So last weekend might not have been best for skiing at the Grouse Mountain due to the cold rainy day, but I couldn’t wait to try my full charged ReconInstruments MOD powered Zeal GPS equipped goggles. For those who don’t know what I am talking about: it is little computer with tiny micro-optics display equipped with GPS inside your goggles which shows your stats in real time right in front of your eyes as you go down the slope. It tracks your distance, speed, vertical and jumps. As you come back home, you can plug in your goggles to the computer and relive the experience in beautifully designed ReconHQ software. It links with Google maps and you can see all your runs overplayed on maps, satellite or terrain views. You can also share your results with others and playback your runs right on your computer.

And that’s exactly what I wanted to do as I came back home all soaking wet but happy and excited to finally view my achievements on the second skiing trip in my life. I was quite disappointed when I tried to launch ReconHQ to no success as it crashed every time. I thought it might be because I updated my OS and now just needed to update ReconHQ software. I headed to Recon Instruments website’s download section only to find out that Flash plugin crashed every time I clicked on Download link. So next logical thing to do is to update Flash Player, right? So I did… Next, after finally managing to download Adobe AIR package, it failed to launch as it “needed newer” version. I put needed newer in quotes because, as I found out after downloading later AIR version from Adobe’s website it needed latest version of AIR as well. Yes, you read it right: Adobe AIR Installer needs newer version of Adobe AIR – ridiculous, right? After another 30 minutes of web search, I finally found logical explanation to ALL my problems. Adobe AIR cannot operate properly when OS X automatic graphics card switch is enabled.

So those of you who made this far in my story and for those who skipped:

If Adobe AIR apps or installer crash and fail to launch, open System Preferences :: Energy Saver and disable “Automatic graphics switching”.

Well at first, I looked at home library, and copied all albums (I manager my iTunes folder myself as I file songs differently) to portable harddrive, brought it to work and add it in. Now, my work library had all my home playlists/albums and more. With 22GB of music, I’ve copied my whole folder  /Users/username/Music/iTunes onto it and replaced the one I had on my home computer. Perfect, I thought, now all I do is add music on my work computer and then make sure I either bring that music to home computer later or copy the iTunes folder all over again, if changes are drastic.

Well, what I haven’t realized, and to my benefit it is a plus, by doing this, my iPhone now thinks that both libraries – one at home and another one at work – is the same thing. Great! I don’t have to worry when plugging iPhone to my work computer that all my music would be gone, I can update my iPhone either at work or at home and I can also keep managing my music in one library, copy it to another and don’t have to remember which computer I’ve synched my iPhone to.

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.

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. Next steps would include:

Setup web server.

First I moved all files from prometheus web server folder to promorphius. I set up site under web service in Server Admin with exact same settings as existing, except for folder location, it’s on separate virtual drive. I then need to make sure that this site is secured and all HTTP requests are going to HTTPS.

As I already have signed certificate on prometheus, I would request Reissue of the certificate from our CA. Follow links provided by your provider to the step where they ask you for CSR (Certificate Signing Request). On that page you would have text field for the CSR. On the new server, I’ve created new certificate with same information as on existing server, but it becomes Self Signed. No worries, Save and select this certificate and click on little gear icon in Server Admin, choose “Generate Certificate Signing Request  (CSR)… ” and window with instruction would appear. Select image of certificate and drag it over text box on the CA’s website. It will be filled with some gibberish, that’s exactly what we need. Follow all neccesary remaining steps. Once you get your certificate select that text copy and select your Self Signed certificate from Server Admin and under little gear icon choose “Add Signed or Renewed Certificate from Certificate Authority…” paste the text in this area now. That’s it, your certificate is signed now!

Next in web server setup, we want to choose our newely signed certificate for our secure server. Under Web service, in Server Admin, choose Sites, select your site (remember, it suppose to use port 443) and under Security check box next to “Enable Secure Sockets Layer (SSL)” and select your signed certificate.

Now, we want to make sure that all requests to our HTTP forward to HTTPS. For that we would duplicate our web site, select port 80 instead of 443 and deselect SSL checkbox in security. We now need to do a little hack to setup these forwarding. Open Terminal, type in su type in root password, type in cd /private/etc/apache2/sites do ls to view your files, you will see some files like 0016_195.75.175.184_443_secure.example.com.conf type in pico 0002_10.1.1.11_443_secure.example.com.conf using your own file name. This will open basic text browser. Scroll down to area with:

RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_METHOD} ^TRACE
RewriteRule .* - [F]

Edit this section to include:

RewriteRule ^/(.*)$ https://secure.example.com/$1 [R]


And either delete or comment out existing lines.
So final would look like this:

RewriteEngine On
##RewriteCond %{REQUEST_METHOD} ^TRACE
##RewriteRule .* - [F]
RewriteRule ^/(.*)$ https://secure.example.com/$1 [R]


$1 would insure that if somebody types in http://secure.example.com/sub/page.php they would be redirected to same subpage but HTTPS.

