Bug: Office Notifications Uses Data from Firewire Disk afterrestart

[Jerry Krinock]

Today, I restarted my powerbook. I had a Firewire drive connected. This
Firewire drive has two partitions. One partition is a bootable system
backup for this powerbook.

Upon login, Office Notifications started giving me reminders which I had
"completed" weeks ago. I then looked at my email and found 3-week old
emails at the top of my in-box. After realizing that it was apparently
using the database from the bootable system backup, I tried to eject the
Firewire disk but the Finder told me that it was "in use".

I shut down, disconnected the Firewire drive, then restarted. I then
re-connected the Firewire drive *after* logging in. Now, all was back to
normal.

I have also submitted this as "Feedback" to Microsoft. You know, Microsoft
is so good that they don't have BUG REPORT in their "area that your
suggestion applies to" so I checked "other" and started with the sentence
'THIS IS A BUG' )

I'm using Office 2004 (Entourage 11.0.0) and Mac OS 10.3 Panther.

Jerry Krinock
San Jose, CA USA

 

[Paul Berkowitz]

Today, I restarted my powerbook. I had a Firewire drive connected. This
Firewire drive has two partitions. One partition is a bootable system
backup for this powerbook.

Upon login, Office Notifications started giving me reminders which I had
"completed" weeks ago. I then looked at my email and found 3-week old
emails at the top of my in-box. After realizing that it was apparently
using the database from the bootable system backup, I tried to eject the
Firewire disk but the Finder told me that it was "in use".

I shut down, disconnected the Firewire drive, then restarted. I then
re-connected the Firewire drive *after* logging in. Now, all was back to
normal.

I have also submitted this as "Feedback" to Microsoft. You know, Microsoft
is so good that they don't have BUG REPORT in their "area that your
suggestion applies to" so I checked "other" and started with the sentence
'THIS IS A BUG' )

I'm using Office 2004 (Entourage 11.0.0) and Mac OS 10.3 Panther.

I suspect that this is not a bug. Before rebooting the first time, you
should have ejected the FireWire disk (cmd-E). Rebooting without doing that
is equivalent to pulling the plug on it without ejecting first. The file
system probably goes back to "last startup" in such circumstances. But maybe
that's not it. You must have been booted from the FW at some point and were
in your user there. Before (or even after) opening Entourage in a different
user (the one on your main computer) you should have removed Microsoft
Daemon Database from the Startup Items of your current user. The Daemon from
the FW's startup disk was still set to fire. And it's linked to the user on
the FW since that's where you used it.

--
Paul Berkowitz
MVP MacOffice
Entourage FAQ Page: <http://www.entourage.mvps.org/faq/index.html>
AppleScripts for Entourage: <http://macscripter.net/scriptbuilders/>

Please "Reply To Newsgroup" to reply to this message. Emails will be
ignored.

PLEASE always state which version of Microsoft Office you are using -
**2004**, X or 2001. It's often impossible to answer your questions
otherwise.

 

[Norman R. Nager, Ph.D.]

I suspect that this is not a bug. Before rebooting the first time, you
should have ejected the FireWire disk (cmd-E). Rebooting without doing that
is equivalent to pulling the plug on it without ejecting first. The file
system probably goes back to "last startup" in such circumstances. But maybe
that's not it. You must have been booted from the FW at some point and were
in your user there. Before (or even after) opening Entourage in a different
user (the one on your main computer) you should have removed Microsoft
Daemon Database from the Startup Items of your current user. The Daemon from
the FW's startup disk was still set to fire. And it's linked to the user on
the FW since that's where you used it.

I reported an almost identical problem earlier to MS Feedback and to
another newsgroup (Entourage). In my case, Entourage uses the backed up
Database on my 2nd internal hard drive rather than on my primary hard drive.
That database may be up to 3 weeks old (the frequency of my Retrospect 6
Duplication operation.

The only thing that works is to unmount my 2nd hard drive. This is now done
automatically with a script in the System Preferences/Accounts/~/Startup
Items. As I recall, Paul Berkowitz suggested this as an option:

"You'll have to save it as an application and put it in your startup items:"

tell application "Finder"
eject "Unwanted Disc's Name"
end tell

That works. But in the contingency that the 2nd hard drive (which I've
named Drive B 10.3.4) becomes defective or is otherwise unavailable, saved
instead the following script as an application and added it to Startup
Items:

tell application "Finder"
if exists (disk "Drive B 10.3.4") then
eject disk "Drive B 10.3.4"
else
display dialog "volume not found or is unmounted already"
end if
end tell

But then one has to remember each time one uses Retrospect 6 or other clone
program that the 2nd drive is unavailable and to mount it before backing up.

