Can't Save to Server issue has come back even though UIDs of local users are unique

[daviddidit]

Clients: OSX 10.4.7 (mounting shares via AFP)
Server: OSXS 10.3.7

When we recently migrated to Tiger for our client systems, we
immediately experienced the "can't save to server" issue that is
described at the Word MVPS site
(http://word.mvps.org/Mac/CantSaveToServer.html). I was able to resolve
the issue by changing the local user accounts to unique UIDs. Nothing
has changed in terms of OS or software on neither client nor server
throughout the entire time.

Just recently (last two weeks), the issue seems to have reappeared.
I've been doing some testing and by all appearances, the issue is
identical to when the local UIDs were not unique (eg. I'll open and
close the same file and sometimes it will open as "Read-Only" while
sometimes it will not).

I have verified that the local users do in fact have unique UIDs and
further, I analyzed the ".TemporaryItems" directory on the sharepoints
and I see directories for each of the UIDs (eg. "folders.50000",
"folders.50001", etc.)

What is strange is that the issue appeared to be resolved several weeks
ago but has reappeared even though there has not been any software
changes to neither client nor server. This would lead me to believe
that there is more to the issue than simply UIDs of local users.
However, I haven't seen any postings regarding this issue reappearing
after then fix was posted.

Any ideas on what is going on or how I can look into this further? TIA.

 

[John McGhie [MVP - Word and Word Macintosh]]

Hi David:

Microsoft issued an 11.3 patch for Office that may have arrived
automatically on the client workstations. It seems to have broken a few
networky-things.

Check the About item on the Word menu of one of the workstations. If you
see "Version 11.3 build 060914" that's it. No point looking in Entourage,
it was not updated: it will still show 11.2.5.

I have escalated this to the developers, we'll see what they say.

Sorry to be no help at all.

Clients: OSX 10.4.7 (mounting shares via AFP)
Server: OSXS 10.3.7

When we recently migrated to Tiger for our client systems, we
immediately experienced the "can't save to server" issue that is
described at the Word MVPS site
(http://word.mvps.org/Mac/CantSaveToServer.html). I was able to resolve
the issue by changing the local user accounts to unique UIDs. Nothing
has changed in terms of OS or software on neither client nor server
throughout the entire time.

Just recently (last two weeks), the issue seems to have reappeared.
I've been doing some testing and by all appearances, the issue is
identical to when the local UIDs were not unique (eg. I'll open and
close the same file and sometimes it will open as "Read-Only" while
sometimes it will not).

I have verified that the local users do in fact have unique UIDs and
further, I analyzed the ".TemporaryItems" directory on the sharepoints
and I see directories for each of the UIDs (eg. "folders.50000",
"folders.50001", etc.)

What is strange is that the issue appeared to be resolved several weeks
ago but has reappeared even though there has not been any software
changes to neither client nor server. This would lead me to believe
that there is more to the issue than simply UIDs of local users.
However, I haven't seen any postings regarding this issue reappearing
after then fix was posted.

Any ideas on what is going on or how I can look into this further? TIA.

--

Please reply to the newsgroup to maintain the thread. Please do not email
me unless I ask you to.

John McGhie <[email protected]>
Microsoft MVP, Word and Word for Macintosh. Business Analyst, Consultant
Technical Writer.
Sydney, Australia +61 (0) 4 1209 1410

 

[daviddidit]

Actually, none of our systems have had any updates whatsoever since
mid-August. We're using Word 11.2 (060202).

 

[daviddidit]

Also, sometimes a user receives the following error:

"There has been a network or file permission error. The network
connection may be lost. (..filename..)"

 

[John McGhie [MVP - Word and Word Macintosh]]

Hi David:

OK, they're working on it.

There was a patch went in with 11.2.6, but it appears it was only partially
successful.

In the meantime, all we can do is ensure the UIDs are unique and permissions
are correct.

Users annoyed by this should be advised to work locally and transfer back
and forth to the server with the Finder until they get this fixed.

Sorry about that.

Also, sometimes a user receives the following error:

"There has been a network or file permission error. The network
connection may be lost. (..filename..)"

--

Please reply to the newsgroup to maintain the thread. Please do not email
me unless I ask you to.

John McGhie <[email protected]>
Microsoft MVP, Word and Word for Macintosh. Business Analyst, Consultant
Technical Writer.
Sydney, Australia +61 (0) 4 1209 1410

 

[kathy80782]

My office has been suffering with the described problem and partially
avoided it by restarting computers when it appeared, or at least daily.
At the risk of sounding very ignorant, what are UID"S and how do I
assign them to each computer. Has there been a patch since that last
post. Thank you for any assistance.