Now it’s time to check our server. Since we don’t want to change DNS settings for our domain as it will take up to 24hrs to propogate, we would use exisiting settings and swap IP addresses of old-real and new-virtual servers (you mapped both external and internal interfaces of your hardware to VMware, right? Instructions) Test your site, and everything should stay the same.

I’ve had issues with error messages on my php pages:

Warning: session_start() [function.session-start]: Cannot send session cache limiter – headers already sent

The reason for that is session_start() function in php file. Make sure it is at the very first line of the file.

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.

First thing is download tokamak script from VMware community document by DaveP.

Make sure that all guest VMs are shutdown and VMware application is not running.

Follow instructions to install script. once script is installed, run configuration (remember to run it as root, easiest way to do it is to use su command):

./tokamak.sh --modify

This will take you through bunch of prompts, use as follows:

You have already setup networking.
Would you like to skip networking setup and keep your old settings as they are? (yes/no) [yes] n
Do you want networking for your virtual machines? (yes/no/help) [yes] y
Would you prefer to modify your existing networking configuration using the wizard or the editor? (wizard/editor/help) [wizard] e
The following virtual networks have been defined:
. vmnet1 is a host-only network on private subnet 192.168.170.0.
. vmnet8 is a NAT network on private subnet 192.168.64.0.
Do you wish to make any changes to the current virtual networks settings? (yes/no) [no] y
Which virtual network do you wish to configure? (0-99) 2
What type of virtual network do you wish to set vmnet2? (bridged,hostonly,nat,none) [none] b
Configuring a bridged network for vmnet2.
Your computer has multiple ethernet network interfaces available: en0, en1.
Which one do you want to bridge to vmnet2? [en0] en0
The following virtual networks have been defined:
. vmnet1 is a host-only network on private subnet 192.168.170.0.
. vmnet2 is bridged to en0
. vmnet8 is a NAT network on private subnet 192.168.64.0.
Do you wish to make additional changes to the current virtual networks settings? (yes/no) [yes] y
Which virtual network do you wish to configure? (0-99) 3
What type of virtual network do you wish to set vmnet3? (bridged,hostonly,nat,none) [none] b
Configuring a bridged network for vmnet3.
The following virtual networks have been defined:
. vmnet1 is a host-only network on private subnet 192.168.170.0.
. vmnet2 is bridged to en0
. vmnet3 is bridged to en1
. vmnet8 is a NAT network on private subnet 192.168.64.0.
Do you wish to make additional changes to the current virtual networks settings? (yes/no) [yes] n
VM@Work Tokamak 2.0.0: Display settings
The following virtual networks have been defined:
. vmnet1 is a host-only network on private subnet 192.168.170.0.
. vmnet2 is bridged to en0
. vmnet3 is bridged to en1
. vmnet8 is a NAT network on private subnet 192.168.64.0.
VM@Work Tokamak 2.0.0: Extended network scripting - Dave Parsons
Host-only/NAT networking on vmnet1 using 192.168.170.1/255.255.255.0 is running
DHCP server on vmnet1 is running
Bridged networking on vmnet2 using en0 is running
Bridged networking on vmnet3 using en1 is running
Host-only/NAT networking on vmnet8 using 192.168.64.1/255.255.255.0 is running
DHCP server on vmnet8 is running
NAT networking on vmnet8 is running

We are almost done.

Almost all of this is the same as document, with slight differences. We are linking XServe’s en0 interface to vmnet2 and en1 to vmnet3. One of them will be used for internal interface, one for external/public.

Next, as per document, open vmx file, I’ve modified it in BBedit, but use tool recommended on the same website. Now, here is where I wasted almost 2 hours trying to figure out why my VM does not see those interfaces.

See, this article and script have been tested on VMware Fusion 2.0.2 and I am using 2.0.4. Maybe it makes a difference, maybe not, but the bottom line is that my newly created interfaces were displaying fine in VMware (except for the message about custom configuration, which you can ignore), they are displaid as connected when VM is running, but Guest OS X Server does not see them.

