This Mac user is particularly cranky today. I got my copy of Mac OS 10.5 Leopard like a good little Mac user and installed it on my aluminum 24-inch iMac via the Archive and Install option. I then went through the process of creating a new user account, copying over my bookmarks, mailboxes, address book, calendar, files, etc., as well as reinstalling all of my apps.

My OCD felt much better having a nice, clean, system. After reinstalling the iLife apps from my System Restore discs, there were some updates available, so I started the system update process. Halfway through, my system took a hard freeze and I couldn’t do anything. I even connected via SSH from another machine and tried to kill potential suspects that might have been causing the freeze. Nothing. I tried to reboot from the command line. Nothing.

With no other recourse, I did the unthinkable: I held down the power button. Not a terribly big deal, right?

Upon rebooting, I was welcomed with the registration window that appears the first time you boot up a new Mac. “Weird, but that’s fine,” I thought. I filled it out. Upon finishing, the window disappeared and reappeared, asking me to fill it out all over again. And again. And again.

I’m completely locked out of my computer because I can’t get past that registration window, and don’t know what to do without reinstalling the OS again.

Here’s one cranky Leopard user. At least, I wish I could use it.

UPDATE: This issue is confirmed on Apple’s support page. I discovered this from Ars Technica’s Infinite Loop blog (ironic, isn’t it?) in the iMac 1.2.1 Update article.

With AIR development looming on my horizon, it’s nice to see SQLite database apps popping up. Now there is even a SQLite Manager plugin for Firefox!!

I’d say its most clunky aspect is data entry, but otherwise it’s very decent.

After installing Windows Vista, I could not connect to my Samba fileshares. I’m running Samba v3.0.10 on CentOS v4.4.

It turns out that NTLMv2, the authentication protocol, is required by default on Windows Vista. According to the Samba Features by Release wiki page, support for NTLMv2 in Samba wasn’t fully developed until Samba v3.0.21.

Running yum would be a quick way to upgrade Samba to a more recent release. For some reason, though, the repositories I’m pointing to only have v3.0.10 as the latest available update. Rather than hassling with it, I found an article that attacks the issue from the Vista end.

The article Get Vista and Samba to Work explains how to get Vista to use the older authentication protocols, like the original NTLM. After making this change, I was able to login to my shares immediately.

Basically, all you need to do is run the Local Security Policies console snapin (secpol.msc), open Local Policies –> Security Options –> Network Security: LAN Manager authentication level, and change the setting from “NTLMv2 responses only” to one of the more lenient settings, like “LM and NTLM – use NTLMV2 session security if negotiated”.

This works for me because I have one, sometimes two, machines with Windows Vista connecting to my server. If you had lots of machines connecting to the server, it’d obviously be worth your time to just upgrade Samba to a version that supports NTLMv2.