The fix: Make sure “Always Insert Attachments at End of Message” is checked off (preference key is AttachAtEnd - boolean for you MCX minded folk) and you can now attach inline as you would normally want to without having Outlook eat your message.

Thunderbird will display the text correctly, but you’ll lose it and it will only appear as an attachment once that email is forwarded or replied to: (Part 1.1.3 is the text “There’s an attachment”). You’ll also notice the horizontal rule separating between the different HTML portions of the email.

What program completely falls flat on it’s face is Outlook; it just puts all attachments off to the side and you have no idea what’s in the those ATT documents and your client sure as hell isn’t going to read them. So you’ve sent the email, the email was successfully sent, the text will be visible on their webmail systems, on their mobile device (Blackberry or iPhone), and even visible in other mail clients but because it’s technically an attachment Outlook won’t display it inline by default. (For the same reason they won’t show images by default in emails - the cookie tracking and that it’s a great attack vector)

Of note, this only occurs when sending from Mail.app. Outlook can attach items inline and have no issue as it attaches the images at the end of the email.

Correct view:

Before going further it’s worth noting how to delegate a group calendar so a user can view it without manually adding the group calendar as it’s own calendar (if using Delegates instead of multiple calendar “accounts” (same credentials, different calendars) is your aim). To do so you have to add the group calendar as a normal account in order to set it up, and then set up delegation as you would for a normal account. The important URL to know for using a group calendar is http://FQDN.OF.SERVER:8008/principals/groups/groupname (as always replace http with https and 8008 with 8443 if you are using SSL).

Sunbird uses slightly different URLs than what you use in iCal to start with, where in iCal an example URL might be http://FQDN.OF.SERVER:8008/principals/users/USERNAME or http://FQDN.OF.SERVER:8008/principals/groups/GROUPNAME. The corresponding URL to use in Sunbird is http://FQDN.OF.SERVER:8008/calendars/users/USERNAME/calendar or http://FQDN.OF.SERVER:8008/calendars/groups/GROUPNAME/calendar

That’s great for adding a single calendar but what if a user or a group has multiple calendars under their one account? iCal will automatically show them as a group whereas Sunbird requires you to add each and everyone that you wish to have show up.

You can specify a “sub-calendar” to subscribe to in Mozilla Sunbird by specifying the unique ID of that calendar instead in the form of the url http://FQDN.OF.SERVER:8008/calendars/__uids__/UID_OF_GROUP_OR_USER/UID_OF_SUB_CALENDAR (Newer versions of Lightning will take http://FQDN.OF.SERVER:8008/users/USERNAME/UID_OF_SUB_CALENDAR). Note the lack of calendar at the end of the URL. To determine the UIDs in question it’s easiest using iCal, if you click on a calendar and press Command-I (File -> Get Info) you can see part of the CalDAV URL at the bottom of the sheet that appears.

You will see calendars/__uids__/UNIQUE_ID/ONLY_PART_OF_THE_UNIQUE_ID because the label the text is placed into is not big enough to fit the URL. Because you can’t get the full URL from there it’s easiest to go to the iCal Server itself and navigate to /Library/CalendarServer/Documents/calendars/__uids__/ (you’ll need administrator privileges to view this). From there find the folder named the same as the UNIQUE_ID portion of the URL and open it to find a folder with the UNIQUE_ID of the “sub-calendar”. You can now put the URL together and use that in Sunbird to view that additional calendar.

