Pips ‘N’ Peelings

I came across another photographer today with an Epson Stylus Photo R2400 that wouldn’t print from Leopard. I suspect that this problem could afflict any Epson printer installation.

Symptoms are:

1) The document to be printed appears in the printer queue but doesn’t go anywhere. Neither does it complain.

2) If you try to open Epson’s printer utility (where you would normally check ink-levels, clean the printer heads, etc) it appears briefly in the dock and then disappears.

If you get the unexpectedly quit dialog and select report to Apple, you see the error details. This time around it complained that it couldn’t find:

/Library/Printers/EPSON/CIOSupport/CIOSupport.framework/Versions/A/CIOSupport

Inspection of this location showed an alias to CIOSupport pointing nowhere.

Fortunately the client had no other printers, so despite the fact he had previously tried to install the latest driver (from here), I did the same, but before doing so removing the EPSON folder entirely to the desktop to make sure the installer created a fresh version and also removing the printer from Print and Fax set-up. I then recreated it after the installer had reinstated the EPSON folder.

That did the trick.

You have a kernel panic and the big clue you are looking for in the report back to Apple (or in the console log) is:

panic(cpu 0 caller 0×001694C6): “vm_map_unwire: entry is unwired”@/SourceCache/xnu/xnu-1228.5.20/osfmk/vm/vm_map.c:4110

Trawlled the internet and came up with 2 possibilities:

1. VMWare Fusion. OK, VMWare does some nifty things with memory.
2. Faulty RAM modules

The pointer for me was that booting in ’safe mode’ caused the Mac to start normally and to be happy for days on end; time for my client to copy over onto another Mac. So I think “Aha, some third-party software is lousing up!”. And the fact that one of the most often used is Fusion seems to be too good to be true.

Which it was. The Mac didn’t stop panicing on start-up no matter what bit of software I removed, what cache I cleared, which plist I dumped.

So I reluctantly move on to RAM. I take out a module. No panics. Put it back, take out the other module, no panics again, So I really strain the Mac with big photoshop files and opening every app in the dock. All fine. So I put the RAM back and restart. No Panics. So all I needed to have done was re-fit the RAM. Sometimes the temptation to be too clever is too much.

In this case the RAM looked fine, but must have made poor contact. It has worked fine since. First thing I’ll do next time. Apologies if it doesn’t work for you. Perhaps my internet trawl will be useful to you:

http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?messageID=7517857&#7517857

http://macosx.com/forums/hardware-peripherals/302019-help-random-imac-aluminum-20-crashes-boot.html

http://forums.macosxhints.com/showthread.php?t=92754

http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?messageID=8418392&#8418392

This post is mainly to remind me of the procedure to follow, in that a little searching on the web will find the answers. However, when I am in front of a client’s mac I would prefer to have the answers in one place.

1) Enable Time Machine’s latent ability to back-up to other kinds of disk. Copy this into an open Terminal window:

defaults write com.apple.systempreferences TMShowUnsupportedNetworkVolumes 1

and press return.

2) Mount the network disk* that you want to back-up onto. Make sure you can see an open Finder window with its contents.
3) In Time Machine preferences choose this disk as the target for the back-up.
4) As Time Machine tries and fails to create a back-up on this target disk, watch the open Finder window; a disk image file will appear there called something like: “MacName_0016cb8c8882.sparsbundle“. As it does so, select its name and copy it. Paste the name somewhere for later. (The “MacName” will be the name of the Mac, the alphanumeric will be the hardware address of the ethernet card used for networking).
5) Time Machine will eventually complain that the back-up failed. Ah well.
6) Find where you pasted the name of the sparsebundle file Time Machine tried to create. Below it paste this code:

DISK_IMAGE_NAME=”Mac_number.sparsebundle” DISK_SIZE=110000 hdiutil create -library SPUD -megabytes $DISK_SIZE -fs HFS+J -type SPARSEBUNDLE -volname “$DISK_IMAGE_NAME” “$DISK_IMAGE_NAME”

7) Replace Mac_number.sparsebundle with the actual sparsebundle name saved earlier. Retain the ” ” double quotes! Determine whether a disk size of 110000 MB is enough for a back-up disk and adjust the figure accordingly. Copy and paste the revised code into a new Terminal window and press return. This will create a disk image file with the same name as the one that Time Machine failed to create. It will at first be small but grows in size as files are backed-up. Copy this new file to the networked disk.

