OXSERVER with AC 8

[Anonymous]

Hello AC people?
Problem.....
I have an extg. stable network running a combination of Pc's and Mac's all with AC 8.1 successfully talking to OSX 10.2.4. Funny cause the box says 10.2.6 or later. BUT....
When I upgrade the Apple Server to OSX 10.3.4 'Panther' and open an extg. or new AC 8.1 file, then make amendments to that file when I go to save; AC 8.1 refuses to update the file, hangs up and crashes (enters a terminal loop).
My AC agent has no answer but is pursuing Graphisoft on my behalf.
I do not presently wish to take up V9 (if indeed this has solved the problem) but I need Panther to resolve a few other issues.
I can't believe that nobody including Graphisoft has come across this problem?
Answers please 'cause I am losing the battle?
Thank you.

[Anonymous]

What OS was your server running before? We use 10.3.x clients on a 10.2.x server with none of the problems you are describing. I realize your's is the reverse. Is it only affecting the Mac clients?

[Stig Bengtsson]

Do you have the permissions set properly?

[Anonymous]

Thank you very much for the replys guy's.
1. To the best of my knowledge it's not a permission problem. I can open an AC file directly from the server tell it to 'save as' onto a work station, then drag and drop back on to the same file on the server and it happily over writes? We had a permisiions problem when we changed from Mac's to Pc's with the server running OSX 10.2.x but we resolved this.
2. The OSX version presently stable and in use on our server is 10.2.x. 90% of machines working off this server are Pc's. GX280's 1GBRAM and flying. No complaints there at all. The swap from Mac to PC was the best move to date although plenty of us were sad to leave the Mac platform.
So all I want to do is run AC version 8.1 on a known stable server running OSX 10.3.4. And I can not reason as to why it doesn't work???
I did read a previous encounter where by the user gave up with V8 reverted to V7 and bit the costs to upgrade to V9 when released. It's not like buying a car is it? I could upgrade to V9 but how do I know I won't have the same problem? I run about 15 licences in this office and a further 15 or so in the other offices. The down time is costly but if its the only way?? Any further advice would be warmly welcomed. Thank you for taking the time to read.
Kind regards....

[Anonymous]

"...I did read a previous encounter where by the user gave up with V8 reverted to V7 and bit the costs to upgrade to V9 when released. It's not like buying a car is it? I could upgrade to V9 but how do I know I won't have the same problem? I run about 15 licences in this office and a further 15 or so in the other offices..."

You may be talking about our office. We did table v8 and v8.1, but that was due to it's performance problems on the Mac. We are pleased with our implementation of v9. I was thinking that the OS problems our office had when we moved from an OS9 file server to an OSX file server might have helped with what you first described. However, we do not use any PCs in our office, so I am not so sure. I had to make sure that the NetInfo settings the the Mac's Directory Access Application. I don't know if it has any corrolary with PC client stations.

Do you have any Mac clients at this point at all? If so, is the problem present on both client platforms? Either way, another critical troubleshooting question would be whether this behavior also occurs when trying to save files from other applications. Microsoft Word? PlotMaker? Photoshop? If they also have problems, you might start looking at the Apple Discussion forums for clues.

By the way, I would hope that your reseller (agent) would be able to send/lend you at no cost a single AC9 dongle to test whether software version is the problem.

Again, I am running 10.2.8 server and not 10.3.x, so I am not sure what settings may change during that update. I am pretty sure that 10.4 is in my near future, so I am hoping you find success soon.

[Anonymous]

Thank you for taking the time to reply.
Mac's won't work either! My agent who is very knowledgable with AC thought it might be a permissions problem but now thinks it might be some part of the AC or OSX software modified for increased virus protection that is affecting good working order. If it is then its beyond us all but hopefully not Graphisoft?
I also understand that very few practices work Pc's off an Apple Server but then the Mac's won't work either? Other software remain unaffected.
I promise to post the result when the problem is cracked.......
Cheers

[Thomas Holm]

Not to offend anyone, but I can see no excuse for staying with OSX10.2.4! 10.2.8 is the last free update to 10.2, and should be applied to all professionally used Macs, in lieu of shelling out the small change needed for the much better 10.3.

I would also guess a permission problem. Archicad is trickier than most programs with this. It has happened to me that Archicad refuses to update a file who's Owner changed, despite the file still had full read and write access for Everyone.

And Apple has also had issues in this area. My impression is that OSX took a long time to mature, and 10.2.x had small changes in every version. The file system wasn't complete until 10.3 finalized journaling, for example. So, always update to the latest system version after lurking a week on Macfixit.com to let others find the bugs.

First, do a Combo 10.3.8 update on the server.
Then, do a 10.2.8 Combo update on all mac clients unless you have knowledge of specific issues that prevents this. (Then, migrate to 10.3 ASAP. (10.4 won't mature until sometime this fall.))

Repairing permissions with the Disk utility won't help, because it doesn't do anything with user's documents or folders.

After doing a full backup and system clean-up on the server (clean caches, run maintenance scripts etc, perhaps with a third-party utility like Onyx http://www.titanium.free.fr/ ), and you're sure the server is in good shape, you might try changing permissions on a test user. To avoid writing Unix batch scripts, use a program like Batchmod http://macchampion.com/arbysoft/ . But use it slowly, taking care to read each dialog and warning through before applying any change. It will let you change Owner, Group and file priviledges on any file or folder and any combination of those. You can for instance change every file's read/write permissions in any folder in one step without changing the files' owners, even if they differ.

If you find this won't work, test re-creating a user on the server. you might then have to restore all files on this user account from the backup. Do this test for both a PC and a Mac client. This has cured problems with access from PCs to OSXservers I know, especially when migrating from Windows 2000 to WindowsXP on the clients. But shouldn't be necessary for the Mac clients if they are properly updated and maintained!

If nothing of this works, I'd go to Apple's OSXServer support. I'm convinced that is where the problem is this time, since you have the issue at all workstations.

But still, once you've scraped together the pile of money necessary for an AC9 upgrade, you'll find it's worth it. With such a large installation, i'd advice you to get bank financing. Even if permissions issues might surface still, you'll find that the productivity increase you get from 9 will easily pay for the bank interests many times over. This is not just because it's faster and more stable on the macs. it's primarily because AC9's tools are so much better and smoother in so many small aspects that add forcefully together - on both platforms.

[Anonymous]

Many thanks again for the reply.
We are on OSX 10.2.8 latest release and have been for some time. My fault not to mention this! I presently have Graphisoft setting up our very same system for a trial.....look forward to receiving their findings? AC V9 - I have costs for upgrade already. It was good though to hear users with V9 on 10.3.8.
Not yet solved the problem!! Very grateful for your interest. I'll keep you posted.

[Anonymous]

GOOD NEWS
We loaded OXServer 10.3.4 and updated to release 8 not 9 as we felt 9 contained bugs and guess what - problem fixed.

[Anonymous]

Are you saying that when you updated the OS X Server to 10.3.8 (but not 10.3.9), the problems went away? With no change in the client builds? Did the recommendation to move from Server 10.3.4 to 10.3.8 come from Graphisoft?