I’ve searched every posting and forum on VMware community website and could not find anything. Unless I’ve noticed this string:

ethernet1.virtualDev = "e1000"

That string existed for each ethernet# created using VMware UI, but not for those custom added interfaces I’ve manually added to VMX file. By adding that string to those instructed in the article for each interface:


ethernet1.present = "TRUE"
ethernet1.connectionType = "custom"
ethernet1.vnet = "VMnet3"
ethernet1.virtualDev = "e1000"


to VMX file, Guest OS was loaded with two interfaces connected. I’ve assigned internal IP to one, and external IP to other. Next is installation of FileMaker Server (do not forget to take snapshot of the system)

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).

To remind, when creating image file from retail install DVD, do not use built in Disk Utility for image creation, use Toast instead. Choose Copy from the right hand menu, and under File menu, choose save as Image. Change extension to .iso, choose location and click Save.

Once image creation is completed, start VMWare, under new machine choose Mac OS X Server 10.5 (experimental) (I’m trying 64-bit right now), assign standard 40GB disk space (use more if necesary) and follow on-screen instructions.

Once server is installed, you will be prompted to OS X Server Assistant. Choose Advanced setup for custom configuration. Follow on-screen prompts to give your server a name, fully qualified DNS name (I used internal DNS name structure: servername.office.mycompany)

Once finished, VM would reboot and, upon logging in you will have your freshly installed Mac OS X 10.5 Virtual Server. Server Admin would automatically launch and… you will get error saying that server could not be found. Do not freak out, your server does not know fully qualified name just yet, you need to add it to your local DNS server and assign static IP to your new VM Server.

Run all updates and we will be ready for services setup.

It seems that updating Server to 10.5.7 breaks VMWare. After reboot, VM hangs on grey screen with Apple Logo. I am currently working on resolution by updating to 10.5.6 and seeing how it goes from there.

Update: updating to 10.5.6 first seems to work fine in 2.0.4. Updated to 10.5.7 after that. Moving on to part 3…

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

The benefits of running virtual machine vs actual server include but not limited to:

- Less hardware to buy – you can better utilize Apple’s extra powerful 8, 16 and 32 core XServes
- Less hardware means more space on the rack and in the server room, smaller server rooms and less energy to burn
- Flexibility and expandability of virtual machines – increase size of virtual drive or re-allocate ram from one VM to another
- Easier backup solution – schedule VM shut down on the weekends, create scripts on mothership machine to backup those VM files and power them back on
- Kernel panic recovery – if VM gets Kernel panic, just restart it through the console, no need to come in to the office anymore
- Easy upgrade, recovery, installation of new machines – just create simple installation machine, save that file in the safe place and copy it to create new server when needed. Same for recovery, ready to apply updates but not sure if it will break anything? Power it off, copy image, update and if it didn’t work, toss it and get back to older one
etc.

For us it was the matter of spending $7,000 on new XServe with all backup drives for existing and new one or spend $1,700 on licensing and backup drives just for one. Choice is obvious.

So here I was, playing with freshly installed VMWare and freshly created DMG file in DiskUtility only to find out that VMWare does not like DMG. Fine, convert it to iso/cdr using hdiutil command. Nah, everytime I try to start VM I get BIOS read error. I’ve searched for it everywhere. So far instructions have been quite straight forward. Use install disc or iso image, if you have dmg – convert it using hdiutil…. But it does not work… in rare cases, when I do not get error, Please wait while DVD is loading message sits forever, and I mean forever without any changes. My home computer, after displaying that message for almost 8hrs, still has |/-|/- spinning.

Well, nowhere I found that dmg file and therefore converted iso from it, nor cdr created in Disk Utility work with VMWare. Anybody out there got it working, share with me. I had to use Toast.

Open Toast, load OS X Server Leopard Install Retail disc, select Copy from the left columns (Data, Audio, Video, Copy) and choose File->Save as Disc Image… navigate to the folder where you want to save it, change .toast extension to .iso and click Save.

Now, this ISO file is working file with which you can easily install Virtual Mac OS X Leopard Server, as I am doing right now.

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.Xerox recommends uninstall Fiery utilities and reinstall them using either downloaded version from their site, or, in my case, they’ve provided version 1.6.0f.10 of CWS which I downloaded from their FTP site. Regardless, uninstalling, as many of us Mac users know, involve dragging Fiery folder from Applications to the Trash and that’s it, right? Wrong!

Here are two ways completely uninstalling CWS. One os very simple, specifically for end users curtesy of Xerox technician. Second is Terminal commands which can be executed using Apple Remote Desktop on large number of workstations.