Example URL of a sub-calendar in the group:
https://FQDN.OF.SERVER:8443/calendars/__uids__/FA26C8C6-5B78-4AB0-AE73-0E9576574EBB/F74174B7-380C-4630-9192-9025F4C691A2

EDIT:

Sub-calendars also work at https://FQDN.OF.SERVER:8443/calendars/users/USERNAME/UID_OF_SUBCALENDAR

Sources Used:

• MacOSXHints.com - Add group calendars to iCal Server
• Apple Support Discussions - Correct URLs for Sunbird
• Apple Support Discussions - iCal + Sunbird

The workaround: Start up the computer in single user mode. Then use the following commands (not the ones with ## preceding them however)

## Mount the filesystem so you can read and write to it
mount -uw /
## The files we want live in /var/db
cd /var/db/
## Files that tell us it's a multi disk install
rm .AppleMultiInstall*
## File that tells us to pop up the registration dialog
rm .AppleCustomMac
## Something else to do with setup (Locale Setup?)
rm .locsetup.plist  

I removed all 3 files because they looked like the most likely culprits but gut tells me the .AppleMultiInstall* files are the only ones that have to be removed but I wasn’t able to test it.

You’re now able to boot the computer just fine - it’s imperative however to be sure that you know what has been installed as you’re interrupting the installation. Because in this case I knew that only iLife was on the second disk (in terms of what had been selected to be installed) I didn’t go ahead with reinstalling the OS to be on the safe side.

This has been tested on Mac OS X Tiger 10.4, it should be identical for Mac OS X Leopard 10.5 as well but I’m not 110% positive.

The Cause

When you restore your iPhone / iPod touch to it’s factory defaults the device is not connected to an iTunes account. When you restore it from your backup (to put your apps and info back on) it will load anything that does not require authorization through the iTunes store (with the exception of free apps - though purchased from the iTunes Store they seem to get loaded anyway). So when you finish a Restore From Backup the first time around it will not load any paid apps or music until it’s authorized. It does it’s authorizations seemingly right after you’ve restored it as it accesses the iTunes Store as if it was just plugged in. Why that has no effect on purchased music I’ve no idea.

In the end you’re left with a phone / iPod that has only part of the data it had on it before and requires you to press Sync again to put your paid applications and purchased music on to it. The biggest issue here is that if you have any data stored in that application, like say Things, or high scores from a game, or just find reorganizing your home layout frustrating you’re out of luck. The paid apps are installed anew, and placed one at a time into the earliest empty spot on your home screens. Frustrating. Thankfully there is a workaround.

The Workaround

1. Perform a backup before you restore.
2. After restoring your Phone to the whichever OS version
3. Restore from your backup (you can cancel syncing music when this part finishes - it will start up again after the next step)
4. Restore once more - you may see two backups to choose from as it would have created a backup after the restoring. Choose the one that would have a timestamp just before you do the restore.

Annoying because a restore from backup may take as long as 5 or 6 minutes but at least you aren’t stuck reorganizing your applications the way you wanted them again.

EDIT: From what I can gather 3.0 has fixed this issue.

Mailbox Setup Reference

To start with for reference I have several computers and an iPhone that share 4 IMAP accounts (GMail, my webhost and one from work). The main reason I use IMAP is that it keeps them in sync - the backup on the server is just gravy. By default Mail.app uses a mailbox called “Sent Messages” and “Deleted Messages” for it’s Sent and Trash mailboxes. If they do not exist it will attempt to create them - which isn’t entirely interoperable with some webmail clients out of the box (eg. Squirrelmail and RoundCube don’t use those mailboxes by default) or other email clients such as Thunderbird (which doesn’t allow you to change your Trash mailbox in Account Settings so you can’t tell it to use Deleted Messages as well).

Changing Your Sent and Trash Mailboxes Normally

In Mail.app you can click on a mailbox (eg. Trash Man O’ Doom) you’ve created and then under the Mailbox menu scroll down to “Use This Mailbox For” and set the mailbox for what you would like to use it for Drafts, Sent, Trash or as the Junk Mailbox. Nice, easy and it nearly always works. (I’ve had it not work once and that wasn’t Mail’s fault)

To Do Mailboxes Are From Hell

You may have noticed above that there was no option for a “To Do” mailbox or even an option anywhere to disable System wide To Dos which means that once iCal is opened or any To Do is intentionally or accidentally created Mail.app will dutifully create Apple Mail To Do mailboxes for each account you have following the IMAP Prefix if necessary. On my iPhone where To Dos are not even recognized it means I’m always seeing a completely useless Apple Mail To Do mailbox somewhere in the hierarchy of my mailboxes.