 

[John McGhie [MVP - Word and Word Macintosh]]

Hi Kathy:

I assume you are running the 11.3 updater?

Details on the UID fix are here:
http://word.mvps.org/Mac/CantSaveToServer.html

Really, this is a job for your Unix System Administrator. The fact that you
don't know about UIDs suggests that I should advise you to think very
carefully before you try this.

The penalty for getting this wrong is that the machine won't connect to the
network AT ALL until you re-install the operating system.

Changing the UID is not a problem: it's a simple command issued from the
Terminal utility. Knowing what to change it to, and more importantly, the
effect on the rest of the network if you do, is the problem.

Usually, there will be no effect and provided you set a unique UID for each
person (that's what UID means: 'unique identifier'...) things should "just
work".

However, you have not told us the manufacturer, version and level of all the
various bits of software involved, so we really don't have enough
information to advise you -- you might be in a Windows server And *I*
don't have the expertise to advise you: we need to wait for one of the Unix
guys or girls to get here

Cheers

My office has been suffering with the described problem and partially
avoided it by restarting computers when it appeared, or at least daily.
At the risk of sounding very ignorant, what are UID"S and how do I
assign them to each computer. Has there been a patch since that last
post. Thank you for any assistance.

--

Please reply to the newsgroup to maintain the thread. Please do not email
me unless I ask you to.

John McGhie <[email protected]>
Microsoft MVP, Word and Word for Macintosh. Business Analyst, Consultant
Technical Writer.
Sydney, Australia +61 (0) 4 1209 1410

 

[kathy80782]

Thank you for responding. We are running OS 10.4.8 on all networked
computers except the server. We are using the 11.3 update to office.
The server is running 10.3.9 and is a G4. I am not going to attempt to
changing anything in terminal, and will await impatiently a solution
from MS. We are taking some comfort in not being the only one
suffering this, as our vendor had never heard of the problem. It took
a while (months) to find a referenced to this resource on the apple
discussion forum.

 

[John McGhie [MVP - Word and Word Macintosh]]

Hi Kathy:

I think you may need some more information here

If I am correct as to the issue you are having, please don't wait (patiently
or impatiently) for a fix from MS for this: it will never come. Microsoft
can't fix this, because it's not a "fault". This is a set-up issue that
needs to be corrected on your network.

If I am correct as to the problem you are experiencing, the issue is that
each of your users appears to the server to be the same person. So when you
try to save a file, the server responds with "You are not allowed to change
that, User 501 is already using it."

Unix expects each user to login to the server with their own username and
password: if they do, the server issues each local user machine with a
unique UID. If you prefer not to do it this way, the article shows you some
ways around it.

If you are using networked computers, but you are logging in only to the
local user account on each desktop machine, then you need a way to manually
ensure that each machine on your network has a unique UID. The article I
sent you to explains two ways of doing this. When you do that, the problem
will be resolved.

Detailed instructions are in the Apple article the website refers you to.

If you are uncomfortable working in Terminal, you need to engage a Unix
System Administrator to do it for you. This is a basic "Networking 101
issue when attaching computers to a network. *I* don't know how to do it
properly, simply because I am a technical writer, not a Unix Administrator


If your vendor has never heard of this issue, I think I might look somewhere
else for support (Actually, I suspect you weren't talking to the Unix
Administrator at your vendor's company: if you had been, their second
question would have been "How are you logging in?" and their third question
would have been "So how do you ensure unique UID's?")

Hope this helps

Thank you for responding. We are running OS 10.4.8 on all networked
computers except the server. We are using the 11.3 update to office.
The server is running 10.3.9 and is a G4. I am not going to attempt to
changing anything in terminal, and will await impatiently a solution
from MS. We are taking some comfort in not being the only one
suffering this, as our vendor had never heard of the problem. It took
a while (months) to find a referenced to this resource on the apple
discussion forum.

--

Please reply to the newsgroup to maintain the thread. Please do not email
me unless I ask you to.

John McGhie <[email protected]>
Microsoft MVP, Word and Word for Macintosh. Business Analyst, Consultant
Technical Writer.
Sydney, Australia +61 (0) 4 1209 1410

 

[Chris Ridd]

Hi Kathy:

I think you may need some more information here

If I am correct as to the issue you are having, please don't wait (patiently
or impatiently) for a fix from MS for this: it will never come. Microsoft
can't fix this, because it's not a "fault". This is a set-up issue that
needs to be corrected on your network.

You're right that it is a set-up problem, but you're surely wrong that
MS can't fix this relatively easily - they could just use a UUID to
create a unique directory on the server instead of the less unique UID.

