sudo serveradmin command afp:command = getConnectedUsers | egrep '(ipAddress)|(name)' | sed '$!N;s/\n/ /' | cut -d '"' -f 2,4 | tr '"' '\t'

Here’s the full script:

[bash]

# Created by: Mike Boylan

# Robert Morris University

# Date: Fri, Mar 4, 2011

logger -p local0.notice “AFP Restart script starting…”

echo “AFP service is being restarted `date`” > /tmp/restartAFP.txt

echo >> /tmp/restartAFP.txt

echo “Currently Logged In Users” >> /tmp/restartAFP.txt

echo >> /tmp/restartAFP.txt

echo -e “IP Address:\tUsername:” >> /tmp/restartAFP.txt

echo -e “———–\t———” >> /tmp/restartAFP.txt

serveradmin command afp:command = getConnectedUsers | egrep ‘(ipAddress)|(name)’ | sed ‘$!N;s/\n/ /’ | cut -d ‘”‘ -f 2,4 | tr ‘”‘ ‘\t’ >> /tmp/restartAFP.txt

echo >> /tmp/restartAFP.txt

echo >> /tmp/restartAFP.txt

echo “Stopping AFP service…” >> /tmp/restartAFP.txt

serveradmin stop afp >> /tmp/restartAFP.txt

echo -e “\t…OK!” >> /tmp/restartAFP.txt

echo >> /tmp/restartAFP.txt

echo “Starting AFP service…” >> /tmp/restartAFP.txt

serveradmin start afp >> /tmp/restartAFP.txt

echo -e “\t…OK!” >> /tmp/restartAFP.txt

`/usr/bin/mailx -s “Server1 AFP Restart Script Completed” email@example.com</tmp/restartAFP.txt`

srm /tmp/restartAFP.txt

logger -p local0.notice “AFP Restart script completed”[/bash]

This should be interesting.

It’s official. Consumer Reports’ engineers have just completed testing the iPhone 4, and have confirmed that there is a problem with its reception. When your finger or hand touches a spot on the phone’s lower left side—an easy thing, especially for lefties—the signal can significantly degrade enough to cause you to lose your connection altogether if you’re in an area with a weak signal. Due to this problem, we can’t recommend the iPhone 4.

More here: http://cl.ly/1dZW

Reception Problems

There’s absolutely no question that the iPhone 4 has generated a lot of buzz regarding its exterior antenna and the benefits and sacrifices that come with the design.  The term “death-grip” has been coined to describe the action of placing a single finger in my case, or an entire hand, over the bottom left corner of the iPhone 4, essentially bridging the two antennas together.  Many users who do this, including myself, notice an enormous drop in signal, and for many the phone drops to No Service whatsoever.  Apple released an official statement on the issue last week.  Apple still believes this iPhone is the best iPhone it has ever shipped and is convinced the issue is software related.  Apple said in its statement:

Upon investigation, we were stunned to find that the formula we use to calculate how many bars of signal strength to display is totally wrong. Our formula, in many instances, mistakenly displays 2 more bars than it should for a given signal strength.

Apple offered this explanation as a fix:

To fix this, we are adopting AT&T’s recently recommended formula for calculating how many bars to display for a given signal strength. The real signal strength remains the same, but the iPhone’s bars will report it far more accurately, providing users a much better indication of the reception they will get in a given area. We are also making bars 1, 2 and 3 a bit taller so they will be easier to see.

Many, including myself, however, are convinced that this is a hardware issue that was glanced over in quality testing.  Could it be due to the fact that most testers were using cases to disguise their iPhone 4s as iPhone 3GSs?  Perhaps, but that’s a far stretch.  (Using a case completely alleviates the problems, by the way.)  According to Apple’s statement, at my home, maybe instead of five bars, I should have three.  That’s not going to change the fact that when I place a finger over the bottom left hand corner, the signal drops to zero; I will just have started with fewer bars in the first place.  Another official Apple statement along with a usual not-out-of-style short e-mail from Apple CEO Steve Jobs circulating the web both offer some light into the issue suggesting that Apple may know that it is in fact hardware related.  Steve told a customer, “All phones have sensitive areas. Just avoid holding [iPhone 4] in that way.”  The other official Apple statement says something similar:

Gripping any mobile phone will result in some attenuation of its antenna performance, with certain places being worse than others depending on the placement of the antennas. This is a fact of life for every wireless phone. If you ever experience this on your iPhone 4, avoid gripping it in the lower left corner in a way that covers both sides of the black strip in the metal band, or simply use one of many available cases.

