Items can't be copied to a Mac because there is not enough free space, even when disk information shows plenty of free space

When attempting to copy 50GB of data onto a Mac Air that was reporting 210GB of space available the copy failed on an error "not enough free space available".

The root cause was Time Machine backups utilizing the local drive.  Even though the person never used Time Machine it was still enabled and apparently backing up to the local HDD.  Turning off Time Machine freed up the space and we were able to copy the data successfully.

Looking under  System Information/System Report/Storage we saw the backups taking up a massive amount of space; only 4kb was left available.

You can also disable Time Machine from the command line:

sudo tmutil disablelocal





 

Ports required for Apple Push Notification Service

We encountered a problem where Macs managed by Casper were unable to communicate with the JSS for Mobile Device Management (MDM).  The solution was to allow the following ports access to Apple's 17.0.0.0/8 range (complete owned by Apple):

• TCP port 5223 (used by devices to communicate to the APNs servers) 
• TCP port 2195 (used to send notifications to the APNs)
• TCP port 2196 (used by the APNs feedback service)
• TCP Port 443 (used as a fallback on Wi-fi only, when devices are unable to communicate to APNs on port 5223)

Here is a link to Apple's support page on the topic.

After migrating a Mac user's profile, Dropbox fails to open: keeps asking for permissions

After migrating a user's profile and changing ownership on their home folder the user was unable to log into Dropbox after logging in.  The users received an error:

"Dropbox needs to change permissions for the Folder: ~/Users/.dropbox  Type in your password to allow this."

Typing in the user name and password did nothing.  The user was then presented with another window that said, "Couldn't start Dropbox.  This is usually because of a permissions error.  Storing your home folder on a network share can also cause an error."

The solution that worked for us was to remove the hidden "./dropbox" folder from the root of the user's home folder.  You can do this from terminal by typing:

sudo mv ~/.dropbox ~/.Trash

Or you can do it from the GUI if you turn off hidden folders.

I have also heard that you should delete the DropboxHelperTools folder although that wasn't required in our situation.

sudo mv ~/DropboxHelperTools ~/.Trash

Spotlight not working in Mountain Lion

We have received numerous report that in Mountain Lion Spotlight is not searching local HDDs.  Since Outlook also uses Spotlight, no mailbox searching was possible either.

The fix is two-fold.  The first thing to do is delete the index metadata:

sudo /rm ./metadata_never_index

Secondly, re-enable spotlight indexing:

sudo mdutil -a -i on

Technically simply turning Spotlight indexing ON using the mdutil command should resolve the problem.  However we have found that you must first delete the index file first.

Update:  We ran into a computer where the above steps did not resolve the indexing problem.  On that machine the .metadata_never_index file was in the root volume (don't know why).  Removing that file and then running "sudo mdutil -i on /" resolved the problem.
 
1.  Double check that the .metadata_never_index file is not located at the root of the volume you are attempting to index
2.  Disable spotlight indexing for the volume:  sudo mdutil -i off /
3.  Remove the index from the volume:  sudo mdutil -E /
4.  Remove the .Spotlight directory from the root if it exists
5.  If there is a .Spotlight-V100 directory in the root, remove it: sudo rm -rf .Spotlight-V100
6.  Enable indexing for the volume:  sudo mdutil -i on /

OS 10.7 Lion and Citrix: 100% CPU use after upgrade

After upgrading from 10.6.8 to 10.7.4 I noticed that my battery life plummeted.  Prior to the upgrade I would be getting a solid 5 hours; after installing Lion my battery life dropped to 1:15.  Applications were also performing very poorly and the entire system seemed sluggish.

After some investigation and speaking with Apple I discovered that the problem was with the Citrix Access Gateway plug-in.  I removed it and my system instantly returned to normal.  In fact I started getting six hours of battery life so it could have been causing problems when I was on 10.6.8 too.

Citrix has acknowledged that several of their Receiver components are having problems with Lion.  HERE is a link to the Citrix page that explains the problems and offers work-arounds.

Changing the Machine Password Interval on a Mac and Windows

Sometimes when a user can not log into their computer (shaking login) the problem is with the machine password and not the user account password.  By default Windows machines reset their machine password every 30 days but Macs do so every 14.  If a computer is on the network but can not connect to a DC at its password change interval it can subsequently prevent the user from logging in and/or changing their password from the computer. 

To change the machine password interval on a Mac you must first unbind the computer and then follow these steps:

http://support.apple.com/kb/HT3422

Setting the passinterval to "0" is the recommended fix.

Keep in mind that having a computer never reset its password poses a potential security risk because the security channel between the computer and the DC will never be reset.  This means that if someone discovers the machine password they could perform pass-through authentication directly to a DC.

Here is a good article describing the entire machine password change proces:

http://blogs.technet.com/b/askds/archive/2009/02/15/test2.aspx

And here is Microsoft's KB on the process for PCs:

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/154501

OS X Server: users can not connect to SMB or AFP shares

We have been troubleshooting several reports from offices with bound OS X servers where Mac and PC clients are unable to connect to shares using AFP or SMB.  Additionally these offices have reported that Macs will randomly drop their AFP connections to the OS X server.

When the connection problem occurs often times the server shares will display generic ACL GUIDs: a series of numbers and letters instead of the group name.   In cases such as these restarting Directory Services generally resolves the problem- at least temporarily:

sudo /usr/bin/killall DirectoryService

Other times the GUIDs display normally but the connection problems still persist.  In these cases two things are suggested:

1. Nest AD users into local groups and then use the local groups to populate the ACLs
2. Flush the group membership cache by running this command:  

sudo dsmemberutil flushcache

Generally these problems occur most often on Leopard servers- Snow Leopard servers have improved group membership caching.