Method 1

If Fiery utilities are currently installed on your Mac OSX system, uninstall previously installed

Fiery utilities:

a. Click the Finder icon located on the Macintosh Dock.

b. A Finder window will open.

c. Select Applications (located under Places in the left pane of the Finder window).

d. Locate the Fiery folder.

e. Drag-and-drop the Fiery folder into the Trash.

f. Under Devices in the left pane of the Finder window, select <Macintosh HD>, where <Macintosh HD> is the name of your Mac OSX hard drive.

g. Delete all the harmony files in LibraryFrameworks. These files are starting with the letter h*.framework, for example haddress.framework, or h10.framework.

h. Delete the file i1C.framework or ES1000.framework in LibraryFrameworks (early versions are listed as i1C and newer versions are listed as ES1000).

i. Delete any files starting with string “CWS” in users<username>libraryPreferences, where <username> is the username currently logged in to the Mac OSX machine. Do not delete the folder “CWSPrefs” at this time.

NOTE: If you desire to maintain preferences already created so they will be available following installation, then skip step j and proceed to step k. Otherwise if you desire a clean uninstallation, perform the following step.

j. Delete the folders “CWSPrefs“, “CWPT Preferences” and “EFI ImageViewer Preferences” in users<username>libraryPreferences, where <username> is the username currently logged in to the Mac OSX machine.

NOTE: “CWPT Preferences” and “EFI ImageViewer Preferences” will be listed only if CWPT and ImageViewer were previously installed with CWS ME.

k. Delete the folder LibraryApplication SupportEFI.

Steps i and k are not neccessary, as I later found out by not including them when doing the Method 2

Method 2

Type in this in Terminal window

su

Enter your password

rm -rf /Applications/Fiery

Enter

rm -rf /Library/Frameworks/h*

Enter

rm -rf /Library/Frameworks/ES1000.framework

Enter

Or copy this after entering password into Terminal window

 

rm -rf /Applications/Fiery

rm -rf /Library/Frameworks/h*

rm -rf /Library/Frameworks/ES1000.framework

 

You can also send UNIX command from ARD and Run it as root

After that, install freshly downloaded copy of Command Workstation.

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.

After spending half an hour on Google, I found interesting thread on Apple.com discussions about ‘grayed out’ Sharing button. I thought I would give it a try and voila it worked. So here is the solution (please note that I did not come up with it, it’s quoted from http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?messageID=6599389&#6599389)

PROCEED AT YOUR OWN RISK , and DO NOT CHANGE ANY STEP or the content thereof

Quit ANY AND ALL management apps (Server Manager, Workgroup Manager) both on the server itself and any connections from any client/management workstation(s).

Please double and triple-check your typing, do NOT make any typos and do NOT skip the back-ticks below, that is the: ` character.

on the server itself issue (in the Terminal):

sudo mkdir /servermgrd.bak

sudo mv /var/servermgrd/* /servermgrd.bak/

sudo kill -HUP `cat /var/run/servermgrd.pid`

Then relaunch Workgroup Manager 

It does help if you have ‘grayed out’ Sharing in the WGM as well.

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.

Using right version of the font is important, but with two programs it is hard to figure out which application has the font you need, which font you are suppose to use, and what to do if fonts in the Font Reserve are not activating.

One of the basic principles is make sure you have TrueType version of your fonts deactivated, before you can activate PostScript version.

Here is an example:
Trying to activate Helvetica in Font Reserve, some faces activate, some don’t. Open Font Book and deactivate Helvetica, then activate it in Font Book. By default, Font Book will have only required system fonts and MS Office fonts, but depending on your setup, it might be different. Deactivate all TrueType version fonts in your Font Book, PostScript versions of which you will be using and activate them in Font Reserve (those fonts might be: Garamond, Helvetica, Times, Zapf Dingbats etc.

After you deactivate those fonts in Font Book, make sure you activate them permanently in Font Reserve. Fonts like Helvetica are required by system and if they are not activated permanently in Font Reserve, there might be a conflict, or system might decide to activate TrueType version from Font Book. Make sure you don’t have any applications launched automatically when you log in. Those applications might require certain fonts that are disabled in Font Book, and will request them before Font Reserve client is able to activate them.

Having proper settings for Font Reserve are essential as well. Refer to Troubleshooting Font Reserve article for proper settings in Font Reserve client.

Permanently activated fonts in Font Reserve client would stay activated even after you restart your machine, which is convenient, but having too many permanently activated fonts will slow down computer performance as well as add additional time on startup. Having not more than 100 fonts permanently activated will make it easier to manage them. Every time you open file which requires one or another font, Font Reserve auto-activation plugin will automatically activate the font, so you wouldn’t have to worry.