Following the publishing of a hint on MacOSXHints.com that described the key used in Mail.app’s Preference file (com.apple.mail.plist) I decided to go digging to see what else was stored there. I discovered that by setting the value to nothing (as in just leave it blank) that To Dos were effectively disabled on that account - I could then delete the Apple Mail To Do mailbox on the account. By doing the same change on the other computers (4 accounts * 4 computers = tedious) I was then Apple Mail To Do mailbox free!

**EDIT: According to a newly published hint there’s another way to avoid ToDo mailboxes being recreated by changing the NewNoteToDoAccount key to the ID of your local account. After deleting all my To Do mailboxes this was auto set so I didn’t notice that it had changed.

**EDIT 2: As far as I can tell this is akin to setting Create Notes & To Do’s in: to On My Mac in the Composing section of the Mail Preferences - which is FAR easier than messing with the plist file.

Multiplying Inboxes

When I changed servers at my webhost, Mail.app got confused about the IMAP Prefixes (I believe the new server was telling Mail.app INBOX and the old server was saying /, but I’m unsure) and decided to whenever I deleted a message to move the message to a new mailbox it would create at INBOX/Deleted Messages. Thinking it was an anomaly I would move the message where it should have gone and delete the newly create mailbox. The next time a message would be deleted (wasn’t necessarily on that computer) it would recreate that mailbox but oddly at INBOX/INBOX/Deleted Messages and the cycle would keep repeating. This was the one time that selecting the Trash Mailbox (Deleted Messages at / and not in INBOX) and telling it to use it failed.

Using the knowledge that the mailbox information is stored in com.apple.mail.plist I edited the offending section setting it properly and haven’t had a problem with it since - it was a good way of having somewhere to write in “I want my Trash to go here”. So it’s useful for making changes and checking to see what path that Mail.app is looking for when it shouldn’t be looking at that location (especially via SSH when VNC is unavailable).

So my frustration ends with that to edit a binary plist the only Apple provided tool is the new Property List Editor 3.0 which is not an optimum solution for editing - it doesn’t provide searching and I find that the extra work using plutil to convert to xml instead of binary and back so I can use TextMate not worth it in the end. Much of what you need to do is in Mail.app itself but when Mail.app is acting up, it’s good to know where you can go to set it back straight and stop the cluttering of your mailbox hierarchies.

On checking the computers I noticed it occurred on every computer running Tiger and that every computer running Leopard did show the menu bar and said Finder was running but unlike Tiger it did not allow you to perform any actions beyond opening a menu. In Tiger you were essentially logged in as root into the Finder (and SystemUIServer) which gave you complete access to anything. The kicker is that the root user was not enabled on any of the computers.

Now in the big picture it’s mostly a non-issue because the following requirements have to be taken to see this edge case:

1) The workstation must be running 10.4.0-10.4.11 (Flash Player 10 doesn’t run on Mac OS X older than 10.4) 2) You must be using Apple Remote Desktop to install the package 3) You must ensure that you choose not to restart the computers in question. By default the package wants to restart the computer if no one is logged in (I assume it is to avoid this very situation). If someone is logged in however it doesn’t request a restart. The kicker is that if you select a group of machines and send it to install and one of them has a logged in user by default it does not ask you to restart.

If you check on the workstation you will see a Finder window open to root’s home folder - even if you don’t have the root user enabled (which I am of the opinion you shouldn’t especially with sudo available). Anything then opened via the Finder then runs as root as well (including Terminal).

So it’s easy to work around - either restart them all, or do it when you have users logged in (not ideal). If you do choose the username for the action to be done in ARD; the Finder window will open up as that user (quite possibly a local administrator account) so filing in a username there is not a workaround but much less dangerous than root access. Once the computer is restarted or someone logs in the issue goes away.

