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12:51 pm - iCal Server Multiple / Sub Calendars and Sunbird

Originally published at Chealion.ca. Please leave any comments there.

At my workplace we use iCal Server running on Mac OS X 10.5 Server to share several calendars all under our one staff group. With iCal, so long as the group is delegated to be shown on the user’s accounts you can see all the calendars but with Sunbird you only get to see the first calendar.

Before going further it’s worth noting how to delegate a group calendar so a user can view it without manually adding the group calendar as it’s own calendar (if using Delegates instead of multiple calendar “accounts” (same credentials, different calendars) is your aim). To do so you have to add the group calendar as a normal account in order to set it up, and then set up delegation as you would for a normal account. The important URL to know for using a group calendar is http://FQDN.OF.SERVER:8008/principals/groups/groupname (as always replace http with https and 8008 with 8443 if you are using SSL).

Sunbird uses slightly different URLs than what you use in iCal to start with, where in iCal an example URL might be http://FQDN.OF.SERVER:8008/principals/users/USERNAME or http://FQDN.OF.SERVER:8008/principals/groups/GROUPNAME. The corresponding URL to use in Sunbird is http://FQDN.OF.SERVER:8008/calendars/users/USERNAME/calendar or http://FQDN.OF.SERVER:8008/calendars/groups/GROUPNAME/calendar

That’s great for adding a single calendar but what if a user or a group has multiple calendars under their one account? iCal will automatically show them as a group whereas Sunbird requires you to add each and everyone that you wish to have show up.

You can specify a “sub-calendar” to subscribe to in Mozilla Sunbird by specifying the unique ID of that calendar instead in the form of the url http://FQDN.OF.SERVER:8008/calendars/__uids__/UID_OF_GROUP_OR_USER/UID_OF_SUB_CALENDAR. Note the lack of calendar at the end of the URL. To determine the UIDs in question it’s easiest using iCal, if you click on a calendar and press Command-I (File -> Get Info) you can see part of the CalDAV URL at the bottom of the sheet that appears.

You will see calendars/__uids__/UNIQUE_ID/ONLY_PART_OF_THE_UNIQUE_ID because the label the text is placed into is not big enough to fit the URL. Because you can’t get the full URL from there it’s easiest to go to the iCal Server itself and navigate to /Library/CalendarServer/Documents/calendars/__uids__/ (you’ll need administrator privileges to view this). From there find the folder named the same as the UNIQUE_ID portion of the URL and open it to find a folder with the UNIQUE_ID of the “sub-calendar”. You can now put the URL together and use that in Sunbird to view that additional calendar.

Example URL of a sub-calendar in the group:
https://FQDN.OF.SERVER:8443/calendars/__uids__/FA26C8C6-5B78-4AB0-AE73-0E9576574EBB/F74174B7-380C-4630-9192-9025F4C691A2

Sources Used:

• MacOSXHints.com - Add group calendars to iCal Server
• Apple Support Discussions - Correct URLs for Sunbird
• Apple Support Discussions - iCal + Sunbird

03:22 pm - Aborting On the Second Disk on a Restore

Originally published at Chealion.ca. Please leave any comments there.

Scenario: Client attempts to restore their iMac using their Software Restore disks (10.4.10) but the second disk containing iLife for some reason refuses to be recognized. iLife is already installed and the OS has been installed but the Installer will come up everytime you attempt to start up the computer.

The workaround: Start up the computer in single user mode. Then use the following commands (not the ones with ## preceding them however)

## Mount the filesystem so you can read and write to it
mount -uw /
## The files we want live in /var/db
cd /var/db/
## Files that tell us it's a multi disk install
rm .AppleMultiInstall*
## File that tells us to pop up the registration dialog
rm .AppleCustomMac
## Something else to do with setup (Locale Setup?)
rm .locsetup.plist  

I removed all 3 files because they looked like the most likely culprits but gut tells me the .AppleMultiInstall* files are the only ones that have to be removed but I wasn’t able to test it.

You’re now able to boot the computer just fine - it’s imperative however to be sure that you know what has been installed as you’re interrupting the installation. Because in this case I knew that only iLife was on the second disk (in terms of what had been selected to be installed) I didn’t go ahead with reinstalling the OS to be on the safe side.

This has been tested on Mac OS X Tiger 10.4, it should be identical for Mac OS X Leopard 10.5 as well but I’m not 110% positive.

04:57 pm - iPhone Restoration : Restoring Home Screen Layout (Pre 3.0)

Originally published at Chealion.ca. Please leave any comments there.