I can say this much: I’ve owned several phones before iPhone, an iPhone, an iPhone 3G, and now an iPhone 4.  I’ve always had full reception at my home with every phone prior to iPhone 4 and have never had any issues regardless of how I held any of them.  Pittsburgh itself has excellent 3G coverage and I very rarely ever drop calls.  On my first iPhone 4 which was replaced already (more on that in a moment), I was dropping between 1/3-2/3 of my calls daily.  In Washington DC, I dropped somewhere around 12 calls alone.  My iPhone 4′s modem was resetting itself exactly 66% percent of the time.  All of these, incredibly unusual statistics said the Genius, were from the iPhone behavior scan they ran at the Apple store.  Those statistics, for what is supposed to be the best iPhone Apple has ever shipped, seemed incredibly depressing to me.  Anandtech, who has some more detailed research into the issues, says:

The drop in signal from holding the phone with your left hand arguably remains a problem. Changing the bars visualization may indeed help mask it, and to be fair the phone works fine all the way down to -113 dBm, but it will persist – software updates can change physics as muchas they can change hardware design. At the end of the day, Apple should add an insulative coating to the stainless steel band, or  subsidize bumper cases. It’s that simple.

My current replacement is also dropping calls and displays the same signal-dropping issue as the first.  I refuse to buy a case for my iPhone 4 as I’ve never used one before and I shouldn’t have to use one for it to function properly. (Did Apple design the iPhone 4 this way to boost its Bumper case sales?  I doubt it.)

Other Issues & A Replacement Replacement?

Many users are reporting other issues such as a malfunctioning or not-sensitive-enough proximity sensor, as well as iPhone 4s that are not recognizing the SIM cards installed in them.  My friend, Jack Amick, had his iPhone 4 replaced due to a “No SIM” error, which interestingly enough, tells the story of my “replacement replacement.”

While I was at the Apple store getting my iPhone 4 replaced for the dropped calls and signal issues I mentioned above, the replacement iPhone the Genius gave me, upon boot, displayed “No SIM Card is Installed.”  The Genius and myself were both confused, tried reseating the SIM, rebooting the phone, and we even went so far as to reset the phone.  None of that worked.  He ended up taking another replacement out of the drawer for me and chucked that first replacement aside.  When I asked him if he thought that one had the not-as-popular-as-the-reception-issue-but-still-popular “No SIM” issue, although it was an obvious question, he just said, “Anything is possible.”  He also told me he’s replaced a few for that very reason.

Luckily, I’ve not personally talked to anyone with the proximity sensor issue and none of my iPhone 4s have exhibited that behavior.

All of this makes me wonder how good the quality control on this device really is and how thorough the testing really was.  I imagine the testing was incredibly extensive, so to miss over the reception problems, or any problems for that matter, seems like a serious omission.  The No SIM and proximity sensor problems are probably more of a manufacturing issue than a quality issue, but regardless, all of these issues need to be resolved.

Call Me Unlucky

I’m scheduled tonight at the genius bar for yet another replacement.  This replacement iPhone has a loose camera assembly on the back that rattles, and it has a piece of dust or lint that’s clearly visible resting inside the front camera assembly.  This front piece of dust is hindering with its ability to handle different lighting situations and the rear camera assembly rattling is just plain annoying and seems to be messing with its ability to focus on certain items.  Perhaps the lint in the front came from my pocket?  Not sure.  But, regardless, it shouldn’t have made its way into the lens assembly.

Edit: I got another new iPhone.  This one doesn’t have dust under the front lens assembly nor does it make any rattle besides a slight noise from the vibration switch.

Is there anything good about this phone?