For some reason my new SMTP information just wouldn’t sync to my iPhone correctly - at best the server info will but the username and password were blank. I’m not 100% certain that the error is not exclusive to Joyebt’s email servers as I have seen it on another server as well - but when the username or password is wrong when attempting to send uemail you are presented with the following error:

“One of the recipient addresses was invalid”

Frustrating and exceedingly cryptic, but if I write it down then I might actually remember what the error means next time.

When a network share is mounted in Leopard it does not appear in the Finder sidebar on it’s own - it is accessible via the server it is on if you have Connected Servers checked off in the Finder preferences. At work we have Back to My Mac, Connected Servers, and Bonjour Servers all hidden by default because they do little to assist anyone in finding anything. (Not to mention Back to My Mac isn’t used and Bonjour Servers lists every computer in the building). Your one alternative was to navigate back to the Computer (Command-Shift-C) and find your Volume there - instead what you can do is drag a Network share to your sidebar (or press Command-T when it is selected) where if mounted it will appear.

What I wanted to do was make it so they would automatically appear no matter what was connected - making the change more future proof. I ultimately failed to do so but I did learn the following tidbits about com.apple.sidebarlists.plist:

Under :systemitems:VolumesList (PlistBuddy syntax in use) you have a list of different hard drives and such that have been plugged into your computer - and if you happen to add a share to your sidebar this portion is what is changed.

Each Item consists of:

• An Alias (Data) - This is the base64 decoded form of a _CFULRAlias (identical to as seen in com.apple.dock.plist)
• EntryType (Integer) - I found the codes for several different types:
  16: Special Access (Computer, iDisk, Network)
  261: Hard Drive (and ZFS Pool)
  517: Time Machine
  515: USB Drive
• Icon (Data) - Again this is Hex but if you have a hex editor (such as Hex Fiend) but is the form “ImgR? SYSL fldr” (Default Finder Folder icon) with two fields separating each section. The default for a server icon is: 496d6752 0000001c 00000000 5359534c 00000010 00000000 73727672
• Visibility (string)(optional) - Can be NeverVisible or AlwaysVisible. In this case we want AlwaysVisible.

My big issue in not being able to figure it out was that I couldn’t figure out through research how to write the necessary alias data that is being looked for by com.apple.sidebarlists.plist . James Reynolds created the dockit.c program. Tweaking the program so it’s start and end points only included the CFURLAlias data (329 and 326 respectively) gave me the base64 encoded information that you see when editing an XML version of the Dock or Sidebarlists plists - but using PlistBuddy to input the information did no good.

So what I ended up doing instead was to use one computer to mount all the possible shares put them in the sidebar (since they’re hidden when not mounted it’s fine having shares that wouldn’t even be mounted) and then push out the changes via MCX. It’s not perfect but it works and it will make finding the shares much easier. I’m hoping this entry helps someone else on their search for getting such a script created.

Thanks to the following places for information:
CocoaDev (note: The Alias data when viewed in an xml plist is base64 encoded - but not in Property List Editor)
JeremyForPresident
MacOSXHints

Here are three snippets I’ve added to my LaunchBar configuration that make my life a bit easier:

Add /Library/CoreServices as a folder to search - it means you can access applications like Screen Sharing and a few other lesser known applications without digging.

Searching Apple Mailing Lists: http://search.lists.apple.com/?q=*&cmd=Search%21&form=extended&m=all&ps=50&fmt=long&wm=wrd&wf=2221&sp=1&ul=

LargeText: x-launchbar:large-type?string=*

Lastly a couple other tips that I keep running up against:

1. ** allows you to do powers of in the calculator. Not ^.

2. If you consistently misspell something (eg. LIHGR instead of LIGHR for Lightroom) you can set the abbreviation by typing in something that does bring up the file or application and then press Command-Option-A (Select->Assign Abbreviation with the mouse) and then type in the misspell that you keep typing.