Topic: Mac OS 10.2 and SME 5.1.2

[Derek]

Hi,

Has anyone had any experience, good or bad, with Mac OS 10.2 (Jaguar) and SME 5.1.2? We are thinking about upgrading the lone Mac on our network to 10.2. It currently is running 8.6 and has no problems connceting to the SME server. I don't want to do the upgrade and then discover that it breaks compatibility somehow.

Regards,

Derek

[Patrick Hickey]

I have three machines running Mac OS 10.2 and they all run fine with 5.1.2 as well as 5.5.

What sort of issues were you presuming or anticipating???

You failed to define how you use the two? As a file server things remained constant. I don't use the SME as a print server as I prefer the simplicity of the HP JetDirect connection, so your mileage may vary on that issue.

Any clues what you thought may be an issue?

regards,

patrick

[Derek]

Thanks for the feedback.

The SME server is a file and dhcp server for the Mac. (Plus domain controller for the Windows network). The Mac has it's own printer and we have a seperate firewall/gateway for Internet access.

I just wanted to get confirmation that the ibays would still be accessible to the Mac as it is in our web department and the locally stored copy of our website is on the SME server. From what you say, it shouldn't be a problem. Much obliged.

Regards,

Derek

[Ken Melton]

Hi Derek,
   I run both MacOS 10.2 and Windows XP off my SME server. I've found that not only does 10.2 work correctly with SME, but it actually runs much better. Thanks to the improved SMB support in 10.2 I'm able to mount my iBays as CIFS shares and overcome the 31 character limitation imposed by earlier MacOS AppleShare connections. It also does better finding other system's shares as it can now aquire and use the WINS setup from the server. All-in-all, the upgrade was well worth it.

Ken

[Derek]

Thanks Ken. That's good to hear!

[Hardijs]

Me too
The network stacks are MUCH improved in X.2 - it easily saturates the network (100bt, full duplex) without any local system slowdowns - no size limitations as in X.1.xx.

samba printing to non directly  supported printers is possible with cups from X.2 (I do not need as all my printers are postscript)

I have 12 macs (9 w OSX.2) and a few WinXP in the network they work fine.

They say that there is a way for the X.2 to use the Active directory as well.

[Chad Self]

I notice I'm late to this thread, but I'm awake and so might as well add my imho.

Our office has two PowerBooks (both on 10.2), 2 XP Pro boxes, 3 Win2k laptops, and a couple older NT boxes (one as our EDOX print server, another as a SCSI scanner box).

Our main fileserver is a Pentium Pro 200 box running Novell 4.11 on several ultra wide SCSI disks.   Of course OS X can't deal with the older Novell servers so we have added two scratch-built SME servers.  All the Art Dept files get stored there as well as personal employee websites and website beta-testing.

One of the Macs is mine and it shares a desk with my XP pro Workstation.  (I'm not a switcher just yet but I'm completely infatuated with the BSD underpinnings of OS X and with the two SME servers.)

For some reason the Macs periodically lose their connection with the two SME servers.  An error message pops up that the server is going down for maintenace (spelling?) and the share is dropped.  This causes problems with linked files in Quark and InDesign docs and general headaches for the 'creative people."  Seems that when we connect through SAMBA, connections don't drop, but it takes longer to mount.

I've been working on it for a while now, and I'm not sure if it's the way the Macs are setup, or an issue with the appletalk conf on the server.

ANother thing that's a pain is that the Macs create a new directory within every directory called 'AppleDouble.'  It's hidden from the Macs but Windows users who are showing hidden files can see it.  Not sure if it actually takes disk space away, but it's a little annoying to burn a CD based on a whole file structure only to have the client call me and ask what the AppleDouble dirs are for.

Chad