TidBITS#673/31-Mar-03
=====================
We're still fielding Macintosh conference news, as MacHack
reaffirms its commitment to its 19-Jun-03 start date and IDG
World Expo announces that Macworld Expo New York 2003 is now
named "Create." Also this week, Adam reveals how to set up
a print spooler under Mac OS X and details improvements in the
Info-Mac Archive mirror network. In other news, we note the
releases of Web Crossing 5.0, LaunchBar 3.2.10, and Apple's
Security Update 2003-03-24.
Topics:
MailBITS/31-Mar-03
Macworld Expo NY Revamped as Create
Info-Mac Archive Mirror Network Improved
Printer Sharing and Print Spooling in Mac OS X
<http://www.tidbits.com/tb-issues/TidBITS-673.html>
<ftp://ftp.tidbits.com/issues/2003/TidBITS#673_31-Mar-03.etx>
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MailBITS/31-Mar-03
------------------
**MacHack Stays Put in June** -- Despite Apple's recent move
of the Worldwide Developer Conference (WWDC) to June in San
Francisco, a single day after the MacHack developers conference,
the MacHack organizers have announced that MacHack will remain
in its originally scheduled spot from 19-Jun-03 to 21-Jun-03
in Dearborn, Michigan. Although many MacHack attendees remain
fiercely loyal to the grassroots conference, it's almost certain
that Apple's move will hurt attendance. I still highly recommend
MacHack: it offers the best combination of real-world information
and industry networking I've seen, and I will definitely be
attending (and presenting at) MacHack. Apple may be the 600-pound
gorilla of this industry, but it would still be nice to see
consideration of the effects of throwing that weight around,
along with a little common courtesy (such as notifying the
MacHack organizing committee in advance). [ACE]
<http://db.tidbits.com/getbits.acgi?tbart=07114>
<http://www.machack.com/pr/3_25_03.html>
**Security Update 2003-03-24 Fixes Samba** -- Apple has released
Security Update 2003-03-24 via Software Update and as a stand-
alone 4.5 MB download. The update fixes a hole that could allow
unauthorized remote access to the system via the open-source Samba
code that underlies Mac OS X's built-in Windows File Sharing
(available from the Sharing preferences pane). Also fixed is a
problem with OpenSSL that could allow RSA private keys to be
compromised. Although Windows File Sharing is off by default, the
update is still important, and Apple recommends that all customers
install it. That's easy if you're running Mac OS X 10.2.4 or Mac
OS X Server 10.2.4, but Apple says those with earlier versions of
Mac OS X must either update to 10.2.4 or visit the OpenSSL and
Samba Web sites for additional information on the available fixes,
not that we could find any that would help a normal Mac user. Our
advice? If you're not running Mac OS X 10.2.4, keep Windows File
Sharing turned off. If you are, install this security update.
[ACE]
<http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=120199>
<http://www.openssl.org/>
<http://www.samba.org/>
**LaunchBar 3.2.10 Improves Help** -- Objective Development has
released LaunchBar 3.2.10, a minor update to the extremely useful
launcher utility (see "Tools We Use: LaunchBar" in TidBITS-671_
for a full review). The two new aspects of LaunchBar 3.2.10 are
significantly improved help files that simplify figuring out
LaunchBar's more advanced features and full support for creating
email messages using addresses garnered from Mac OS X's system-
wide Address Book. It's a 252K download. [ACE]
<http://www.obdev.at/products/launchbar/>
<http://db.tidbits.com/getbits.acgi?tbart=07107>
<http://www.obdev.at/products/launchbar/download.html>
**Web Crossing 5.0, Web Crossing Express 5.0 Debut** -- Web
Crossing, Inc. has announced a pair of new products, Web Crossing
5.0 and Web Crossing Express 5.0. Web Crossing 5.0 is the
latest version of the company's powerful server platform and
collaboration tools, which include Web services, email (POP, SMTP,
IMAP, and mailing lists), FTP, newsgroups, discussions, and much
more. Web Crossing 5.0 offers new customization features, a plug-
in architecture for extensibility, and an interesting approach
to mirroring local and remote files with only a Web browser.