Time Machine will now be able to back-up. The first back-up will be huge and take days, so in the Time Machine preferences, select lots of folders to omit from the back-up in the Time Machine. Then the first sync will be small. The missed folders can be activated later.

*Network disk: If the disk is being shared from another Mac you may have to fiddle with its permissions until Time Machine will see it. For me, using a firewire disk shared from a Mac running Panther, giving everyone read-write access and un-checking ignore ownership on this volume did the trick:

Credit:
http://adamcohenrose.blogspot.com/2008/02/time-machine-wireless-backup-without.html

http://forums.macrumors.com/showthread.php?t=427488

http://www.macosxhints.com/article.php?story=20080420211034137

My MacBook Pro has been running out of space for some time and I have put off the inevitable tidy. It was down to its last 20 GB where it always starts to get into trouble. (That seems like a lot to me as I had older macs that didn’t have that in total).

Anyway time to lose some stuff, so I searched (cmd-space) for the usual culprits: .dmg, .ps files for instance but thought there must be a better approach. Hurrah, http://www.omnigroup.com are doing a public beta of omnidisksweeper, so a quick download gets me a scientific approach to finding large files. And so it does; finding that my Applications folder has ballooned to 70GB - big for a 200 GB disk. The real culprit it turns out are files in my vmware folder; 8 GB files ending .vmdk that contain backed up data used by vmware Fusion to snap the system configuration! These must be deleted from Fusion itself once the guest system has suspended. My new consolidated Fusion disk has returned 29GB to me. So I can continue not to be tidy!

I have come across a number of clients who get this message if they open Network Preferences:

“Your network settings have been changed by another application”

They click the OK button and it just keeps coming back immediately, effectively locking them out of the preference pane. It has cropped up for a lot of people, as is evidenced by threads like this one: http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=1715241&tstart=30 and there were a host of workarounds to try when I last tried to fix this issue. However, the most effective solution then was to do an “archive and install” of the whole OS X operating system because you can only play detective so long on someone else’s time and money.

However, when it works, the best solution I have come across is a one-click fix:
Go to the Security preference pane, and check the check-box next to “Require password to unlock each System Preferences pane”. That’s it.

I suspect it stops whatever is taking over using that extra layer of security. Which would be ironic as the consensus seems to be that it is an Apple Security Update that causes the issue.

If this works for you, please let me know!

Just a quick blogette to plead with mac users to back-up their stuff. I just came across another iMac with a disk that had suddenly become unuseable. Years of precious photos gone. I tried every disk utility I could find but no joy. If you think backing up is too much like hard work then upgrade to leopard os x 10.5 and with TimeMachine and a USB hard disk it is 2 clicks for hourly back-ups forever

OK, I know, I have more chance of selling a pension scheme.

I was setting up a client’s access to Microsoft Exchange Server from his lovely MacBook Air today. There was a big drumroll to this because the client left the mac at one of his company’s offices while he went to some important pow-wow. I had a window of opportunity to sort it. So I was not happy when after backing things up and selecting new Exchange account I was greated by a message saying that Office 2008 Student & Teacher Edition does not support Exchange mail accounts, and that I needed to ‘upgrade’ to the full version of Microsoft Office 2008.

Huh.

1. I suppose a business user should have known better than to buy the student pack. I couldn’t help thinking that any install of Apple Mail in OS X Leopard supports Exchange.
2. I needed to lay my hands on a copy of the ‘Full’ version fast. Or perhaps the ‘upgrade’. But no local computer shops stocked it. I had to find an Apple Reseller. Not so handy. But they imparted the bomb-shell that there is no upgrade from the Student & Teacher edition to the ‘Full’ edition. So what looked like a £100 upgrade turned into a £300+VAT purchase of the ‘Full’ version for my client’s company.
3. Of course the ‘Full’ version isn’t the full version because there is a Media edition that does more. But I didn’t need that today, I just mention it so that you understand that Microsoft’s grasp of English is confusing.