After having gone through 3 iPhones and countless restores of different iPhones and iPod touches I had to get to the bottom of how to restore my layout of my apps on my home screens.

The Cause

When you restore your iPhone / iPod touch to it’s factory defaults the device is not connected to an iTunes account. When you restore it from your backup (to put your apps and info back on) it will load anything that does not require authorization through the iTunes store (with the exception of free apps - though purchased from the iTunes Store they seem to get loaded anyway). So when you finish a Restore From Backup the first time around it will not load any paid apps or music until it’s authorized. It does it’s authorizations seemingly right after you’ve restored it as it accesses the iTunes Store as if it was just plugged in. Why that has no effect on purchased music I’ve no idea.

In the end you’re left with a phone / iPod that has only part of the data it had on it before and requires you to press Sync again to put your paid applications and purchased music on to it. The biggest issue here is that if you have any data stored in that application, like say Things, or high scores from a game, or just find reorganizing your home layout frustrating you’re out of luck. The paid apps are installed anew, and placed one at a time into the earliest empty spot on your home screens. Frustrating. Thankfully there is a workaround.

The Workaround

1. Perform a backup before you restore.
2. After restoring your Phone to the whichever OS version
3. Restore from your backup (you can cancel syncing music when this part finishes - it will start up again after the next step)
4. Restore once more - you may see two backups to choose from as it would have created a backup after the restoring. Choose the one that would have a timestamp just before you do the restore.

Annoying because a restore from backup may take as long as 5 or 6 minutes but at least you aren’t stuck reorganizing your applications the way you wanted them again.

EDIT: From what I can gather 3.0 has fixed this issue.

03:21 pm - Alert: Flash Player 10.0.12.36 Installer Opens Up Root Home Folder

Originally published at Chealion.ca. Please leave any comments there.

I updated the current installation of Adobe Flash Player at work today over ARD and had several people ask me odd questions about why there was a Finder window with the word root for a title when they came in to login this morning. Needless to say that raised warning bells all over the place for myself.

On checking the computers I noticed it occurred on every computer running Tiger and that every computer running Leopard did show the menu bar and said Finder was running but unlike Tiger it did not allow you to perform any actions beyond opening a menu. In Tiger you were essentially logged in as root into the Finder (and SystemUIServer) which gave you complete access to anything. The kicker is that the root user was not enabled on any of the computers.

Now in the big picture it’s mostly a non-issue because the following requirements have to be taken to see this edge case:

1) The workstation must be running 10.4.0-10.4.11 (Flash Player 10 doesn’t run on Mac OS X older than 10.4) 2) You must be using Apple Remote Desktop to install the package 3) You must ensure that you choose not to restart the computers in question. By default the package wants to restart the computer if no one is logged in (I assume it is to avoid this very situation). If someone is logged in however it doesn’t request a restart. The kicker is that if you select a group of machines and send it to install and one of them has a logged in user by default it does not ask you to restart.

If you check on the workstation you will see a Finder window open to root’s home folder - even if you don’t have the root user enabled (which I am of the opinion you shouldn’t especially with sudo available). Anything then opened via the Finder then runs as root as well (including Terminal).

So it’s easy to work around - either restart them all, or do it when you have users logged in (not ideal). If you do choose the username for the action to be done in ARD; the Finder window will open up as that user (quite possibly a local administrator account) so filing in a username there is not a workaround but much less dangerous than root access. Once the computer is restarted or someone logs in the issue goes away.

05:06 pm - LaunchBar Snippets

Originally published at Chealion.ca. Please leave any comments there.

One of the very first programs I install on any machine I will be spending a good deal of time on is LaunchBar. I am a self confessed LaunchBar whore because of the amount of time it saves me from going down to the Dock or having to find the Applications folder to launch Applications on top of being able to calculate, do web searches and manipulate files just from a few keystrokes.

Here are three snippets I’ve added to my LaunchBar configuration that make my life a bit easier:

Add /Library/CoreServices as a folder to search - it means you can access applications like Screen Sharing and a few other lesser known applications without digging.

Searching Apple Mailing Lists: http://search.lists.apple.com/?q=*&cmd=Search%21&form=extended&m=all&ps=50&fmt=long&wm=wrd&wf=2221&sp=1&ul=

LargeText: x-launchbar:large-type?string=*

Lastly a couple other tips that I keep running up against:

1. ** allows you to do powers of in the calculator. Not ^.

2. If you consistently misspell something (eg. LIHGR instead of LIGHR for Lightroom) you can set the abbreviation by typing in something that does bring up the file or application and then press Command-Option-A (Select->Assign Abbreviation with the mouse) and then type in the misspell that you keep typing.