Network Home Redirector - reverting back

Back when we had OS X 10.5 installed throughout the computer suites we had to run a script at startup which created a symlink for Caches in the users Library folder. These scripts were called NHR (Network Home Redirector) This linked to a folder stored locally, as the caches folder stored on the Active Directory smb shares had permissions issues for some applications.

The only thing which didn't work quite as planned was the fact that the logout scripts never ran, and so people were left with the symlink in their Library folder.

Now we have updated to OS X 10.6.6, this permissions issue seems to have resolved itself. But anyone who logged in last year has now got a symlink for their Caches folder, and not a folder! To resolve it I plan to make a small script which, upon login, looks for a symlink, deletes it and makes a nice new folder.

I've had a look at the man page for 'ls' function, and if you use the -l command in it, it shows you more info on the files and folders. Any with a 'l' at the beginning of the line are symbolic links. I ran the command with the grep command to pick out the Caches folder:

ls -l Library/ | grep 'Caches'

lrwxrwxrwx+ 1 leachs  CHSTFADMIN\teaching_global     19 15 Sep 14:00 Caches -> /tmp/leachs/Caches/

So thats a good start.

Microtek ScanMaker 8700, ScanWizard Pro and OS X 10.6

After upgrading all the machines to 10.6.6, ScanWizard Pro 7.20 kept coming up with an "error -1" when the application was loaded up, and also an "error -30000" when we tried to initiate a scan. It obviously wasn't made for 10.6.

I updated to ScanWizard 7.62, but this couldn't find the ScanMaker 8700. It actually appeared in the scanner probe but wouldn't let you click on it. Quite frustrating!

So, I did a quick search for the problem and found this article by Microtek. They've got a work-around:

1. Download and install ScanWizard 5
2. Download and install the ScanMaker 8700 specific driver

It has to be done in this order for some reason. I also removed ScanWizard Pro 7 so there wouldn't be any confusion.

I also revised the tutorial on how to use the software. I'll put it on my next post

Creating Stripes in Illustrator using Patterns and Live Paint

I recently wanted to fill in a circle is some stripes in Illustrator, but alas it was not self explanatory. After looking it up on the old reliable internet I found quite a few posts describing a technique of copying and pasting lines throughout. Not really what I wanted to hear. The process I wanted was something along the lines of:

Mythical solution (does not really work this way, although I would like it to)

1. Get the fill tool
2. Select "Stripes"
3. Fill object

I decided to investigate myself. I finally came up with a pretty close technique.

Making two lines into a "Pattern"

1. Draw a line and make it a stroked colour of some thickness
2. Copy and Paste it next to the first, making it stroke a different colour
3. Select both lines and go to - Edit > Define Pattern
4. Click on "Live Paint" from the left toolbar
5. From the Fill Colour box at the top you can select the striped pattern you just made
6. Click on the object you want to fill with stripes

Star filled with striped pattern

To change the colour of the stripes:

Changing the colour of pattern using
"Recolor Artwork"

1. Select the fill (double click on it).
2. Select "Recolor Artwork"
3. Go get the option to change each of the colours in the fill:

Just found this post which describes a similar process using boxes, and dragging the boxes into the "Swatches" to create a pattern. Also how to rotate it, simply right click > Transform > Rotate  and tick "Pattern". Nice.

Rotating a pattern

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.

Transferring pictures on an iPad and any iOS device

Well, it is funny how user friendly the iPad is, and yet how puzzling it can be to do simple tasks. One such task is to transfer pictures onto an iPad. One would think it quite simple, perhaps drag and drop, bluetooth, through iPhoto; but alas these are not the way to do it.

Amazingly I had to look this up on the internet and found quite a few blogs, this one being helpful. Basically you need to sync either a folder or album to the iPad, which is controlled through iTunes.

1. Load up iTunes and plug in iPad (or iOS device)
2. Click on the device on the left hand side of iTunes
3. Click on the Pictures tab
4. Tick the sync box and select "folder" or whatever is relevant to you

Simple but not the way I would have done it.

802.1X login with OS X 10.6.6 and Active Directory

After re-imaging all the computer suites, there were a few machines without ethernet connections. These I had to set up using 802.1X logins on OS X 10.6.6, something I hadn't tested, although in theory there would be nothing different then the setup with OS X 10.5.8. But I've now just noticed that I have not written this process down, so this will be the first connotation of it:

After a few trials and tribulations I discovered the best (quickest and easiest) way to get the to log in wirelessly on Active Directory accounts using 802.1X.

1. Go to Network Settings in System Preferences
2. Click on Airport, turn it on and connect to ChesterfieldCollege wireless network:
3. 
4. Authenticate using the login details which will be used in the 802.1X authentication (needs to be the full username i.e. username@students.chesterfield.ac.uk. I think I also unticked the "Remember Password" box.
5. Accept the certificates (if you get any) and hopefully you should be connected
6. Click on Advanced and then go to the 802.1X tab
7. We are going to add a System Profile, so that whenever the computer is on, it'll always be authenticated on the wireless with a certain username and password.
8. You need to fill out the FULL username (.......@students.chesterfield.ac.uk) and password, tick TTLS and PEAP (might just apply to this wireless) and select ChesterfieldCollege as the wireless to use. Oh and WPA2 Enterprise.
9. Before we click OK I've found I also need to add the server certificate we just accepted (no.5) to the certificates. So go to Certificates, click add "Select Certificate from Keychain" and select the one you added:
10. 
11. Click OK, OK and when back on the initial Network Settings screen, click "Disconnect" under 802.1X.
12. Now restart the machine and see if it works!

In my experience, the wireless login takes a few more minutes to authenticate, so when restarting a machine you might want to give it a minute before trying to log in.

If it doesn't work, login as your administrator and see if it's connected to the wireless using 802.1X, and if not, delete the System Profile in Advanced and see if you can connect to it normally. Just keep on trying, and perhaps you added the wrong server certificate?



....
After doing this I always found a few machines which would come up with the "Error connecting to 802.1X" blaa blaa blaa. After a bit of trial and error it turns out that if I moved the machines to another part of the room it worked. Thus, the error message only came up when there was a low signal. Simple.

Setting Ignore ownership on this volume from Command Line ARD

I have a lot of computers, all with a separate volume for storage of files, mostly for Video editing storage. After re-imaging them all I need to set the other volume, which is named "Scratch Disk" so that it does not have any permissions, as it causes issues when groups of students use the same files.

This is a little tick box in the 'Get Info' box for that volume in the Finder. But to do it on all these macs would not be economical with my time. So the best thing to do would be to find the command line argument for it, and use Apple Remote Desktop (ARD) to send this command to all the computers.

After a quick search I found this article by apple explaining how to do the opposite; "do not ignore ownership on this volume". To do this the code was:

sudo vsdbutil -a /Volumes/NewHD/

I did a quick man on this "vsdbutil" and found the argument I was looking for -d. So the actual line to use is:

sudo vsdbutil -d /Volumes/Scratch\ Disk/
notice the "\" character just after the word "Scratch", which denotes that there is a space after it. Of course I run the command line as a root user so no need to have the "sudo" at the front.