File Sharing Difficulties Frustrate Tiger Admins 334
rmallico wrote in to mention a story currently running on Eweek about technical difficulties sites running Tiger are experiencing. From the article: "A number of sites running Apple's new 'Tiger' operating system are experiencing problems with SMB file sharing and authentication with Microsoft's Active Directory, Ziff Davis Internet News has learned. Although Apple Computer Inc.'s Tiger increases support for Server Message Block file sharing and Active Directory, several sources say that the Finder fails to log on to Windows and Linux Samba file servers."
Oh, right, error code -36! (Score:5, Insightful)
Here's a bet: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Here's a bet: (Score:2, Insightful)
A typical slashdot response. (Score:2, Insightful)
I've said it before, and I guess I'll have to say it once again -- zealotry should have no place on slashdot. If Microsoft turned around and released a perfect, bug free operating system that interfaced perfectly with all the competitions' offerings, there would be a 1000 comment shitstorm of complaint as the flock of rabid posters decried them for not releasing the source, or for charging for the software. Compare that to this, where a major operating system has been released with a large and quite frankly obvious bug present, and along come the apple fanboys. GET OVER IT. Base your opinion on the product, not the company, or the shiny form factor, or the how overpriced it is.
Don't get me wrong, as I sit here I am listening to a 40 gig iPOS, and I use a powerbook when I need mobility, so I don't have any bias against apple themselves, just their little army of braindead followers who would buy and defend a box of Steve Jobs' shit if it had a pretty shape and the apple logo.
Hah, and it seems after previewing the parent comment is already rated insightful. Funny how that works, isn't it?
Re:Here's a bet: (Score:5, Insightful)
Your car analogy is flawed. New cars do have bugs when they roll off the lot. You would be really surprised at the number of real issues every car or every batch of cars has off the factory floor. Many times however these flaws and bugs don't crop up and cause a noticeable problem for a long time if ever. There are some problems that do crop up quickly however. It would be one thing if the manufacturer ignored this and went on its merry way. It is entirely another if they repair your car for you. I just had the dome light fixed in my car because of a faulty latch, should I be screaming about the manufacturer not having any QA? No.
The car analogy also falls flat when compared to something as easily changed as computer software. A patch containing the repair can be very small and be distributed to millions of affected users very quickly. If your car is in the shop for a week you're out one car. If SMB shares don't show up in Finder's Browse window properly you're not out SMB shares as you can work around the problem if need be.
Re:Oh, right, error code -36! (Score:2, Insightful)
Really, it's probably part of their 'Keep the UI as SIMPLE as possible' ideals. If they don't think a standard user will be able to do anything with that information, don't even bother telling them.
Re:A typical slashdot response. (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Here's a bet: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Oh, right, error code -36! (Score:5, Insightful)
And -36 doesn't help even if you know what it means, because it's just a generic "I/O error". Originally it was for media problems (like an unreadable floppy), usually accompanied by strange sounds from your disk drive, but for a network file system it's kind of silly. So even the old-timers say "yeah, that sure tells me a lot".
Other -3x range errors include file not found (-34?), end of file (-39?), and file name too long. Another good one is -50, parameter error. Well, duuuuuuh, which parameter? What's wrong with it?
The worst one to see is -127. That one means your file system data structures are in deep doodoo.
But seriously, the days of 400K floppy disks are long gone. It's total laziness that nobody bothers to print a text error message along with the number. I've been doing that in my own code since the days of 800K floppies. Even printing out the ten most common error messages as text helps most of the time.
Re:I don't use samba anymore (Score:1, Insightful)
-Daedalus
This is normal (Score:3, Insightful)
I'm sorry, but if you are installing Tiger onto a mission-critical system, you deserve the problems you get. Give the software time to mature before rushing to employ it in your networks.
Re:Here's a bet: (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Here's a bet: (Score:3, Insightful)
fanboys... pfffff
No Admin worth their salt installs a new OS (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Finder and Linux Samba shares (Score:1, Insightful)
people are addicted to. In terminal , you just do a 'ditto' and then wait unless you chose verbose.
Re:Oh, right, error code -36! (Score:1, Insightful)
Wait a minute... (Score:5, Insightful)
SysAdmin Rule #1: If you depend on it, and it works fine the way it is, don't mess with it. [If it ain't broke...]
SysAdmin Rule #2: If you want to mess with it, test it before deploying it.
Why the hell did people install a
We waited to deploy WinXP until the first service pack was released--and that saved our ass. I think it's ignorant to ignore that principle on the Mac side as well--esp. with a major update.
Early adopters are unpaid beta testers. Congratulations--you found the bugs!
Apple or not... (Score:5, Insightful)
If you insist, however, do it right. Prep a build of the new OS and put it on its own hard drive in the machine of your one or two most clueful end users. Let them beat on it for a while and document their problems/questions as they try to do their work. Once in a while go through the list and address their fixable issues. If they happen upon a show-stopper, they simply boot from the drive with the old build on it and use that until the next service release appears. Then you apply it, and test again. Repeat as necessary until the number of issues is low enough that you can confidently deploy the new OS build to all end users.
I have used this technique to great effect at several of my Mac clients, though I don't even consider giving them the newest OS until the
As for OS X Server, that gets tested in my company's lab and on my bench at home from the day we get it, but it doesn't get rolled out anywhere until
~Philly
Does it matter? (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Oh, right, error code -36! (Score:1, Insightful)
having worked tech support, I know what the standard response to "what was the error message"
the answer is "I don't know..I closed the window"
so most people don't read them..they just make the window go away.
the ones that DO read...then immediately want you to replace their I/O by this weekend. I mean..how log can it take to get a new I/O? and what went wrong with the I/O that's in there?
Re:No Admin worth their salt installs a new OS (Score:5, Insightful)
Now that AFP support under linux is much better, I'm almost certainly going to go back to Linux for my main file servers. At least it is a known quantity.
Re:Exception (Score:3, Insightful)
1) you have no idea how much testing Sarge has actually undergone. For all we know only 5% of users are using Debian/Sarge on a regular basis. While in theory any package in Sarge should have gone through two weeks of Sid testing first, there have been bugs in Sarge packages.
2) Sarge may be the best release ever, but have you tested it in your environment? Is the new version of an application going to be able to import your existing data?
Regardless of the quality of the software a new release must always be tested first.