:admin /Library/Printers/

Just make sure you add your printer’s manufacturer folder after /Printers/

So Xerox will be:

sudo chown -R root:admin /Library/Printers/Xerox

Hope this helps as it did work for me.

Tags: Printers, Snow Leopard, Xerox

This will be forth article in the series of articles about Mac OS X Server 10.5 setup under VMWare.

I would leave FileMaker Server installation for another time. Right now I want to talk about following services on the server which will replace existing server. Here is the situation, just a reminder:

I have live server which hosts websites and FileMaker databases. It also runs AFP services for access to files internally and FTP service for external developers access to those files. Our registration websites are secure websites with proper CA signed certificates. This server, once virtualization project is complete, would become host server, which will not have any services running, well maybe AFP, and will have VMware hosting guest machines. One machine would be new server with registration websites and FileMaker databases with same FTP and AFP services running as well. My challenge is to swap services of current server with new virtual server with least impact, as those registration websites are live 365 days a year and updating every now and then.

So, I’ve setup bare 10.5.7 server, called it promorphius and it would become twin of prometheus, our existing server. Read »

Tags: Apple, FileMaker Server, HTTPS, Open Directory, PHP, SSL, Virtual Server, Web Server

This will be third article in the series of articles about Mac OS X Server 10.5 setup under VMWare.

Once we finished battling through updates on the OS X Server (install 10.5.6 by downloading Combo update from Apple.com first using VMware Fusion 2.0.4, then update to 10.5.7) we are ready to set up network interfaces.

My XServe is connected through 2 network cables to external world and internal network. One is public, external IP, other is internal IP.

Set up for my first server which will host registration websites, FileMaker Server and FTP/AFP access to it for developers, would include 1 public IP and 1 internal IP.

Let’s start.

First of al, I want to warn you that it is rather advanced setup to bridge two real network adapters to VM’s two virtual adapters. I hope it will work. I am referring to article on VMware community website. Read »

Tags: Apple, Bridged network, Server, Virtual Server, VMWare

This will be second article in the series of articles about Mac OS X Server 10.5 setup under VMWare.

In the first part we’ve discussed setup of virtual machine and using image file instead of DVD to install OS X Server 10.5 on VMWare virtual machine (VM). Read »

Tags: Apple, Server, Virtual Server, VMWare

After talking to Brian from agis, I’ve decided that the way to utilize our existing XServe that has nothing running on it but FileMaker 9 Server is to implement virtualization method.

The plan is beef it up with RAM and have core server installation hosting multiple VMWare machines. Read »

Tags: Apple, Server, Virtual Server, VMWare

Have it ever happened to you when using Command Workstation to change job properties, standard Properties window does not come up and quick error message flashes with: “Failed to load shared library /usr/lib/jpwx.bundle (error 2: No such file or directory)” ?

We’ve had this happenned on couple of machines in our office. It took about 2-3 weeks of phone calls with Xerox developers ti finally resolve the issue.

So here is how to fix it. Read »

Tags: Apple, Apple Remote Destop, Printers, Xerox

I’ve noticed today that newly installed server over at the “NorthShore News” newspaper is having same problems as Parksville’s server had couple of weeks ago.

Basically what happens is this:

• Some users loose their permissions to some folders. 
• ALS were initially enabled on shared volumes but browsing through WorkGroup Manager shows that there is nothing in those preferences.
• Trying to add user or group is not working either.

As I mentioned, it happened couple of weeks ago at Parksville’s “OceanSide Star” newspaper couple of weeks ago. At that time I thought that ALS was never setup, and was ready to rebuild the server. Read »

Tags: Apple, Open Directory, Server

In LMP, we’ve decided to use Extensis Font Serve server/client font management tool. One of the reasons is being the fact that id has true server/client implementation. We can have all standard fonts stored in a place where they will not be altered and fonts that are used for specific jobs stored in other place. Added fonts are automatically appear in users’ client windows and are synchronized with the server automatically.

Font Reserve Server/Client is quite good, one user adds font, others can see it. Supervisor, or senior staff members can setup Sets, share them and all users in the department would just activate fonts from that set to make sure they use right version of the font.

Font Book, provided with Apple OS X, is another font management software on workstations. Unfortunately you cannot use Font Reserve only and remove all fonts from Font Book. Helvetica is a required font for OS X to run as many other fonts. Microsoft Office adds 70+ fonts into the Font Book and Office components would freak out if you remove those fonts. Read »

Tags: Apple, Font Reserve, FontBook, InDesign, Server

From time to time you might have problems when after activating font in Font Reserve you still miss it in InDesign. As a mater of fact, you will miss these fonts in all Adobe applications.

 As you can see from this example Garamond family is active including Garamond Light, but Light is not appearing in InDesign font menu. For that matter, Garamond Light would be missing from all Adobe applications including Illustrator, Photoshop etc. This is a sign of corrupted Adobe font caches. Read »

Tags: Font Reserve, FontBook, InDesign

Font Reserve is great Font management software, but every now and then you might experience font problems. Main reason for that is font caches. According to Extensis, font caches have to be purged on regular basis. They do not supply any tools, so you have to do it manually.

From time to time FontReserve preferences and temporary database might get corrupted. When it happens you might get error messages. fonts will not activate automatically or not at all. Following is a shortlist of error messages you might get:

When you get last error message in this list: “DocFontInfo::DoActivate - exception caught # (1)” it means that Font Reserve is getting corrupted. Usually none of the symptoms are present after that error message and everything seems to work fine until Font Reserve stops working at all. So, when you get “DocFontInfo…” error message, it is a good practice to clean Font Reserve preferences. Here is how. Read »

Tags: Font Reserve, InDesign