UUIDs are Universally Unique IDs, and often constructed from the
Ethernet address of your computer. <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UUID>

Cheers,

Chris

 

[kathy80782]

Thank you John and Chris,

I can probably learn faster than waiting on MS. We live in the
hinterlands so vendor service is expensive and slow. Given that I was
already considering reinstalling the operating software on my powerbook
(I did the firewire transfer and have some other issues) I am going to
give assigning the UID a try. My experience with programing commands
goes back 30 years, but has been intermittant. I have been reading the
manuals the past two days and now understand the concepts involved in
the issue. Had my vendor better explained to me at the time we
installed the OS 10.3.x Server it is possible this problem would not
have arisen. Given that I only deal with nine client terminals the
changing the client UID seems easier than absorbing enough information
to configure the directory services on the server, and risk the mayhem
that could result. If in your opinions that might be the optimum
solution (and I now see some other very good reasons for implementing
directory services) I will give further consideration to having the
Server configured.

 

[John McGhie [MVP - Word and Word Macintosh]]

Hi Chris:

Yeah, you're right: Microsoft *could* do anything it likes. But right now,
it's trying to be a good Unix/Mac citizen and do things the Unix/Mac way.

If companies start inventing their own work-arounds to facilities that are
already built-in to the environment and to expected operating methods of the
platform it just leads to a world of hurt. MS has done enough of that in
the past -- hopefully they're trying to turn over a new leaf

I hope that Microsoft feels that in this case, it's not right for them to
replace the standard Unix system of user IDs with a Microsoft GUID, which is
what the WIKI seems to be suggesting.

My question would be what Apple expected to happen in this situation.
Obviously Apple handles this somehow, because Finder doesn't get confused
when accessing network files from desktop clients, whether they are
authenticated locally or by the server.

I suspect the real answer would be for Microsoft to do what it does when
printing: it hands the task off to the operating system and lets Apple worry
about it.

Cheers

You're right that it is a set-up problem, but you're surely wrong that
MS can't fix this relatively easily - they could just use a UUID to
create a unique directory on the server instead of the less unique UID.

UUIDs are Universally Unique IDs, and often constructed from the
Ethernet address of your computer. <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UUID>

Cheers,

Chris

--

Please reply to the newsgroup to maintain the thread. Please do not email
me unless I ask you to.

John McGhie <[email protected]>
Microsoft MVP, Word and Word for Macintosh. Business Analyst, Consultant
Technical Writer.
Sydney, Australia +61 (0) 4 1209 1410

 

[John McGhie [MVP - Word and Word Macintosh]]

Hi Kathy:

Sounds like you already know a lot more about this issue than I do

From what I have heard, setting up directory services on a server is simple
enough if you know what you're doing. However, the penalty for getting it
wrong is that "nothing works"

So I personally would lean to the simplistic solution: updating the Netinfo
preference to assign a static UID to each of the nine terminals

Cheers

Thank you John and Chris,

I can probably learn faster than waiting on MS. We live in the
hinterlands so vendor service is expensive and slow. Given that I was
already considering reinstalling the operating software on my powerbook
(I did the firewire transfer and have some other issues) I am going to
give assigning the UID a try. My experience with programing commands
goes back 30 years, but has been intermittant. I have been reading the
manuals the past two days and now understand the concepts involved in
the issue. Had my vendor better explained to me at the time we
installed the OS 10.3.x Server it is possible this problem would not
have arisen. Given that I only deal with nine client terminals the
changing the client UID seems easier than absorbing enough information
to configure the directory services on the server, and risk the mayhem
that could result. If in your opinions that might be the optimum
solution (and I now see some other very good reasons for implementing
directory services) I will give further consideration to having the
Server configured.

--

Please reply to the newsgroup to maintain the thread. Please do not email
me unless I ask you to.

John McGhie <[email protected]>
Microsoft MVP, Word and Word for Macintosh. Business Analyst, Consultant
Technical Writer.
Sydney, Australia +61 (0) 4 1209 1410

 

[Chris Ridd]

I hope that Microsoft feels that in this case, it's not right for them to
replace the standard Unix system of user IDs with a Microsoft GUID, which is
what the WIKI seems to be suggesting.

No, UUIDs are a cross-platform ISO standard and RFC (4112). MS happens
to use them as well.

I think you misinterpreted the article a bit - they'd be used to
construct /.Temporary Items/<unique stuff>/ on the remote server, and
really anything that's unique would do. UUIDs are just a known good way
of getting something unique. Type "uuidgen" in the Terminal to see..

I suspect the real answer would be for Microsoft to do what it does when
printing: it hands the task off to the operating system and lets Apple worry
about it.

Nod.

Cheers,

Chris