Upgrades to Web Crossing 5.0 start at $120, depending on traffic
levels, and new copies cost between $300 and $35,000, also
depending on traffic. Despite those scary-looking prices, you
can try some of Web Crossing's core features with the new Web
Crossing Express 5.0, which offers a significant subset of Web
Crossing's features for free. Most notably, Web Crossing Express
lacks most of Web Crossing's collaboration tools, leaving it as
a more pure Internet server platform with the capability to
serve Web pages, email, FTP, and more. [ACE]
<http://www.webcrossing.com/home/products/features/>
<http://www.webcrossing.com/home/products/expressfeatures/>
<http://www.webcrossing.com/home/products/compareexpress/>
**Poll Results: Sport Utility Drives?** In last week's poll, we
asked how many of you have a utility hard drive for Macintosh
maintenance and configuration tasks. Of the over 500 people who
weighed in, nearly 75 percent said they did have such a hard
drive. That's interesting, but not surprising, since the type
of person who solves problems is more likely to need a utility
drive, and the type of person who reads TidBITS is likely to be
a problem solver. [ACE]
<http://db.tidbits.com/getbits.acgi?tbpoll=80>
<http://db.tidbits.com/getbits.acgi?tbart=07116>
Macworld Expo NY Revamped as Create
-----------------------------------
by Adam C. Engst <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
IDG World Expo and Apple last week announced a new event called
Create that replaces Macworld Expo in New York from 14-Jul-03
through 18-Jul-03. Macworld Expo centered around the world of the
Macintosh; Create will instead focus on the creative arts: design,
publishing, audio, and video. Although details are still sketchy,
Create appears to be a compromise between Apple and IDG World Expo
in the running feud over IDG World Expo moving Macworld Expo back
to Boston in 2004 (see "Apple, IDG World Expo Play Hardball over
Macworld Expo" in TidBITS-652_ for details). As a compromise,
Create makes some sense given the demise of Seybold New York and
the lack of similar conferences on the East Coast. Since New York
is a larger market than Boston in the creative arts, it's possible
that the deal may result in future instances of Create in New
York, and Macworld Expo disappearing entirely from the East Coast.
IDG World Expo said that the focus of Macworld Expo in San
Francisco next year will remain unchanged.
<http://www.macworldexpo.com/macworld2003/V33/press.cvn?id=11&p_id=13>
<http://db.tidbits.com/getbits.acgi?tbart=06966>
The switch from Macworld Expo to Create raises the question of
whether or not core Macworld Expo audiences, such as network
administrators, consultants, developers, and consumers, will
bother attending Create when it's nominally aimed at technology
for creative professionals. No matter what, we expect that many
companies offering products or services that aren't directly
related to the creative community will still exhibit, since
creative professionals still need utility software, wireless
networks, and peripherals like large hard disks. Also, although
Apple has committed to exhibiting, the most notable no-shows at
previous Macworld Expos in New York have been creative arts
companies such as Adobe, Macromedia, and Quark, so IDG World Expo
may have a tough row to hoe in attracting them to a conference
that will probably be significantly smaller than the more general,
former Macworld Expo.
It's possible that the entire change of name and focus is just
a way for IDG World Expo to soothe Apple's ruffled feathers. And
it's equally possible that all that will really change is the
name - everything else may turn out to be substantially similar.
In fact, IDG World Expo's Web site for the show uses "Macworld
Conference & Expo presents Create" as the primary logo, thus
retaining a connection with the previous name. No matter what,
we plan to attend Create... this year.
<http://www.macworldexpo.com/>
Info-Mac Archive Mirror Network Improved
----------------------------------------
by Adam C. Engst <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Since the dawn of the Macintosh (really!), a small group of
volunteers has been toiling away to provide services to the
Macintosh community. Known as the Info-Mac Network, this non-
profit organization publishes the Info-Mac Digest, a moderated
mailing list of all things Macintosh (currently on hiatus while
the group works through some problems with digest scripts after
moving to a new server) and the Info-Mac Archive, the oldest
(and for many years the largest) archive of freely distributable
Macintosh software and information.
