Tell Netscape to use Eudora or Outlook?


Ron LaPedis(RonL[at]laserphernalia.com)
Sun, 11 Apr 1999 15:30:29 -0500


WinMac Digest #281 - Sunday, April 11, 1999

  UNSOLVED MYSTERIES: DHCP Dropout
          by "Daniel L. Schwartz" <expresso@snip.net>
  UNSOLVED MYSTERY: Defragmenting Services for Macintosh volumes
          by "Daniel L. Schwartz" <expresso@snip.net>
  Tell Netscape to use Eudora or Outlook?
          by "Ron LaPedis" <RonL@laserphernalia.com>

Subject: UNSOLVED MYSTERIES: DHCP Dropout
From: "Daniel L. Schwartz" <expresso@snip.net>
Date: Sun, 11 Apr 1999 00:18:45 -0500
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UNSOLVED MYSTERIES: DHCP Dropout


        Hello!

        While reviewing a few web pages, I stumbled across:
 <http://www.macwindows.com/NTunsolv.html#DHCPdropout>, and I have a few solutions below.

>>>>
DHCP Dropout

DESCRIPTION: Macs connected to the NT DHCP server suddenly loose their IP identity. (The MacWindows Server Tips page has some related information regarding BOOTP.) Here are some description of the problem from readers, and some hints as well:

Sept. 16, 1998
Scott Fraze

"The person will be cruising along just fine then suddenly loose TCP/IP connectivity. The AppleTalk stuff will still work, so they can see the NT-based shares just fine, but any attempts to surf the web or retrieve email fail. This has happened on several different G3's.

"The machines are running OS 8.1, with Farallon 100-base-T (PN996-TX) PCI NICs in them. When the machines refuse to browse the web, if you bring up the TCP/IP control panel .... the machine is set to DHCP lookup. Multiple reboots do not solve the problem, the only way I've been able to bring the machines back up is to switch over to the built-in 10 MB/sec ethernet for a day, then switch back."

Sept. 19, 1998
Gary Swick

I'm Gary Swick, the Systems Editor for The News Journal in Wilmington, Delaware. We're a Gannett newspaper with 160 Macs, 220 PCs and 20 NT servers. The NT boxes are both 3.51 and 4. We run both 10BaseT and 100BaseT, and also have DAVE on a few machines.

A couple of things I'd like to comment on: Using DHCP, we've had no problems with the Macs connecting when the DHCP server was on NT 4.0. We learned from Gannett's corporate operations center that DHCP has problems with NT 3.51, where it won't release IP addresses correctly. We'd get an error message like "A device with hardware address 00 00 94 7C AC 68 is using the IP address 10.1.11.164." Moving DHCP to NT 4.0 solved this problem.

Also, the older Farallon cards can't handle full-duplex at 100BaseT, so IP connections won't be completed.

Several of our Macintosh applications use TCP/IP to connect to servers, and if we have a problem with one connecting, we've found that pinging a known address will force DHCP to give that Macintosh an IP address.

Services For Macintosh is slow, much slower than Windows 95 to NT, or even DAVE to NT. If Microsoft doesn't fix the problems in the next Service Pack, we'll switch to DAVE and a total IP network.

Sept. 17, 1998
John Wolf

There are a couple things he needs to try:

Has he set the Macs TCP/IP control panel to "Advanced" and then used the option button to set TCP/IP to "Always Load"? This is important when using DHCP. If you don't set it to always load the TCP/IP stack, the Mac will cancel its lease after about 30 seconds of inactivity, and try and grab a new lease the next time TCP/IP is required. This just waists time, and may likely be the culprit.

You may want to pass along a similar problem that we have here and the solution. On occasion a Mac will lose IP connectivity. If you look in the TCP/IP control panel, it still shows an IP address as always, but only AppleTalk works. It turns out that out network switch caches the Ethernet address, IP address and AppleTalk address of each node on the network. Sometimes it just fritzes out and decides not to forward IP packets to that Mac again. The solution is to telnet into the switch and clear the cache.

<<<<

        John Wolfe is in the right ballpark with his tips in the first paragraph, but it may be exposing a configuration problem in the DHCP Server: What is the lease time as set in the DHCP Manager? It can be set anywhere from a minute to a period of days. If you have a direct Internet connection with a small subnet and even smaller DHCP scope, then the lease times may be set pretty short. A 4 hour lease time is a reasonable balance for small LANs -- Under about 100 users or so. This time will vary, depending on the number of desktop computers, laptops, RAS ports, and such.

        Another solution, if there are enough IP addressí available, is to assign fixed IP addressí to the Macs; and then exclude them from the DHCP scope. Youíll want to group them at one end of the subnet, along with printers, servers, and other devices that remain on constantly, i.e you only want to have a single excluded range (if possible).




        Yours truly,
        Daniel L. Schwartz,
        Electrical Engineer.

        Dan's Macintosh Consulting
        239 Great Road
        Maple Shade, NJ 08052

        609-642-7666

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        ALTERNATE: <mailto:expresso@workmail.com>

                Webmaster for   <http://www.Faulknerstudios.com>,
                                        <http://www.BrakeAndGo.com>

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Subject: UNSOLVED MYSTERY: Defragmenting Services for Macintosh volumes From: "Daniel L. Schwartz" Date: Sun, 11 Apr 1999 00:18:51 -0500 Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/html; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable UNSOLVED MYSTERY: Defragmenting Services for Macintosh



        Good afternoon!

        While perusing the "Win NT SFM Unsolved Mysteries" page at:
 <http://www.macwindows.com/NTunsolv.html#defrag>, I came across the solution by looking at the possible causes. Before continuing, it's important to note that the issues of defragmentation and file corruption are closely interrelated.

