The Cool-ade Blog: Mac-Windows, Information Security and Technology. » Snow Leopard

Apple 10.6 updates from Apple 10.5 Software Update Server

admin — Fri, 21 May 2010 09:00:02 +0000

Your running a 10.5 server with (SUS) software update services and you’ve got 10.6 clients on your network. You want to patch your 10.6 clients but they won’t with 10.5 SUS. The Apple solution is to upgrade the server to 10.6 so it can serve 10.6 updates. An alternative solution is to hack the 10.5 SUS. This hack has been taken from a thread from Jan Uschok on the Apple Support Discussion page: http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=2169042&tstart=15

1: Stop SUS

2: Download http://swscan.apple.com/content/meta/mirror-config-1.plist and copy it to /usr/share/swupd/html/content/meta/mirror-config-1.plist

3: Change it to look like this:

PrimaryCatalog
http://swscan.apple.com/content/catalogs/index.sucatalog
CatalogsList

http://swscan.apple.com/content/catalogs/index.sucatalog
http://swscan.apple.com/content/catalogs/others/index-leopard.merged-1.sucatalog
http://swscan.apple.com/content/catalogs/others/index-leopard-snowleopard.merged-1.sucatalog

4: Edit /etc/swupd/swupd.plist and change the metaIndexURL entry to look like this:

metaIndexURL
http://myserver.com:8088/content/meta/mirror-config-1.plist
portToUse

5: Start SUS and wait for it to download the catalog files and to generate the local versions thereof.

6: Once it has generated the local catalog files add some symlinks like this:

cd /usr/share/swupd/html
ln -s /usr/share/swupd/html/content/catalogs/index.sucatalog .
ln -s /usr/share/swupd/html/content/catalogs/others/index-leopard.merged-1.sucatalog .
ln -s /usr/share/swupd/html/content/catalogs/others/index-leopard-snowleopard.merged-1.sucatalog .

7: Just in case restart SUS

8: Wait for SUS to download all the updates

9: On your 10.6 client go in the Finder to /Library/Preferences and open com.apple.SoftwareUpdate.plist. Change the CatalogURL entry to point to http://myserver.com:8088/index-leopard-snowleopard.merged-1.sucatalog

10: Launch Software Update on your 10.6 client and be happy

It should behave like a 10.6 server now as it is serving the catalog files according to the 10.6 server documentation as described on page 89 here: http://images.apple.com/server/macosx/docs/System_Imaging_and_SW_Update_Admin_v10.6.pdf

Snow Leopard Ditched Resource Forks

admin — Mon, 01 Mar 2010 11:00:40 +0000

Yes, the dot underscore (DS_Store and ._ AppleDouble files) are gone. They have been replaced using SMB Alternative Data Streams (ADS) also known as NTFS Streams. See http://www.symantec.com/connect/articles/windows-ntfs-alternate-data-streams for detailed information on ADS.

As a network administrator, I welcome this but it may have repercussions. For example, you have a bunch of Quark files without extension names on an SMB share in the AppleDouble format created by a 10.4 client. By default a 10.6 client wouldn’t be able to read the Quark files because it doesn’t read the AppleDouble dot underscore file and there are no extension names. Therefore, Apple have made it easy to re-enable the feature. This is possible be editing the nsmb.conf file.

To disable named streams as a default for your Mac OS X client user account

Execute these two commands in Terminal:

echo "[default]" >>  ~/Library/Preferences/nsmb.conf
echo "streams=no" >> ~/Library/Preferences/nsmb.conf

To disable named streams as a default for all Mac OS X client user accounts on a Mac

Log in to Mac OS X with an admin user account if you aren’t already logged in as an admin, then execute these two commands in Terminal:

echo "[default]" | sudo tee -a /etc/nsmb.conf
echo "streams=no" | sudo tee -a /etc/nsmb.conf

See the man page on nsmb.conf for more details about how to configure it.

To re-enable streams on 10.6 or to enable it on 10.5 change streams=no to streams=yes

Mac OS X 10.6 Software and Driver Issues

cool-ade — Sat, 27 Feb 2010 15:21:48 +0000

I recently set-up some new iMacs, the 21.5in, 3Ghz ones running 10.6.2. All seems to be going well. However, I soon discovered a number of major problems with third party software after the iMac’s were given out the test group of users. The problems listed below have resulted in delaying the roll out of 25 new iMacs.

Quark Xpress 7 crashes when printing with 10.6 and is generally unstable. Quark doesn’t like printing documents using the binary data format. If prefers using ASCII. See http://forums.quark.com/t/22523.aspx. The best fix for this problem is to change the picture data option to ASCII. You may get the error message: “Page could contain EPS pictures which include binary data. OK to continue?” but it does work and Quark is more stable. However, Quark still crashes randomly so users need to save their work regularly. Unfortunately, the only real solution available for Quark running on 10.6 is to use Quark 8. See http://forums.quark.com/t/21811.aspx.

Canon has only updated a few of their printer drivers to fully work with 10.6. They have updated all of the PPDs, but these only give limited printing functionally. See http://www.canon.co.uk/Operating_System_Drivers/mac_os_compatibility_office.asp. The older 10.5 compatible drivers will install but they won’t work, an error message occurs “The printer software was installed incorrectly. Please reinstall the printer’s software or contact the manufacturer for assistance.”. Using a PPD will work, but there no secure printing option and limited ability for proper tray selection, double printing etc… Fortunately, I discovered a work around for the fiery RIP enabled devices. EFI have released a printer driver update which modifies the CUPS permissions on Mac OS X 10.6.

Microsoft Powerpoint 2008 with SP2 is unusable on 10.6. Typing and keystrokes lag behind about of 5 seconds before appearing on screen. Moving between slides is very slow and Powerpoint often freezes. There currently isn’t any solution for this problem. I’m hoping that the next Microsoft Office update will fix this, or possibly the new Apple update 10.6.3.