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!

What I’ve Been Doing

The second half of March was a transitioning period for me.  I went from working two days a week and going to class four days a week to working five days a week while still going to class four days a week.  I was hired at Robert Morris University to be an IT Student Associate Systems Administrator to head up the project of getting the Macs on campus back up to speed.  Some of my other responsibilities include maintaining the exisiting Xserve, preparing to install a brand new Xserve, and designing, creating, and deploying three brand new client machines this summer to our different Macs on campus.

Early April I really began plowing through some of the Apple Training Series books for IT, and by mid April it was time to start preparing for finals.  The end of April brought finals, and after it was all said and done, I got a 4.0 both semesters my freshman year and carried 37 credits total for the year.

The first week of may, I took a trip up to Canada and stayed with one of my best friends, Kyle Van Essen (he makes a pretty cool piece of OS X software – check it out), and also met Patrick Patience, Andre Deminiac, and Alex Robert.  I knew Andre from working online at Forumer years ago, and I met Patrick and Alex on Twitter.  The trip was my favorite vacation I’ve ever taken.  You can see some pics here.

I’ve been super busy at both Fox Chapel and at Robert Morris as well as at home by continuing to read through the OS X Training Series books.  I’ll be writing some posts soon about some projects I’ve been doing in both places.

My Plans for the Summer

1. Work MWF for Robert Morris
   1. Install, configure, and deploy the new Xserve
      1. Migrate all our existing OD accounts
      2. Create new managed preferences for both faulty and students (centrally managed)
      3. Provide more to the users.  Storage, web services, wikis, blogs, etc.
   2. Create & deploy new images for the new iMacs, MacBook Pros, and Mac Pros
      1. System Image Utility? DeployStudio? ASR Multicasting? (blog post coming)
   3. Assist in the deployment and transitioning of the entire campus to Windows 7 based images.
2. Work T/Th for Fox Chapel
   1. Wrap up the SMB Portable Homes project for teachers (blog post coming)
   2. Wrap up the SMB student profiles project for students (blog post already written. See here.)
   3. Assist in recycling old equipment
   4. Assist in asset management, creation of image, and deployment of image for 300+ new teacher MacBook Pros
   5. New Xserves?
3. Become at least Apple Certified Support Professional and Technical Coordinator. Maybe Deployment Specialist?
4. Lose ~10 lbs
5. Get back to fiddling with the piano
6. ENJOY MY TIME OFF!

Pledge

I’m pledging (and we all know how valid pledges are) to blog around once a week or so at the minimum on this blog.  I want to interact with you and I want to share with you what I’m doing.  My goal is to post some more technical guides and also post my thoughts on major news stories.  iPhone 4G release, anyone?

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

Within minutes, Christi Day, the PR Person who manages Southwest’s Twitter and Facebook pages was bombarded with hate posts and tweets.  Many of which consisted of things like, “F— You, Southwest!”  So what did she do?  She immediately realized the magnitude of the situation and began investigating.  She tweeted back at him and called him apologizing and began collecting details.  Kevin, in the meantime, continued to bash Southwest.  On Sunday, Christi posted a blog post on the Southwest blog telling their side of the story and once again apologizing to Kevin.  There were several details in that post that Kevin just happened to forget in his original telling of the story.  Such as, the fact that he regularly purchases two seats, had purchased two seats for this flight, but then decided to fly an earlier flight.  Therefore, there ended up only being one seat available for him on the earlier flight, and he wouldn’t fit in it (or so says Southwest).

Why am I blogging about this?

Here’s the thing.  He complained on Twitter over the handling of the situation.  Perhaps the pilot was rude to him – we really don’t know.  Here’s what we do know.  What’s the purpose of complaining? To be heard, and to be given a reasonable resolution to your problem.  The company immediately apologized via Twitter, Facebook, and phone and then later wrote a blog post about it.  They gave him a credit for his troubles and a public apology via several mediums.  What more does Kevin want?  The company has done all it can do.  They’ve done exactly what they would do for any customer with the same gripe.  What do I think he wants?  He wants the press for his new film.

Today, he continues to whine on Twitter about the situation.  The AP has written a story about it.  It’s the talk of the media.  That’s what he wanted, and that’s what he got.

Now, Kevin, will you please stop whining like a baby and accept the apology and credit like a normal, mature adult?  Your continued refusal of all apology is only making you look bad at this point.

(And by the way, Kevin Smith blocked me on Twitter after seeing my Tweets about the situation.  I guess I’m special now, being blocked by a celebrity.)