On the way to and from the reseller I got to wondering what would happen if OS X came in different flavours. OK, I know there is the server edition, but that is such a special case. Generally the consumer is not greeted by a range of different versions more or less crippled/accomplished. For instance, I had a call from a PC user the other day, and I actually helped him out. To start the remote desktop session it was necessary to know what version of Windows he was using, so I asked. “Home Premium edition” he said. Now I am a bit rusty on Windows, but I was fairly sure there could have been an XP version of that, as well as Vista. So I explained that to start the session he needed to download the right client and that the XP version was different to the Vista version, so again, which version was he using? “Home Premium edition” he said.

What I am leading up to is the possibility that Apple might go that way if it caves in and produces a mac to compete with the cheap PCs on the market. I really hope it doesn’t. The Mac OS X is now one of the things that makes macs great to work with, and it would be a pity to purposely cripple it to make a lower entry point for the prospective buyer.

And finally, upon my return with the ‘Full’ version, I realised that I had been left a MacBook Air without its DVD drive, so that was another hurdle. And once surmounted, and the new version installed, it said that the ‘main identity’ (containing all the contacts, emails, accounts, attachments) was not readable by this ‘Full’ version of Office 2008.

Humm

I didn’t put my back-up to the test. I unzipped the Student edition which I had very concientiously backed-up, opened that version’s Entourage, it reread the ‘main identity’ and opened. I closed it again, then opened the new ‘Full’ version, and it read the identity without a hitch. Phew.

A client has bought a really grand Epson Stylus Photo R2400 for his top notch photography business. Putting aside my jealousy for a moment I tried to install the necessary driver and software from the CD.

But we find that:

1) The CD that came with his new printer is not just incompatible with Tiger/Leopard, it doesn’t work on Intel macs!

2) We only find this out on the website after trying to install. So it insists we reset the Printer Setup app and restart.

3) Then download the Intel driver and printer configuration software, and reinstall the printer.

So you do all that and although it will find and install and print to the printer, nothing is printed out. And the configurations in the printing dialog are inaccessible (greyed/struck through). The pdf manual put this down to the wrong driver, but it isn’t. Re-Reinstalling the driver does nothing; no printouts.

4) Searching the Epson site yields nothing. Tech support only available in US or Canada. Thanks so much.

Beginning to feel peeved on behalf of my client now because he isn’t mucking about; he has a serious business and either the mac, Epson, or possibly me are letting him down. Then I realise that his other USB printer was found immediately after reseting the printer system. The new printer connects via Firewire, but can it connect via USB? Sure enough it does. And guess what? Fully configurable options appear on printing!

Nowhere at any time did we find anything that said the drivers do not work with Firewire.

When troubleshooting a misbehaving application one thing I learned early on was to go to the user’s home folder, and find the application’s preferences file (.plist) in the Library/Preferences folder, and drag the file to the desktop (bin it later). This often has a miraculous effect after restarting the application.

Other corruptible files are in the Application Support folder in the user’s Library folder, and the one that solved a problem today: removing the relevant cache file in Caches, again in the user’s
Library folder.

That one got InDesign working properly again when the color picker became stuck on pantone only. I had begun to wonder what to do, but was reassured when I logged in as Guest, started InDesign, and all was well. That proved that the problem was with the user’s settings and not the application proper.

OS X Leopard still seems to have trouble finding printers that are shared on the network from macs running earlier versions of OS X.

Potentially you could waste an enormous amount of time getting this to work. But if you know that the printer should be found by the printer browser, especially if it was working before without Leopard, or other macs simply see the printer, try the following in Terminal:

cupsctl BrowseProtocols=’”cups dnssd”‘

(yes, the various speech marks are intended -use cut and paste to make sure you get them)

Then if you try to add a printer again (remove any previous attempts) the shared printer should appear when you add printer.

A full explanation of the problem and why it happens here:
http://support.apple.com/kb/HT2275?viewlocale=en_US