Absolutely!  The issues I’ve mentioned above aside, I truly believe this is the best mobile device Apple has ever shipped.  I do, however, believe this is the worst phone Apple has ever shipped.  The Retina display with a pixel density of 326 ppi is absolutely gorgeous and makes it impossible to distinguish individual pixels on the screen.  The display is ultra crisp, bright, and viewable at almost any angle thanks to the inclusion of in-plane-switching.  The front and back glass panels are incredibly strong aluminosilicate glass.  The camera takes absolutely excellent photos and the HD video is rather clear as well.  The front facing camera for use with FaceTime and self-portraits is also decent.  FaceTime works flawlessly and rarely cuts out or fails.  The ability to video conference on my phone is incredible and just plain amazing.  The Apple A4 chip inside the phone makes it super snappy and responsive alongside iOS 4.0.  iOS allows for multi-tasking which screams on the A4.  Apps are state frozen and switching between them works very smoothly.  The apps that tie into Apple’s background APIs like Pandora also work amazingly well and don’t excessively drain the battery (which lasts reasonably long, by the way).

Overall thoughts? What should Apple do?

Overall, I love my iPhone 4 because of all the great things I mentioned in the above section.  However, Apple needs to make these antenna issues right for its customers.  Apple sold tons of these phones.  It sold 1.7 million of them in the first three days.  That makes for a pretty damn expensive recall.  Do I see Apple doing a recall?  No.  Should it?  Perhaps.  I agree with Anandtech that Apple should either coat the phone with something to make it less conductive, or subsidize or give away free bumper cases and just admit that although innovative, the iPhone 4′s antenna design is ingeniously weak to human-generated interference.  There’s a paradox at play here – increase the reception dramatically by moving the antennas to the exterior… but, just don’t touch them!  That’s highly impractical, and for Steve to tell people “Just avoid holding it in that way.” is completely unreasonable.  Even if it’s a silent fix and replacements are offered over time for affected buyers who make their way into an Apple Store, Apple needs to make this situation right, and I fully expect them to after the software update in the coming weeks is shown to not help the situation at all.

Even though the keynote isn’t mainly focused on releasing new products, Apple generally uses WWDC to announce a few things.  Here’s what I think we’ll see tomorrow:

• iPhone 4G – Only for AT&T
• Tons of info about iPhone OS 4.0
• Mention of iPhone OS 4.0 for iPad (Perhaps a dev release)
• Tethering for iPhone 4G / iPhone OS 4.0 w/ a small little segment from AT&T
• Mac Pro hardware spec update

What we will possibly/hopefully see:

• Free MobileMe for all iPhone users
• Something in regards to Apple TV? Update, etc.
• Safari Extenstions

What I don’t think we’ll see:

• Any mention at all about Mac OS X 10.7 [Name Here]
• Other US Carriers
• Anything to do with iPods
• iTunes in the cloud

Those are my predictions.  What are yours?  Leave me a comment below!

You can read more about it on the Twitter blog.

So when will Twitter be announcing a future business model and/or advertising platform?  For now, according to Mashable, “Williams says Twitter is still mainly focused on creating the best experience for users and businesses.”

Step one – Enabling the SMB Service

If the SMB service isn’t already running on your server, you’ll need to enable it. (This step assumes that you already have Open Directory running as a Master on the server you’d like to make the PDC.) To do this, open Server Admin, click on your server’s address, click on Settings, then Services.  Place a check in the box next to SMB.  Click save.  You’ll now see the SMB service on the left list under your server’s address as shown here.

Step two – Configuring the SMB Service

Click on the SMB service in the left list.  Click on settings. On the general tab, set the role to “Primary Domain Controller (PDC)”.  Enter something for description, your hostname under computer name, and the finally specify the name of the domain you’d like this server to be the PDC for.  In this image, my domain is named OSXTEST.

Under Access, set the options to the needs of your organization.

Medium logging is usually sufficient.  Feel free to change as needed.

Under advanced, if you use a WINS server you can configure this here.

Keep the box “Enable virtual share points” checked if you’d like to be able to be able to access the Mac home directory (assuming you’re using this in a mixed platform environment) via a mounted drive in My Computer when the user logs in.  More on this later.

Press save.  You can now start the SMB service by clicking “Start SMB” in the bottom left of the Server Admin window.

