I discovered a recent bug with 10.6.2 Snow Leopard in which the iPhoto Library folder is not correctly synced at login and logout.¬† This annoying issue leaves each user with a prompt to decide if they should keep the network copy or the local copy of the iPhoto library even though neither has changed.¬† This results in duplicate iPhoto Libraries being created as each user logs in and out РSince most users chose keep both copies the iPhoto library is duplicated.

You can see that this quickly can be a problem with our 2000+ users syncing to an Xserve Raid duplicating the iPhoto library over and over is unacceptable.  A quick search through the apple forums shows that this issue has been acknowledged although no fix is yet available.

Here is my fix using Terminal and ARD.  The key to this fix is using the nifty unix command of find.

To clear up the sync issues it is necessary to run the equivalent of this command on both the end machines and the server which house the mobile home directories.

On the server end run this command as root.

√√∏sudo find /path to user home directories -name “iPhoto Library-“* -exec rm -r {} \;

This command will search for each instance of a directory called iPhoto Library-, notice the – sign with this in place this command will not delete the users original iPhoto Library but will instead only delete each synced duplicate – this is because they are in the name format of /Users/user/Pictures/iPhoto Library-local-local-network or something similar.

This is the command I ran on the server which houses half of all mobile home directories.

To clear up the duplicates on all of the client machines it is necessary to run an identical command on all machines.  The easiest way I found to do this was to use ARD and use the UNIX command

Here selecting all user workstations I run as user ROOT the same command starting the find command in the Users directory.

Here are the command results, if you look through them you will see that it says error /users/user/iPhoto Library-local-local does not exists – this is because the command was successful and that it deleted all traces of the duplicated iPhoto Library.

I hope this temporary fix may help others since Apple can be slow at time to release fix similar issues.  If this issue becomes frequent I will followup with a command to alter the permissions on the iPhoto Library file and to examine the sync preferences to determine where this problem first arises.  For now I plan to run these commands as necessary and await an official fix from Apple.

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It has been brought to my attention that Office 2008 is a little buggy and can crash from time to time running on Snow Leopard.  I have looked into the issue on a couple of machines and have decided that the crash seems to occur when trying to open files through Words Open button.

If a user clicks on this Open button on Word 2008 after the third of fourth document is opened simultenously a memory leak occurs and the program beach balls.  The only resolution is to force quit.

A working solution is to open all documents directly through finder instead of from within Word.  Below is a short 2 minute podcast showing demonstrating this problem and showing how to do the work around.

[qt:http://gcsdpodcast.org:8171/podcastproducer/attachments/F8A90E1E-6BB6-4BB5-93A8-405AB9FFA801/5C75F44F-A374-40D5-8675-56A20009F617.m4v 640 480]

****Updated ******* IMPORTANT NOTE¬† -¬† I learned the AT$T does not allow Internet Tethering and that this is grounds for termination of service.¬† Thus I have re Рdisabled the tethering feature and have just left the MMS photo tweak.

Often when a new firmware for the Iphone OS comes out I quickly jump on it and update. In the case of the new Iphone 3.1 I decided to hesitate because it appears that features are removed rather than enabled in this OS. The newest OS for the Iphone enables the ability to send MMS photos but removes the ability to use Internet tethering.  With the original firmware 3.0 (and 3.0.1) you can enable Internet Tethering on the IPhone, this is a feature I find quit useful when traveling. Doing a quick Google search you will also find that you can easily enable MMS photo text messaging on firmware 3.0 without upgrading to 3.1.

With Internet Tethering it is easy to connect a MacBook to the internet via USB or Bluetooth.  With Bluetooth on or with the USB cable the Mac OS will prompt you that it has found a new internet connection.

To enable MMS photos on Firmware 3.0 you need only to edit one preference file in Itunes and simply update the carrier manually through Itunes (Hold Option and click on Update Рselect new carrier file 5.5).¬† Before connecting the Iphone to Itunes open Terminal and type

Two simply tweaks leave firmware 3.0 with more features than 3.1 unless I am missing something.