<http://www.info-mac.org/>
In recent years, Info-Mac has had a hard time keeping up with
the many companies who found they could make money from similar
services via advertising - hence the rise of CNET's Download.com,
VersionTracker, MacUpdate, Tucows, and others. For a long time,
Info-Mac was saddled with an extremely old server that didn't
support much additional disk space, and as with any volunteer
organization, getting anything done quickly is uncommon. I'm
certainly not one to point fingers here; as the president of
Info-Mac Network, I'm more to blame than anyone else for not
recruiting more volunteers to help with our to-do list. (If you're
interested in helping, drop me a note outlining your skills and
I'll add you to our list of people to call on for particular
tasks.)
However, thanks to Glenn Fleishman's misfortunes with distributing
his book Real World GoLive 6 in PDF format (See "Publish
(Electronically) and Perish?" in TidBITS-672_), we've taken
a significant step forward in making the Info-Mac Archive
significantly more useful for everyone.
<http://db.tidbits.com/getbits.acgi?tbart=07115>
**Pricey Bandwidth** -- Despite predictions from pundits like
George Gilder that bandwidth would become essentially free, it
hasn't really happened. Glenn's experience is the most extreme
I've heard of, but it's not uncommon for developers to complain
about the cost of maintaining a high-speed Internet connection
for distributing updates to their programs. If a product has
several thousand users, and the developer notifies them of the
update, that can result in a huge number of downloads in a short
period. And that, as Glenn found out, can be devastating.
So bandwidth can be expensive. But what about the commercial file
distribution sites? Although it's often not obvious, they don't
actually host the files themselves (with the notable exception
of Tucows). Instead, they just point at the developer's site, so
working with the commercial file distribution sites doesn't change
the bandwidth equation at all, other than by increasing demand for
the file, hopefully.
This is where Info-Mac comes in. Although our server is kindly
hosted by MIT and has quite a bit of bandwidth because of that,
we don't let people download files from the main server directly.
Instead, Info-Mac encourages other organizations to set up mirror
sites of the Info-Mac Archive, thus spreading the load much more
widely. In the early days of the Internet, reducing the geographic
distance your download traveled was also important, although that
concern has fallen by the wayside in most parts of the world now.
**Mirror, Mirror, On the Net** -- Info-Mac currently has 22 mirror
sites, 7 in the United States and another 15 internationally. As
a user, how do you know which one to pick, and as someone making
a file available, how do you provide a reasonable interface for
your users, without making them pick from 22 links? Years ago,
a Macintosh developer named Fabrizio Oddone proposed a new URL
scheme that worked with a utility he wrote called QuickestMirror
to solve the problem. For a variety of reasons, QuickestMirror
and the special URLs never caught on.
<http://db.tidbits.com/getbits.acgi?tbart=04227>
This mirror problem is the gauntlet Glenn picked up. I suggested
to him we could upload his Real World GoLive 6 PDF file to Info-
Mac, but that the user experience wasn't great because of all the
mirror sites. I'd been thinking about the possibility of a CGI
that would take a path to a file in the Info-Mac Archive and
download it from a random mirror, and when I mentioned it to
Glenn, he wrote the necessary script in Perl in a few minutes.
Because of the Perl script, developers can now offer users a
single download URL that connects each user to a random mirror
site. From a developer's perspective, here's how it works. If you
click the link below, the script takes you to the top level of a
random Info-Mac mirror site. Most Info-Mac mirrors are FTP sites,
so it's likely that your Web browser will launch your preferred
FTP client software.
<http://www.info-mac.org/cgi-bin/mirror.cgi>
The next trick is to point the script at a specific file. For
that, just add a specific path= argument to the link, as I've done
below for an old issue of TidBITS. Of course, you must find your
file on one of the mirror sites by hand (and I strongly recommend
using the short directory names rather than the longer ones that
appear on some sites - they're purely to make the file listings
more human readable). If you need to search for your file, try the
Info-Mac HyperArchive at MIT, and then locate the short directory
name on one of the other mirrors.
<http://www.info-mac.org/cgi-bin/mirror.cgi?path=per/tb/tidbits-663.etx>
<http://hyperarchive.lcs.mit.edu/>
If you wish to narrow the list of archive sites used, you can
append "&archives=us" or "&archives=intl" as I've done with these
links. It might be a good idea on a download page to provide two
links, one for those in the United States and one for people in
other countries.