Step 3 – Configuring users in Workgroup Manager

Before moving on, you need to ask yourself, “Will I be storing these profiles on the same server that’s acting as the PDC, or would I like to store them on a different OS X Server?”  A good example of when this would be needed is if your organization has users grouped and placed on different file servers based on alphabet, grade level, etc.  In cases like that, it would make sense to keep the Windows profiles on the same server as the network Mac home directories.  Or, if you plan on making a new network share on a file server other than the one acting as the PDC to store all of the profiles, this would also apply.  If any of these situations are the case for you, it’s a little more complicated.  Read step A below.  If you’re fine with your windows profiles being stored on the server that’s acting as the PDC, jump to step B.

Step A (The more complicated one)

Step one – Make a new network share on your secondary server.  Name it what you’d like. In my example below, I named it “NetUsersProfiles.” Set the permissions as root – read and write, staff – read and write, others – no access or read only is fine.  It’s also generally a good idea to uncheck “Enable Spotlight Searching” under the Share Point tab, too.  It should look like this when you’re done.  (This picture is on the same server, but just assume it’s a separate one named mini-xserve2.)

Step 2 – Make sure that this secondary server is bound to the Open Directory Master, Kerberized, and SMB is running and configured as a domain member, rather than a PDC.  Configuring SMB was described in step two. The only change would be selecting “Domain Member” instead of “Primary Domain Controller.”

Step 3 – Configure your users in Workgroup manager.  Open workgroup manager and select the user you’d like to configure.  Go to the Windows tab on the far right.  Where it says “User Environment Profile”, insert the path of the network share you made above.  Under “Windows Home Directory”, insert the path to the user’s network Mac home directory (if you’re in a mixed platform environment) and select the drive letter you’d like it to mount as in My Computer on the PC.  In this picture below, you’ll see the User Profile is stored on mini-xserve2 and the Mac home directory is stored on mini-xserve.  If you’d like to use a logon script to specify any sort of group or user policy enforcement, mount drives, etc., enter the name of the login script here.  It must be stored in the /etc/netlogon folder of the server acting as the PDC and the filename must be all lowercase.  When done, press Save.

Step 4 – On the client machine, login as the administrator and open the group policy editor by typing gpedit.msc into the Run window.  Go to Local Computer Policy > Computer Configuration > Administrative Templates > System > User Profiles and enable “Do not check for user ownership of Roaming Profile Folders”. (If you’re using Windows Vista, you may also have the make this change.) Reboot the machine. (Note: If you do not see “System” under Administrative Templates, right click on Administrative Templates, select Add/Remove Templates, select Add, choose system, choose open, then click close.)

Step 5 – After the reboot, finally join the client to the domain.  Login as the administrator again, go to the Start Menu, right click on My Computer, select Properties, choose the Computer Name tab, press the Change button.  Enter the name of the domain you specified in step one.  In my case it was OSXTEST.  Authenticate with a directory administrator account.  Reboot the machine.

Step 6 – After the reboot, log in with the user you configured above and verify everything is working correctly.  If so, congratulations.  Jump down to step 4 below for some additional information.

(Getting a “Not enough space on the disk?” error?  See the special section below.)

Step B – The less complicated one

Step 1 – Open workgroup manager and select the user you’d like to configure.  Go to the Windows tab on the far right.  Where it says “User Environment Profile”, leave the path blank to have the profile stored in the default /Users/Profiles directory, or specify a sharepoint on the PDC.  The permissions for the sharepoint on the PDC should be root – read and write, staff – read and write, others – no access or read only is fine. Under “Windows Home Directory”, insert the path to the user’s network Mac home directory (if you’re in a mixed platform environment) and select the drive letter you’d like it to mount as in My Computer on the PC.  In this picture below, you’ll see the User Profile is stored on a sharepoint of mini-xserve and the Mac home directory is also stored on mini-xserve.  If you’d like to use a logon script to specify any sort of group or user policy enforcement, mount drives, etc., enter the name of the login script here.  It must be stored in the /etc/netlogon folder of the server acting as the PDC and the filename must be all lowercase.  When done, press Save.

Step 2 – Join the client to the domain.  Login as the administrator on the PC, go to the Start Menu, right click on My Computer, select Properties, choose the Computer Name tab, press the Change button.  Enter the name of the domain you specified in step one.  In my case it was OSXTEST.  Authenticate with a directory administrator account.  Reboot the machine.

