Thursday 30 August 2012

Adobe Flash Player Install Manager failed to quit

I've got a couple of Mac suites with OS X 10.7.4 and have noticed this error appearing on them when trying to logout/shutdown the machines:

After doing a few searches I found firstly this adobe forum in which looked good, and next this adobe bug forum which provided a quick fix. Here's the quick fix as said in the last forum:

Go to and change Library/Application\ Support/Macromedia/mms.cfg

to:

AutoUpdateDisable=1
SilentAutoUpdateEnable=0


The actual problem is caused by two solutions to a previous problem related to Flash player security holes:

  1. Apple have fixed a security hole by disabling old versions of Flash Player because of a security flaw which was recently made use of.
  2. Adobe have enabled an update manager so that flash player is checked every hour, and updated (if needed) every day, to the newest version.
The problem with this solution is that Adobes update manager crashes at some point. The quick fix suggested here only turns the autoupdate off, but Adobe Flash will in the meantime not update automatically, and unless done manually, will be disabled.

The fix might be to update Adobe Flash Player to version 11.4 which apparently does not have this problem.

No Drives were found - installing Windows 7

So, just trying to fix a friends computer. There's just one SATA HD inside, and he wants it nice and fresh, so I just started the windows 7 install disk and, after booting off the disk and getting to the "Disk Selection" stage it came up with the information:

No drives were found, Click Load Driver to install a Mass Storage Driver

Ridiculous I thought. I had a quick look in BIOS and found it not listed in the HD's. I later found out that it was originally RAIDed with another (which broke) so I turned off RAID from BIOS so that it treated it as a normal HD again. It now appeared in the HD list in BIOS.

But still the same error in the Windows installer! So, now BIOS can see it, what is the problem. Well, I finally found this forum which suggested looking at this Microsoft Help Page, particularly Method 8.

  1. Insert the DVD into the DVD drive.
  2. On the disk selection screen, press SHIFT+F10. A Command Prompt window opens.
  3. Type diskpart, and then press ENTER to open the diskpart tool.
  4. Type list disk, and then press ENTER. A list of available hard disks is displayed.
  5. Type sel disk number, and then press ENTERnumber is the number of the hard disk that you want to clean. The hard disk is now selected.
  6. Type det disk, and then press ENTER. A list of partitions on the hard disk is displayed. Use this information to verify that the correct disk is selected.
  7. Make sure that the disk does not contain required data, type clean all, and then press ENTER to clean the disk. All the partitions and all the data on the disk is permanently removed.
  8. Type exit, and then press ENTER to close the diskpart tool.
  9. Close the Command Prompt window.
  10. Click the Refresh button to update the disk selection screen. This step lists the disk.
  11. Run Windows Setup to perform a clean installation of Windows.
Firstly I couldn't believe the fact that you still need to use a Command Prompt for such a simple thing as cleaning a Hard Drive. Mac OS users have had a "Disk Utility" on the install disk since OS X came out, which was 2002, maybe even "Drive Setup" which came out in 1995! 12 years on and Microsoft still uses a command line utilities on it's install disk for disk formatting!

Not only that, but SHIFT+F10?! Why not a button which says "Command Prompt"! Have they ever heard of of the word "Intuitive".

And now I've just got to step 7, typed "clean all" and it looks like it's frozen. No user feedback to say what is happening!

Microsoft, can you please design things, it'd make everyones jobs and home life much better. Instead you seem to have just patched things together. I guess at least you seem to have created a large job market for computer technicians, but you seem to make their lives pretty hard too.

After waiting 25 mins on a none-changing screen, it's finally popped up saying "Disk Part succeeded in cleaning the disk". A little long for a simple clean. It now appears in the list. But now another error!

Windows cannot be installed to this disk. This computers hardware may not support booting to this disk. Ensure that the disk's controller is enabled in the computers BIOS menu.
So, after restarting the machine, it seemed to accept the disk.

It's now installing, I need a coffee.

Tuesday 28 August 2012

iTunes requires Quicktime 7.5.5 on OS X 10.5.8

After updating a G4 PowerBook to OS X 10.5.8, making sure all the software was up to date with "Software Updates" in the Apple Menu, I tried iTunes. It came up with the error message:
iTunes requires Quicktime 7.5.5

I had a quick look around and found this in Apple Discussions. It appears Software Update does not pick up on the quicktime update. If you go to  http://support.apple.com/downloads/#quicktime it gives you a list of quicktime downloads. The latest version at present which goes on OS X 10.5.8 is Quicktime 7.7

After downloading and installing it's working fine.

