New users, New Macs, New troubles. Help!

[Anonymous]

We are experiencing a lot of crashing AC files in our office. Any time I try to share a project the second person to sign in ends up crashing.

We have 5 new dual 2.5 G5 coputers running mac OSX 10.3.7 and a 6th single 1.8 G5 for a server. The server is actually just a big hard drive running OSX 10.3.7 and sharing its user. (might be the problem) I have updated all of the AC versions to 8.1 v2 build (2284). Still crashes.

For example. I save a pln file to the server with 4 walls and two stories. Share the project from the server and set up the admin and passwords. Then I reserve some space as a teammate and save a sketch. When I move to a different workstation and go through the signin process everything works up until I sign in. It opens the file with the new teammates space and waits about three seconds and then closes and opens an untitled new file. Just before it restarts to an untitled project it says warning cannot save Plan file. Does anybody have any info on what we are doing wrong. Do I need to break down and buy actual server software (MAC OSX server 10.3)?

Thanks

[Aussie John]

I might be completely off base here but as version 8 was coded before 10.3.7 came out this could be your problem. Just a guess. I know you have just spent a load on new computers but I think version 9 is needed.


as cheap option try an upgrade to 10.3.8

[Eduardo Rolon]

Try using a program called sharepoints you can find it in versiontracker it is an alternative to share files and folders without having to buy OS X Server and it might avoid the share of the same user problems if that is what is causing it. By the way sharepoint is freeware.

[Anonymous]

Thanks for your input. I will look into sharepoint. I did however solve the problem. I found a post that suggested a freeware called Onyx for macs. Allows me to easily clean up logs and cache files and more importantly... fix permissions. I did all of this and fixed the problem. Might have been a permissions problem. Thanks again for your posts.

Rob

[Eduardo Rolon]

As a regular user of Onyx (current 1.5) the only item that it is not recommended to run with it is "repair permissions". Everything I have read about it points to use the "Disk Utility" program that is in your utilities folder within applications for permission repair instead of Onyx, Yasu or Cocktail.

[Thomas Holm]

Eduardo, I don't think you have to worry about using Onyx for repairing permissions. Just like Cocktail, this program does nothing by itself. It's just a GUI front-end to a bunch of OSX/Unix system utilities, most of which you'd otherwise access through Terminal commands. In fact, that's just what it does - it issues Terminal commands according to the way you've configured it's settings.

I mostly use Onyx in its automated mode to run system routines, clean up caches and repair permission before system upgrades etc. Then, after the update, I use Disk Utility to do the permission repair alone - just because it's faster to do it that way when that's the only thing I want. As far as I know, both programs use the same system routine.

And, Rob, when you're using Sharepoints as a cheap replacement for OSX Server, as I do, you might find it necessary to not only repair, but change permissions on certain folders or on the complete shared volume once in a while. For example, if you use the server machine to create a new folder in the shared volume, you might find you can't write from networked machines to the new folder because it was created with the server admin as the owner and only read access for others.

To fix that situation, use BatchMod:
http://macchampion.com/arbysoft/
Take care not to change Owner of Archicad files - AC won't like that. But you can let all participants Read and Write, which will fix the situation you described. And never use BatchMod on any system files!