Step 3 – After the reboot, log in with the user you configured above and verify everything is working correctly.  If so, congratulations.  Jump down to step 4 below for some additional information.

Step 4 – Additional Information

If you’re experiencing any access denied error messages using the more complicated method, again, make sure to set the permissions correctly, and make sure the secondary server is bound to the Open Directory Master, Kerberized, and SMB is running and configured as a domain member, rather than a PDC. Also make sure to make the registry change that’s needed on the client as described above.  If you’re using Windows Vista this change may also need to be made.  All of this was described in detail under Step A of Step 3 above.

Tell your client(s) that if they’re away from the PDC, out of the network, etc, they’ll need to use their shortname to login.  Windows is caching the credentials for the shortname, not the full name.   After weeks of calls to Apple enterprise and tons of configuration changes, logging in away from the domain turned out to be something as simple as this.

To supply SMB Print services, enable the Print service on your server, add a queue, and enable the SMB option for the queue.

The benefits of using Mac OS X Server as a Primary Domain Controller for your domain are endless.  You can harness the power, ease of use, security, and flexibility of  Mac OS X  Server all while still supporting your Windows clients and allowing for future Mac growth.

Not Enough Space on the Disk? What?

If you’re storing your roaming profiles on a domain member as outlined in Step A, and you begin noticing “Windows cannot update your roaming profile.  Error: There is not enough space on the disk.” messages upon logout, you’ll need to disable Darwin Streams support on your PDC and on your Domain Members where the profiles are stored.

1.  Stop SMB

2.  In terminal make a backup of the smb.conf file:

sudo cp /etc/smb.conf ~/Desktop/smb.conf.old

2.  In terminal type the following:

sudo pico /etc/smb.conf

3.  Locate the following sections and edit to reflect the following:

;vfs objects = notify_kqueue,darwinacl,darwin_streams

vfs objects = notify_kqueue,darwinacl

; The darwin_streams module gives us named streams support.

stream support = no

4.  Ctrl + o to save the changes

5.  Start smb

Thanks

Please leave any comments below and I’ll try and answer them to the best of my ability. If there’s some extremely technical issue that’s preventing this from working in your environment, please understand that this is just a general guide.  I do not have time to try and create a test environment for other users’ configurations.  Contact Apple Enterprise Support or an experienced OS X Server administrator for more detailed assistance.

Last Updated 8/13/2010

My thoughts on Buzz are that Google is trying to simplify people’s workflow by giving them more of what they already use elsewhere, inside of a single location – Gmail.  They’re really testing to see how many people use Gmail as their primary communication tool, and how many are willing to make it even a larger part of their communication schema.  For me personally, similarly to Twitter, I use Gmail as a service, not a website.  I very rarely, perhaps once or twice a week, go to Gmail.com.  I get all my messages via IMAP sent to Apple’s Mail application on both my iPhone and on my Mac.  So for users like me, there’s no real benefit to using Buzz because I not only never visit Gmail.com, but I also don’t use Google contacts for any other reason besides Google Voice.  However, for anyone completely engulfed in the Google experience, that is, users who use Google Docs, Chat, Wave, Gmail, Voice, etc., then Buzz is just one more service added to your current toolset to simplify your life.

If you’re interested in giving Buzz a try or learning more, check out http://www.google.com/buzz

What is it and what does it do?

The iPad is, in the words of Apple, “Our most advanced technology in a magical and revolutionary device at an unbelievable price.”  They claim it is, “The best way to experience the web, email, photos, and video.  Hands down.”  Ok, minus all the marketing, it’s essentially a giant, beautiful iPod Touch (or iPhone if you buy the 3G model – more on that in a minute).  They’re looking to fill the gap/market between the phone (mobile) and laptop/desktop (computer).

It includes many of the same applications that are included by default on the iPod Touch/iPhone including Safari, Mail, Photos, YouTube, iPod, iTunes, App Store, Maps, Notes, Contacts, and Calendar.  Two apps that were made specifically for this device include iBooks and Videos.  All of applications, however, got a major UI overhaul and look like much larger, advanced, grown-up versions of their little siblings on the iPod Touch/iPhone.