        With that in mind, let's start out with the basics as to the 3 general ways dual Mac files can be stored on a non-MacOS server:

        1) Via native NTFS (Native Transactional File System) and SFM, splitting the forks into two streams of data. As long as the files stay on NTFS volumes, the streams will be preserved; so then everything will remain all hunky-dory... Diskeeper will transparently defragment the files per its normal operation [More below];


        2) Via combining the two file forks into a single fork file, such as the way MacBinary works. Defragmenters will work as they would on any DOS or Unix file; but this method involves extra CPU overhead and disk space on the Mac to split the 2 forks apart again so they can be used by the MacOS;


        3) Via the PC Exchange Control Panel’s method, of storing the Resource Forks in a separate hidden (to the MacOS) files. The Desktop files are also stored in hidden (to the MacOS) files. According to the support at Thursby, DAVE also works in this way. [Lots more below].


>>>>
Defragmenting Services for Macintosh volumes
December 15, 1998 -- A reader told us that Executive Software (makers of Diskeeper) told him that Diskeeper can't defragment NT Services for Macintosh volumes, and that NT itself doesn't support it. Another reader had partial success with Diskeeper:

December 17, 1998
Gary Peterson

"We are using Diskeeper 3.0 on NTS4 with SFM. We have 2 SCSI cards with 4 SFM drives attached to each card. On one card, Diskeeper crashes every time we try to defrag a drive. I have to come in on a weekend and turn off SFM to defrag drives. On the other card, no problems. The autoscheduler kicks in every 12 hours and works fine on all 4 drives. No problems in 6 months."


<<<<


        More on Method 1: Native SFM/NTFS support. First, there was a fundamental shift in NTFS between NT4 and earlier versions: Prior to NT4, Executive Software licensed the NTFS source code from Microsoft and created special API’s to perform defragmenting. However, starting with NT4, Microsoft incorporated these API’s directly into the NTFS system... Now, all any app needs to do is call these API's and voìla - Instant NTFS defragmenter. And, since NTFS considers the two streams as a single file, then everything reads, writes, and defragments simultaneously. It is important to note that NTFS Cluster size is critical in 2 ways:

        A) The defragmenting API’s only work with cluster sizes of 512, 1024, 2048, and 4096 bytes;

        B) 512 byte cluster sizes are more easily fragmented due to the 1024 byte file record size. This limits the effective cluster size range to 1024, 2048, and 4096 bytes. This is important because the CONVERT utility (FAT -> NTFS conversion utility) will only create 512 byte clusters... Pay attention to this when performing an NT installation on a fresh drive!

        Note: AFP over IP (Apple Filing Protocol over IP) "husbands" Method 1 but can extend it to FAT partitions as well: Essentially, it is a hybrid of Methods 1 and 2; and normal defragmentation methods and corruption warnings apply.


        More on Method 3: Splitting the Mac files into two discrete files. The advantage to this method is that one can store Mac files on any remote mountable volume - FAT12, FAT16,§ FAT32, as well as NTFS, as well as on 95/98 and NT/Workstation as well as NT/Server. The downside is that NT will see these hidden files as separate files, as opposed to a single dual stream file as in SFM/NTFS. An additional downside is that the 2 files required to make up a dual fork Mac file can become widely separated when defragmenting a partition, partially defeating the very purpose of defragmenting. An additional issue arises when these file pairs are stored on a  Native Transactional File System  (emphasis added) volume: NTFS will not say a file has been written until it has been actually written... But what happens if your server crashes when one file fork has been written to its' file, but not the other? The two file forks now all of a sudden are corrupted due to "forking," i.e the versions are out of sync.


§ NOTE: FAT12, FAT16, and *I think* FAT32 drives can be directly mounted on a Mac via PC Exchange as well.

§§ BEWARE: Both FAT12 and FAT16 are used in DOS floppies!

 -------------

REFERENCES:
 <http://www.be.com> explains how the BeOS "journaling" (but not streaming) file system works, and is an effective primer in that it is similar to how NTFS handles its transactions;

 <www.diskeeper.com> and <http://www.sysinternals.com> explain how defragmenting works in NT; and also is the source for various free tools;

 <http://www.cyan.de> and <http://www.teamasa.com/cyan2.htm> explain how AFP over IP works.


 -------------



        This note may be a bit long; but hopefully this will not only explain the way NT effectively defragments files but also explain how these same Mac files can become corrupted.




        Yours truly,
        Daniel L. Schwartz,
        Electrical Engineer.

        Dan's Macintosh Consulting
        239 Great Road
        Maple Shade, NJ 08052

        609-642-7666

 -----------------------------------------------------------------

        <mailto:expresso@snip.net, Dan@Hemnet.com>
       
        ALTERNATE: <mailto:expresso@workmail.com>

                Webmaster for   <http://www.Faulknerstudios.com>,
                                        <http://www.BrakeAndGo.com>

        **Your Corel Solution Partner**

                **Your UltraBac Solution Source**

 -----------------------------------------------------------------

Subject: Tell Netscape to use Eudora or Outlook? From: Ron LaPedis Date: Sun, 11 Apr 1999 15:30:29 -0500 Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" ; format="flowed" I have Netscape 4.x on my Mac and PC. On the Mac I want to tell it to use Eudora for mailto: on the PC I want it to use outlook. All it wants to use is itself. How do I force mailto:? Thanks, Ron LaPedis Visit my website to learn about Shanghai, Sailor Moon, MiniDisc and Lily Wong: HTTP://www.laserphernalia.com

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