<http://www.info-mac.org/cgi-bin/mirror.cgi?path=per/tb/
tidbits-663.etx&archives=us>
<http://www.info-mac.org/cgi-bin/mirror.cgi?path=per/tb/
tidbits-663.etx&archives=intl>
**Current Limitations** -- I won't pretend this is the ideal
distribution solution for every situation. First off, you really
do get a random mirror from our list, and it's entirely possible
that one could be down temporarily (or permanently - if you run
into a dead site, please let us know at <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>).
It's also possible the random mirror might be slower than a hand-
picked mirror. We're happy to consider improvements to the script
from any Perl experts out there; visit the link below for details.
Possible improvements include smarter selection of mirrors, load
balancing, and improved user feedback.
<http://www.info-mac.org/mirror/script.html>
Second, although our mirrors update frequently, you might want
a file that a particular mirror doesn't yet have; in this case,
clicking the download link again should send you to another random
mirror for your requested download.
Third, since Info-Mac is a volunteer organization, our archivists,
Christopher Li and Patrik Montgomery, aren't always able to
download, verify, virus-check, and post submissions as quickly
as might be ideal. We're working on improving and speeding our
submission process, but it could take two or three days for any
given submission to appear. Don't assume it will be instantaneous.
Fourth, and finally, although we currently have plenty of free
disk space and have been able to lift our previous submission size
limit, thanks to the new server MIT gave us recently, lack of disk
space and aging hardware are ongoing expenses that have caused us
problems in the past and will no doubt do so again. It would be
helpful if developers using the Info-Mac Archive to distribute
shareware or demos would donate the equivalent of a single license
to help cover our costs. So, if a particular utility costs $15, a
$15 donation from its developer would be welcome. We won't require
such donations, but if Info-Mac helps you avoid large bandwidth
charges, donating the amount of a single license seems like a
reasonable way to chip in.
<http://www.info-mac.org/donate/>
**Future Plans** -- We have lots of things we'd like to do with
Info-Mac, given unlimited time and resources, but since both are
in exceedingly short supply, I won't promise anything. Info-Mac is
what it is, and if it's useful for users and Macintosh developers,
I can be happy with that, and I hope you can as well.
Printer Sharing and Print Spooling in Mac OS X
----------------------------------------------
by Adam C. Engst <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
As of this writing, my internal network has only Macs running Mac
OS X. That's not to say that most of our Macs can't boot into Mac
OS 9 when necessary, but the only reasons I've had to switch back
to Mac OS 9 recently were to run Norton Disk Doctor to perform a
media check on a hard disk with bad blocks, and to use the floppy
drive in my PowerBook G3. For everyday operation, though, every
Mac is in Mac OS X. The last hurdle to making the conversion to
OS X was setting up print spooling in Mac OS X, and here's the
story of how I set it up and turned off the last essential Mac
running Mac OS 9.
**Performa Printing** -- The last holdout was our Performa 6400,
which was winning the award for most gratuitous use of an old
Macintosh. It used Mac OS 9.1, the latest possible for that model,
and was running AppleShare IP 6.3. Until its internal file serving
duties were taken over by a Power Mac G4/450, it was our internal
MP3 server, Retrospect backup server, and it also hosted Now
Up-to-Date & Contact's Public Event and Public Contact servers.
Nagging performance and stability problems caused me to move most
of its duties to the Mac OS X-based Power Mac G4/450, but the
Performa remained active for a single purpose: print spooling.
Tonya and I have an old Apple LaserWriter Select 360 that we use
for all our black-and-white printing. It's a good printer, and in
fine working order, but it's accessible only over LocalTalk. The
Performa 6400, thanks to a PCI-based Ethernet card, served as the
bridge between our main Ethernet network and the LocalTalk cabling
for the printer. That was important, but we had become even more
fond of the print spooling feature in AppleShare IP.