Monday 13 August 2012

Current NHR LIclean.hook

So, after a few years of using NHR I've had to add a few more exceptions. Instead of writing them down I thought I'd might as well just paste the LIclean.hook file here:



#!/bin/sh
#set -xv; exec 1>>/tmp/out 2>&1
PATH=/bin:/usr/bin:/usr/sbin export PATH



#The line above is used for logging and troubleshooting only - if you need to troubleshoot this script, remove the "#" from the line.  Once you are done, put the "#" back at the beginning of the line.
logger "LoginHook: Starting for $1"

#Update on June 27, 2006 - added support for 10.3 clients and other improvements
#Update on July 10, 2006 - added feature so that all local users will bypass redirection.
#Update on October 18, 2006 - added $1 directory in /tmp for better folder structure.
#Update on July 13, 2007 - added Leopard compatibility
#Update on July 19, 2007 - added line to delete Clip Gallery Preferences, if they have not already been removed from the local admin's account.
#Update on April 28, 2008 - took out iHook application, as some users didn't like seeing the iHook window during login.
#Update on August 20, 2008 - due to ACL's put on user home folders starting with 10.5.4, this will now remove the ACL so that redirection can still take place on the folders with Deny Delete ACL's.
#Update on September 3, 2008 - added Office 2008 support
#Update on September 17, 2008 - deleted EOF commands, as it was causing issues with some PPC machines.
#Update on October 5, 2008 - added support for SMART board software, as they store caches in ~/Library/Application Support
#Update on March 5, 2009 - fixed issue with finding local users that matched part of the username (added -x to grep)
#Update on March 11, 2009 - added support for Adobe Acrobat 9
#Update on April 17, 2009 - added support for Adobe CS4
#Update on August 17, 2009 - added support for iMovie 09 with network homes
#Update on September 23, 2009 - added support for users with "." in their shortnames (thanks to Ben Gollmer for this addition)

LocalAdminUser=`dscl . -list /Users uid |grep 501 |awk '{print$1}'`
Local=`dscl . -list /Users |grep -x $1`

#This script will re-direct several folders from a user's network home location to the local machine to help with performance.

if [[ "$1" == "$Local" ]]; then
        exit 0
fi

eval home_loc=~$1

#This section will verify that there are no DENY DELETE ACL's on the folders - and if so, remove the ACL so that redirection can still take place.

aclline=`ls -led "$home_loc"/Library/Caches | grep "deny delete" | head -1 | awk -F: '{print $1}' | sed 's/^[ \t]*//'`
chmod -a# $aclline "$home_loc"/Library/Caches

aclline=`ls -led "$home_loc"/Library/Fonts | grep "deny delete" | head -1 | awk -F: '{print $1}' | sed 's/^[ \t]*//'`
chmod -a# $aclline "$home_loc"/Library/Fonts

aclline=`ls -led "$home_loc"/Library/Application\ Support/SMART\ Technologies\ Inc/Gallery | grep "deny delete" | head -1 | awk -F: '{print $1}' | sed 's/^[ \t]*//'`
chmod -a# $aclline "$home_loc"/Library/Application\ Support/SMART\ Technologies\ Inc/Gallery

#This section will delete the Fonts, Microsoft User Data, AppleWorks User Data, SMART Board Gallery folder and Microsoft Preferences folders from the current user's network home location
rm -rf "$home_loc"/Library/Caches
rm -rf "$home_loc"/Library/Fonts
rm -rf "$home_loc"/Documents/Microsoft\ User\ Data
rm -rf "$home_loc"/Documents/AppleWorks\ User\ Data
rm -rf "$home_loc"/Library/Preferences/Microsoft
rm -rf "$home_loc"/Library/Application\ Support/Microsoft/Office
rm -rf "$home_loc"/Library/Application\ Support/SMART\ Technologies\ Inc/Gallery
rm -rf "$home_loc"/Library/Application\ Support/Adobe
rm -rf "$home_loc"/Library/Application\ Support/Google

#This section will clean up the local drive, so that iMovie 09 will work with network homes
rm -rf /iMovie\ Events
rm -rf /iMovie\ Projects

#This section will make a folder for the current user in /tmp
mkdir /tmp/$1/
mkdir /tmp/$1/Adobe
#mkdir /tmp/$1/Adobe/Acrobat
#mkdir /tmp/$1/Adobe/Illustrator\ CS4
mkdir /tmp/$1/Google

