EBS 4 Agent and Silverlight on OS X 10.6.6

We use EBS and have recently upgraded to version 4 which isn't officially supported for Mac :(. But it does work, although we have intermittent cases when a user gets a white screen.

To fix, you simply need to delete the:
~/Library/Application\ Support/Microsoft/Silverlight

folder. Simple.

I noticed that on 10.7.4 machines the folder is read only.

Firefox not picking up the wpad auto config file

I've decided to setup firefox on the new Windows image but it turns out it doesn't like the options:

• Use system proxy settings
• this is the one I prefer as I can set it using group policy/workgroup manager
• Auto-detect proxy settings for this network

Whenever either of these are ticked you cannot browse the internet.

Had a quick search and think I've found the problem. The browser looks for the file:

http://wpad/wpad.dat

Now when I typed this in the address bar of; Safari, Internet Explorer and Google Chrome; they all downloaded the wpad.dat file. But Firefox was the odd one out as it just displayed the "Unable to connect" and "Problem loading page" errors.

Did a quick search and found this Knowledge Base Article describing how all other browser now use DHCP to help find this address, but Firefox only uses DNS. Also found it here in a blog and more importantly in Mozillas bug reports here (takes a while to load).

The fix apparently is to put a "DNS record for the WPAD server" (described here under 7.2.2)

Making a pkg file for installing sendLogon for Bloxx on OS X

In a previous post I described how we're getting a new web filtering system called Bloxx, which needs the sendLogon program to be installed and run as a login script on all the Apple Macs (OS X).

I used Iceberg free application to make the PKG file as I've used it before with relative ease, and also couldn't find the latest official Apple PKG maker app!!

Its all working now so here's how I did it:

1. Made a new project in Iceburg, and made a nice little folder to hold all the files needed (makes it easier to find things)
2. I filled in the top section "Settings"

3. Next was the "Scripts" section. I had to make a script which changed the com.apple.loginwindow plist file to add the LoginHook /usr/bin/login.sh
1. I ran nano from the command line (nano ~Desktop/sendLogonfiles/Install\ sendLogon/writeloginhook.sh)
    and typed:
2.  #!/bin/tcsh
   sudo defaults write com.apple.loginwindow LoginHook /usr/bin/login.sh
3. I found I had to put "sudo" into the script so that it had the right permissions to write to the file. Not sure why else it didn't work?
4. I saved the file and made the file executable - chmod 755 ~Desktop/sendLogonfiles/Install\ sendLogon/writeloginhook.sh
4. I then added this script to the "PostFlight" script, and set the path to "Relative". Note - I found an article here documenting the definition of each of these types of scripts. Most were concerned with whether this was an upgrade or not, and would only run once.

5. Finally was the "Files" section. 

1. I firstly put the files in the project folder.
2. I set these files with the correct permissions (as in the tutorial folder for sendLogon). chmod 755
3. Then, in Iceberg, I had to add the folders; /usr/ and /usr/bin/, which were not there.
4. I then made the "Default Destination" the /usr/bin/ folder
5. Finally I added the login.sh file and the sendLogon file.

I've just tested this through the Apple Remote Desktop Task Server on a single MacBook Pro and worked a charm (had to ring ICT though to add its' IP address to the Bloxx list of computers with sendLogon working)

Note: There is potential also for adding to this a little script which changes the proxy settings to the system and maybe also Firefox, but it would be easier to control these settings through a .pac file or .wpad file.

Firefox address bar and search not responding

We currently have Active Directory users logged into OS X machine using Firefox 6.0.2. We've always had problems with Firefox. Most notably the "A copy of Firefox is already open" error, which requires you to delete the Application Support/Firefox folder on the users home drive.

The most recent problems is that when you type in either an address or search in the boxes at the top, or the new "home" page which looks like google, but saved locally, when you press "enter" it does not do anything.

The way to fix this is to close Firefox and reopen it, which isn't really a fix but a rubbish work around. Although it sort of amuses me to say "Switch it off and back on again", I don't like saying it to fix random things such as this.

WallSpaceVidualArts coming soon

Just made the coming soon front page for the website www.wallspacevisualarts.co.uk. All works well, apart from in Firefox 4.0.1. Have a look at this:

Firefox 4.0.1 in background, Safari 5.0.4 in foreground. Notice you can't see the bottom email address in Firefox, and the last part of the phone number

Looks like Firefox 4.0.1 either makes the text too big, or makes the gaps (padding and margins) too big. Quite frustrating. Might be because I used em's for the font size?

Yep, worked it out in the end:

Firefox 4.0.1 in background, Safari 5.0.4 in foreground - fixed inconsistency

So, I started by changing margins which had no effect. I then tried changing font size from 'em' to 'pt', but this didn't work either. Finally tried the old 'line-height', changing from 'em' to 'px' which fixed it. Safari and Firefox are not the same when it comes to 'em's and 'line-height'. I still don't exactly know what 'em' means, but I'm sure I'll look it up one of these days.

Also to note was the slight differences in title formating. I used h1, h2 and h3 for the headers and footers, and there was a slight inconsistency with margins on them. Had to set them to 0px.

Also, for the "JOHN KING" text and phone number, I put a little bit of 'word-spacing' using 'em's, this is inconsistent between these browsers, so I changed it to 'pt'.

I also manually changed the margins for the '
' paragraphs. This is what gives it a bit of space at the top and bottom. I manually changed these so that I could determine the exact distance between the top and bottom of the main text.

Package Maker for OS X

Well, after finding out to some degree that Firefox 3.6.12 works perfectly on Active Directory I thought I'd try and role it out through the Task Server. First and final step was to make a package file which puts Firefox in the Applications folder with the right permissions.

It took some time but I found just dragging Firefox over the "drag contents here" dialogue on the left of the window added Firefox and also added Applications/ folder for the destination!. Tried it, it said it worked, even took a little time installing the files, and it just wouldn't appear in the Applications folder.

After trying "trial and error" I finally looked at the logs to find it saying it was "Diverting" or some similar wording, the files to some other place. I searched on the internet to find that you need to 'untick' the "Relocate" box. I think it's been finding "firefox" or reminants of Firefox  in the folder and so didn't want to overwrite it. Unticking the box finally worked which then showed some wierd results.

The wierd results were that once this was run, Guest and other logins couldn't run firefox. I thought of permissions issues might be the cause because I was logged in and made it from Firefox which I copied. I tried it from Cove login from the Firefox in the Applications folder with no luck. Finally I tried it from Cove and Firefox from the original DMG file downloaded from the interweb. The pkg file recommended a restart through ARD and this tended to work. Just a few more tests and I shall run it through the Task Server.

Should now be able to make more PKG files for distribution. Yay

Firefox OS X bookmarks and History

So, a big problem, but not really that big. But when you load firefox in OS X 10.5 on an active directory account firefox cannot save any preferences including bookmarks and history. But I think these are very necessary for everyday browsing.

I looked up the problem and found lots of complaints but no answers! The earliest complaint was in 2008, and 2 years on no fix.


http://support.mozilla.com/en-US/forum/1/71305

I personnally tried re-directing lots of folders from the library to the local hard drive, because at the end of the day it's a permissions issues os x has with active directory servers. Folders I've tried to re-direct are:

~/Library/Application Support/Firefox
~/Library/Mozilla
~/Library/Preferences/org.mozilla.firefox
~/Library/Caches

Some success, but only per session. If you re-direct Firefox and Mozilla folders it lets you bookmark and saves history. But on closing and re-opening firefox all is lost. It must save temporarily in the caches folder and not be able to move it to another? Doesn't quite make sense.

Oh well, I shall spend some more time on it.