I initially set up the AppleShare IP print spooler so we could
print from AirPort-only Macs (before I'd finished the wired
Ethernet network) through the Linksys EtherFast wireless gateway
we use for bridging between wireless and wired Ethernet. Although
the EtherFast works well on the whole, it doesn't bridge AppleTalk
packets between the wired and wireless segments of our network,
and since the LaserWriter Select 360 understands only AppleTalk,
we needed a way around the Linksys's limitation. (Wireless
gateways from Mac-savvy manufacturers like Asante and Proxim can
bridge AppleTalk packets appropriately, but when I bought the
EtherFast, it was quite a bit cheaper than the competition.)
The solution turned out to be AppleShare IP. True to its name,
AppleShare IP's print spooler would accept print jobs sent to it
via TCP/IP rather than AppleTalk, and it could then send the print
job to the printer via AppleTalk over the LocalTalk cables. When
I managed to get this approach working, I was pleasantly surprised
to discover a welcome side-effect of the print spooler: it was
perfectly happy to accept print jobs when the printer was turned
off and hold on to them until we turned the printer on. This was
fantastic, since we don't need to see much of what we print right
away, and since the printer isn't in either of our offices, it was
handy to send a print job and have it come out of the printer
hours or days later when we remembered to turn the printer on.
So there we were, keeping an entire computer running all the time
just so we could print a few times a week. Gratuitous certainly,
and if electricity were both free and had no environmental impact,
perhaps we would have left it that way. But neither is true, so it
was time to figure out how to implement print spooling in Mac OS X
so the Power Mac G4/450 could take over from the Performa.
**Mac OS X Print Spooling** -- The first step was to buy an
Ethernet-to-LocalTalk bridge, a small hardware device that
connects LocalTalk and Ethernet networks. I opted for the Asante
FriendlyNet Ethernet to LocalTalk Bridge; a bunch of inexpensive
refurbished units are available from TidBITS sponsor Small Dog
Electronics. The bridge took care of the physical problem of how
to connect my Ethernet network to the LocalTalk-only printer.
<http://www.smalldog.com/search/x/x/wag125/?z=1&find=Localtalk>
Next up was the task of configuring the Power Mac G4/450 to talk
to the printer. First I made sure AppleTalk was turned on for the
Built-in Ethernet connection in the Network preferences pane. Then
I launched Print Center, added the LaserWriter Select 360 as an
AppleTalk printer, and printed a test sheet. It was almost too
simple, but it did show that the Asante Ethernet to LocalTalk
Bridge was working.
Then I wanted to make the printer available to all the other
computers on the network, so I opened the Sharing preferences pane
and clicked the checkbox next to Printer Sharing. To test, I tried
printing from my iBook. In the Print dialog there's a Printer
pop-up menu, and in it, when you have a shared printer on the
network, is a Shared Printers hierarchical menu. I chose
LaserWriter Select 360 from that menu and verified that printing
from another computer worked fine as long as the printer was
turned on. Easy enough, but I wanted to print to the printer
when it's powered off, too!
I thought it was time for serious geek juju, so I rolled up my
sleeves and started poking around the hidden Web interface for the
Common Unix Printing System (CUPS) that's underneath Mac OS X 10.2
and later. You can find it too, at the link below, but I recommend
caution when making changes, since it's entirely possible that you
could muck things up but good if you don't know what you're doing.
After a bit of fruitless reading in the CUPS documentation, I
searched for instructions in Google. Nothing there either.
<http://127.0.0.1:631/>
<http://www.cups.org/>
Out of ideas for where to look for help, I figured I'd try the
obvious, so I turned off the printer, printed another test page,
and did something else for a few minutes. Lo and behold, when I
turned the printer on, the printer promptly spit out my print job!
In short, print spooling using Mac OS X's built-in printer sharing
just worked, with no fuss, no muss, and no need for incantations
from the command line. Apple deserves big points for building
something as useful as print spooling into Mac OS X by default,
but I'll take a few away because they never mention that you can
still print to a shared printer that's turned off in Mac Help.
**Printing from Classic** -- I wasn't entirely done. Even though
configuring all our computers to print via our new print server
was simple in Mac OS X, convincing Classic applications to print
was trickier. For those of our Macs that can use AppleTalk because
they're connected via wired Ethernet, the process of setting up
the new printer was a matter of launching a Classic application,
choosing the Chooser from the Apple menu, and setting up the
printer as you normally would. Remember that you must have
AppleTalk turned on for your network connection in the Network
preferences pane.