#This will copy several Microsoft folders of the local admin user (make sure this account was the first account set up on the client - with UID 501) to /tmp.
cp -R /Users/$LocalAdminUser/Library/Preferences/Microsoft /tmp/$1/Microsoft/
rm -f "/tmp/$1/Microsoft/Clip Gallery Preferences"
cp -R /Users/$LocalAdminUser/Library/Application\ Support/Microsoft/Office /tmp/$1/Office2008
cp -R /Users/$LocalAdminUser/Documents/Microsoft\ User\ Data /tmp/$1/Microsoft\ User\ Data/

#This will create the iMovie 09 folders needed to work with network homes
mkdir "$home_loc"/Movies/iMovie\ Events
mkdir "$home_loc"/Movies/iMovie\ Projects

#This will create an AppleWorks User Data folder in /tmp.
mkdir /tmp/$1/Appleworks

#This will create the user's Caches folder in /tmp.
mkdir /tmp/$1/Caches

#This will check for the Notebook application (SMART) and create a SMART folder in /tmp (if needed).
SMART=`test -e /Applications/Notebook\ Software/Notebook.app && echo Yes`

if [[ "$SMART" == "Yes" ]]; then
mkdir /tmp/$1/SMART
mkdir -p "$home_loc"/Library/Application\ Support/SMART\ Technologies\ Inc/
fi

#This will change ownership of all files in /tmp/$1 to the current user
chown -R `dscl /Search -read /Users/$1 UniqueID | awk '{print $2}'` /tmp/$1

#This will create the Microsoft and Adobe folders, inside the Application Support folder, for the user.
mkdir "$home_loc"/Library/Application\ Support/Microsoft
#mkdir "$home_loc"/Library/Application\ Support/Adobe

#This last section will set up symbolic links for the current user.
ln -s /tmp/$1/Caches/ "$home_loc"/Library/Caches
ln -s /Library/Fonts/ "$home_loc"/Library/Fonts
ln -s /tmp/$1/Appleworks "$home_loc"/Documents/AppleWorks\ User\ Data
ln -s /tmp/$1/Microsoft/ "$home_loc"/Library/Preferences/Microsoft
ln -s /tmp/$1/Microsoft\ User\ Data/ "$home_loc"/Documents/Microsoft\ User\ Data
ln -s /tmp/$1/Office2008/ "$home_loc"/Library/Application\ Support/Microsoft/Office
ln -s /tmp/$1/SMART/ "$home_loc"/Library/Application\ Support/SMART\ Technologies\ Inc/Gallery
#ln -s /tmp/$1/Adobe/Acrobat/ "$home_loc"/Library/Application\ Support/Adobe/Acrobat
#ln -s /tmp/$1/Adobe/Illustrator\ CS4/ "$home_loc"/Library/Application\ Support/Adobe/Illustrator\ CS4
ln -s /tmp/$1/Adobe/ "$home_loc"/Library/Application\ Support/Adobe
ln -s "$home_loc"/Movies/iMovie\ Events /iMovie\ Events
ln -s "$home_loc"/Movies/iMovie\ Projects /iMovie\ Projects
ln -s /tmp/$1/Google "$home_loc"/Library/Application\ Support/

logger - "LoginHook:  Finished for $1"

#sendLogon extras (IP address and Port number has been taken out)

/usr/bin/sendLogon 123.456.32.1 1234 $1
/usr/bin/sendLogon 123.456.32.2 1234 $1
/usr/bin/sendLogon 123.456.32.3 1234 $1





I've commented out a few lines so I could see what I've done in the past.


Addition:

so, I've now found that Adobe Bridge has trouble opening. After some investigation it looks like Bridge 4 (CS5) doesn't like symbolic links, but prefers to use the networked folder.

After looking into all the Adobe Applications, the only one now which needs the symbolic link is Adobe Acrobat Pro. So I'm re-writing this script to create a symbolic link from ~/Library/Application Support/Adobe/Acrobat a the local folder.

I'm also getting rid of the Adobe symbolic link so that bridge works.



Addition (08/11/2012)

A few months on and I soon realised that although Illustrator is behaving much better then it did do in the past, I found that if it did not have a symbolic link to the local drive it would have trouble saving and exporting files to the desktop, making it appear that the files were saved, when in fact they had 0kb! This caused a bit of trouble with students at the time, and backups had to be retrieved.

I then added a symlink with ~/Library/Application Support/Adobe/Adobe Illustrator CS5.

I also realised that if it was a new student which didn't have an Application Support folder, NHR would be unable to create an Adobe folder inside this. I hence added a few lines to make the folders:
~/Library/
~/Library/Application Support/
~/Library/Application Support/Adobe/

Sending Files over the internet - Zendto

So, just a quick note because I'll probably forget, but Zendto is a very nice system to send and receive files over the internet.

It's a nice simple system which is why I like it.