The tablet isn’t meant to be your main machine.  It’s meant to be something to use to enjoy your content when you’re out and about, or just relaxing on the living sofa.

Is there anything really special about this device?

The Apple iPad. Image courtesy Apple.com

This device has the ability, if executed correctly, to revolutionize several industries.  The main industry it will hopefully impact in a positive way is the publishing industry.  The print business is hurting so terribly right now that they’re essentially begging for anything to come to their rescue.  The iPad could be it.  The iBooks application on the iPad essentially takes the same functionality as the Amazon Kindle or Barnes and Noble Nook and makes it 10x as pretty looking and versatile.  Also, because this device includes the App Store, and special apps will be made for the size of the iPad, each individual newspaper, for example, can create an app for the device.  The New York Times showed off its application for the iPad today, and it looked awesome.  It’s essentially like reading the paper.

It’s also very versatile.  It can do a lot of things in an excellent form factor.  There’s many times I’d like to use an app on my iPhone in a bigger, more powerful context, but do not feel like taking out my MacBook Pro.  This bridges the gap.

Does the device have any shortcomings?

In my opinion, yes.  There are many, in fact.  There’s almost more shortcomings than identifiable positives.  However, as I said above, the possibilities are endless.  Here’s my list of shortcomings:

• The UI/OS is just a giant version of the iPhone/iPod Touch OS.  The home screen looks silly with such small application icons and the lock screen looks absolutely ridiculous.  Also, for those hoping for some sort of filesystem or structure that is available to the user to store and create documents, you’re out of luck.  On top of that, there is no multitasking (yet – unless iPhone 4.0 ships before this device and this functionality is included), and for a tablet, that’s a huge disappointment.  That means you can’t IM and e-mail, or IM and surf the web at the same time. This makes me wonder if Apple is trying to stretch the iPhone OS too far?  Perhaps a brand new, hybrid OS X / iPhone, OS would have been better?
• No Cameras.  None.  This means no video conferencing and no picture taking.
• No HDMI/HD Video Out – Apple is touting the gorgeous screen and the fast CPU to be able to play HD video.  Why not allow users to connect this to an HDTV?
• No Flash – I can understand this on the iPhone, but this is part computer.  Suck it up, Apple.  People still need Flash.  HTML 5 hasn’t been widely enough adopted yet.
• Adapters – There’s no USB port on this device.  Apple is selling two adapters for it, one being a USB adapter for cameras, and another being an SD card reader.
• The name iPad.   Slate would have been much better.  Hell, anything would have been better than iPad.
• No Handwriting Recognition – This was my biggest letdown.  PC tablets running Windows for years have supported this, and OS X has excellent pen/stylus recognition software called Inkwell already built into the core of the OS.  Why not port that over to this device and allow people like me, students, or artists, to draw on this with something else but our fingers?  Sure, third parties will make input devices, but are you really going to trust a third party company to write a handwriting recognition algorithm and notepad app to go with it?  No.  This is a huge letdown.

Technical Specs/Models

The iPad has a 9.7-inch (diagonal) LED-backlit glossy widescreen Multi-Touch display with IPS technology that runs at a 1024-by-768-pixel resolution at 132 pixels per inch (ppi).

There are two distinct model types: One with 3G cellular data provided by AT&T, and one with WiFi only.  The one with cellular data allows you to purchase data without a contract.  You can pay either 15 dollars a month for 250 megabytes of data (think e-mail only, or limited web browsing online), or unlimited data for 30 dollars a month.  Again, there’s no contract and you can cancel at any time.  The activation takes place right on the device.

Both models include WiFi (a/b/g/n) and Bluetooth 2.1 + EDR technology.

The processor inside is a 1GHz Apple A4 custom-designed, high-performance, low-power system-on-a-chip.  The reviews so far say this chip is blazing fast.

It has a built-in 25Whr rechargeable lithium-polymer battery that provides up to 10 hours of surfing the web on Wi-Fi, watching video, or listening to music.  Standby time is over a month!!

Finally, for pricing, here’s Apple’s official chart:

Your thoughts?

I’d love to hear them in the comments below.  Also, if you have any questions about the device, I’ll try my best to answer them.  Be sure to check out http://www.apple.com/ipad