The problem came when I tried to configure those Macs that
occasionally use the wireless network. Since the Linksys EtherFast
doesn't bridge AppleTalk between the wired and wireless segments
of our network, I needed to use a little-known utility from Apple
to set up the necessary Desktop Printers. It's called Desktop
Printer Utility, you need version 1.3, and it's probably located
in either the Utilities folder or Apple Extras folder inside the
Applications (Mac OS 9) folder. Launch it to display the New
Desktop Printer dialog.
Select Printer (LPR) and click OK. In the dialog box that appears,
you must select a PostScript Printer Description file and your LPR
Printer. Click the first Change button and select the appropriate
PPD for your printer. Then click the second Change button, enter
the IP address of your print server and the name of your print
queue (which you can verify by selecting the printer in Print
Center on the server and choosing Show Info from the Printers
menu), and click the Verify button to make sure you can
communicate with the printer. Click OK to close the selection
dialog box, click the Create button, and give your new Desktop
Printer the name you want to see in the Print dialog boxes for
Classic applications.
(If, for some reason, using the Chooser to set up an AppleTalk
printer doesn't work, you can also select Printer (AppleTalk) in
the New Desktop Printer dialog and run through a similar process
to create an AppleTalk-based Desktop Printer.)
So here's the rub. I've done this before, when I used the Performa
and AppleShare IP as my print spooler, and it worked fine. I
vaguely remember needing to reboot into Mac OS 9 on one occasion
and rebuilding the Desktop on another to get it to work right, but
one way or another, it did work. Now, for whatever reason and no
matter what I try, I cannot convince the Desktop Printer Utility,
or the Desktop Printer it creates, to talk to my print server. It
always fails with an error -8885, which I believe means No LPR
Connection.
<http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=106710>
<http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=106687>
Although I'm annoyed at being stymied, I don't actually care,
since all the Macs that need to print from Classic can connect to
the wired Ethernet network and print via AppleTalk, which works
fine. And of course, the number of Classic applications from which
we need to print is extremely small and dropping all the time.
One final note. Although I haven't wanted to share our USB-based
Epson Photo Stylus 870 color inkjet printer with Classic
applications or Macs running Mac OS 9, Apple has a worthwhile
discussion of what's involved.
<http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=107060>
**Gimp-Print to the Rescue?** One thing I haven't had time to try
yet is installing the open source Gimp-Print drivers. Although
they're a bit complicated to install - seemingly like all open
source software - they offer many additional printer drivers for
Mac OS X, and equally important, they often add features that
aren't supported by the built-in Mac OS X printer drivers. For
instance, my Epson Photo Stylus 870 is supported and works
acceptably in Mac OS X, but when I wanted to print on roll
paper, the only option was to download and install the
Gimp-Print drivers. If you've been having any printing
frustrations in Mac OS X, give the Gimp-Print drivers a
try and see if they help.
Two tips: Make sure assign a unique name to the new printer you
add via Gimp-Print, and consider yourself forewarned that the
Gimp-Print drivers take over in some unexpected ways. For
instance, the presets in iPhoto disappeared after I installed
Gimp-Print, and even removing the Gimp-Print-defined printer
didn't bring them back. It's not a big deal, but I haven't yet
devoted the time to figuring out how to get those presets back.
<http://gimp-print.sourceforge.net/MacOSX.php3>
**Share and Spool Alike** -- Despite my disheartening failure to
set up LPR printing for Classic applications, I was stunned at
how easy the overall process was, particularly the Mac OS X parts.
Mac OS X certainly isn't perfect, but at least in this case, it
was easier and more pleasant to work in than Mac OS 9. Here's
hoping that becomes true of ever-more facets of using the Mac
over time.
PayBITS: If Adam's look at print spoolers and the Gimp-Print
drivers in Mac OS X helped you out, say thanks via PayBITS!
<http://www.amazon.com/paypage/P7CYHEC5YJO65>
<https://www.paypal.com/xclick/business=ace%40tidbits.com>
Read more about PayBITS: <http://www.tidbits.com/paybits/>
$$
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