Would it not be within the state of the art of Microsoft programming to
create a preference on opening the Database only on a designated drive?

Respectfully, Norm

 

[Jim Gordon MVP]

Hi Gerry,

I often have several bootable firewire drives connected to my Mac. What
are you are describing is not a bug at all. It is the expected and
desired behavior.

Booting to a different drive or partition is not like switching users.
Instead, it is like switching computers.

Each bootable drive has a completely different database daemon, so it
looks at that drive's information. If that information is 3 weeks old,
then that's what you're going to see, and that is what you *should* see.

You can use an alias to a single master file folder someplace, or you
can use synch software to keep all the repicas of your database up to
date.

But as far as the different bootable drives is concerned, each one
stands on its own unless you take specific actions to keep files synched.

-Jim

 

[Paul Berkowitz]

I reported an almost identical problem earlier to MS Feedback and to
another newsgroup (Entourage). In my case, Entourage uses the backed up
Database on my 2nd internal hard drive rather than on my primary hard drive.
That database may be up to 3 weeks old (the frequency of my Retrospect 6
Duplication operation.

Actually, a better alternative is not to do a Duplication operation (which
is desperately slow and has all these problems) I Retrospect but instead
create a second Retrospect Backup Set there, and every 3 weeks do a Recycle
Backup from your regular Backup Set to this "Reserve Backup Set", followed
by a Recycle Backup on the main backup set. That's what I do (every two
weeks). I have both backup sets on an second internal HD, like you do, and
on all other days (nights) do a Normal Backup on the main set.

The only thing that works is to unmount my 2nd hard drive. This is now done
automatically with a script in the System Preferences/Accounts/~/Startup
Items. As I recall, Paul Berkowitz suggested this as an option:

"You'll have to save it as an application and put it in your startup items:"

tell application "Finder"
eject "Unwanted Disc's Name"
end tell

Was that me, or Barry? Anyway, with the operation above there's no problem.
The real reason is probably that I let Retrospect compress the backup sets
(its preferred mode) so it's a proprietary file that has nothing like the
real MUD folder whereas it sounds like you must do an uncompressed backup
which confuses Entourage and maybe the file system too. These compressed
backups are what Retrospect does best - it seems silly not to use them IMO
(they save space too).

--
Paul Berkowitz
MVP MacOffice
Entourage FAQ Page: <http://www.entourage.mvps.org/faq/index.html>
AppleScripts for Entourage: <http://macscripter.net/scriptbuilders/>

Please "Reply To Newsgroup" to reply to this message. Emails will be
ignored.

PLEASE always state which version of Microsoft Office you are using -
**2004**, X or 2001. It's often impossible to answer your questions
otherwise.

 

[Norman R. Nager, Ph.D.]

Actually, a better alternative is not to do a Duplication operation (which
is desperately slow and has all these problems) I Retrospect but instead
create a second Retrospect Backup Set there, and every 3 weeks do a Recycle
Backup from your regular Backup Set to this "Reserve Backup Set", followed
by a Recycle Backup on the main backup set. That's what I do (every two
weeks). I have both backup sets on an second internal HD, like you do, and
on all other days (nights) do a Normal Backup on the main set.

Was that me, or Barry? Anyway, with the operation above there's no problem.
The real reason is probably that I let Retrospect compress the backup sets
(its preferred mode) so it's a proprietary file that has nothing like the
real MUD folder whereas it sounds like you must do an uncompressed backup
which confuses Entourage and maybe the file system too. These compressed
backups are what Retrospect does best - it seems silly not to use them IMO
(they save space too).

Thanks very much, Paul.

The benefit of duplication to another drive is that if

--a drive deteriorates and has to be replaced (as I once had happen)
--a drive becomes too corrupted for DW or TTP (as I had happen on one
occasion while beta testing) or
--if one downloads a bad OS (I think the first version of OS 10.2.8 or
10.2.6 was a case in point)

In those three situations, I can and have booted the remaining drive without
loss of time to to re-install Panther and its updates. One then uses
Retrospect's backup sets to restore files that were changed/added since the
last Retrospect Duplication. And one then duplicates the good volume onto a
new hard drive or erases a corrupted volume and duplicates the good volume
onto it.

Thus my empathy for others such as the person who started this thread and my
proposal to MS Feedback to build in a preference on the drive/volume for the
software to use.

It would be nice if more than two of us suggested this to MS Feedback.

Respectfully, Norm