Any Mac users in UCD? Need help please!

Breezer

Hi all,

Having a bit of trouble with my Macbook on the college network. IT set it up for wireless (by which I mean they told it to use UCD's proxy.pac file), which works fine for web browsing. The trouble is, I can't get anything else to work.

Mail times out when I try to send or receive email from any account other than my UCD Connect one. Adium tells me it's unable to read from proxy.pac and won't connect. I'm willing to bet that a lot of other stuff wouldn't work either but it's these two that I really want working. Both work perfectly at home.

On a side note, has anyone noticed a problem with the newest version of Firefox (2.0.0.3)? Safari and Camino both work fine, but Firefox keeps randomly locking up and giving me the beach ball. It didn't happen with older versions and doesn't happen at home.

Anyway, if anyone can shed any light on the issue it'd be much appreciated. Thanks!

humbert

Sorry don't use a mac but have to vent spleen over firefox locking up. Dear god, it used more ram than everything else combined. It should have completed the action before I think of it. Instead it freezes, often. Grrr :mad:

Red Alert

On the wireless (and public wired) LAN you won't be able to get email working. I didn't know you could use IMAP to the server even from those locations.

If you're stuck, you can hardcode the proxy name as proxy.ucd.ie on port 8484. That might do the trick. Make sure to do it in system preferences and/or in all your applications.

I'm on the staff wired LAN so all the ports are open etc, but i'll check it out for ya. (I'm loving my new MacBook Pro!)

Breezer

Thanks guys, I already tried manually entering the proxy though and it didn't work. It's probably a limitation of the wireless network, I'll have to check with someone on Windows if MSN works on wireless and I'll know then I guess.

But are you serious that I can't use email other than UCD connect even on the wired LAN? That's insane.

Whelo10

I've got a macbook and its works grand everywhere on campus bar the computer science building. I managed to sort out the proxy settings myself, all i had to do was tick off the web proxy, secure web proxy, streaming proxy and SOCKS proxy, putting in for each 'proxy.ucd.ie' and '8484'. If your using firefox you'll have to change the proxy settings for that as well; go to preferences, then hit the network tab, then go into settings. Then click on manual proxy configuration, then enter the same proxy: 'proxy.ucd.ie' with the port number '8484' and use this proxy server for all protocols.

Thats what works for me and a few other of my mates that have mac's

Oh and Adium simply doesn't work on campus, neither does mercury messenger or mac messenger im afraid we're stuck with bonjour and web messenger...it sucks!!

Red Alert

Pretty much the above:

Just to note on the Public Wired Network the outgoing IMAP ports (for email) are blocked. (I'm now on the staff one which has all the ports open).

MSN Messenger for Mac has its own proxy settings I think, will check it for you tomorrow.

Breezer

Whelo10/Red Alert, will that allow me to pick up email from any account? I don't mind having to send from the UCD one as long as I can read from all of them without going through webmail. I'll try it anyway.

I have Firefox working fine, it just needs be set to automatically detect the proxy settings for the network, thanks though.

My friend says he'll be able to set up Adium for me through a VPN. It all seems a bit mad, Windows Live Messenger runs fine on campus for people on Windows. I mean why do UCD say they support Macs if they only half support them?

upmeath

I'm a Windows XP/Firefox user for 2 years on the UCD networks now. I'd a problem last September where nothing would work: Firefox, IE, GE, MSN - nothing. The problem stemmed back to Firefox. When you go into Tools->Options, the proxies had somehow deleted themselves over the course of the summer, even though I'd never gone near them. Might be a similar problem with your Macbook, though plenty of people use them over this way and nobody's had any problems lately!

Breezer

Well setting up all the proxies didn't work. Same result as before. Browsers work grand, Mail works grand for UCD Connect but nothing else.

Oh well, I guess webmail isn't that inconvenient. And Adium's really more of a distraction than anything else.

Still, it bugs me that if I'd bought Windows it would've worked, when UCD supposedly supports Macs. Almost all my lecturers use Macs, one of them spends his life telling us how much better they are than Windows PCs (which in general, i.e. off-campus, I agree with), Macs have been installed in several places around the campus, yet UCD doesn't bother implementing proper support for the students.

Red Alert

Computer Services really do need a dose of cop-on: they use Netscape/Mozilla as a supported non-IE browser despite the fact that Firefox has made both redundant. They refused to put Firefox in NAL for ages, and for computer services their website really sucks.

However, I think there's something a miss somewhere in your config. I'll try this fella on the wireless before i head down to my lab tomorrow and see can I msn with it.

Breezer

Is the Firefox version in NAL still 1.0.6 I wonder?

I emailed the IT helpdesk thinking that they'd be able to forward it to whichever member of staff actually knows about Macs. About a week later I got a reply saying "I presume it's a laptop" (no, it's my Macbook desktop that I lug into college with me every day) and that if I bring it into IT in Daedalus they might be able to advise me. Daedalus set it up like this in the first place.

Anyway, enough ranting. Red Alert that'd be brilliant if you could. It doesn't have to be Adium,I'll put up with Microsoft Messenger or whatever if it actually works. Thanks a million, very much appreciated.

realism

To get Microsoft Messenger for Mac working in UCD do the following:

1=> Go to Messenger Preferences
2=> Select Accounts
3=> Select "Manually configure settings"
4=> Tick "I use a proxy server"
5=> Type: HTTP Proxy
6=> Server: proxy4.ucd.ie
7=> Port: 8484
8=> Leave User name & password blank.

And that's it, it should work perfectly with those settings. Happy messaging!!!!!!!!

rainbow kirby

Breezer wrote:

I emailed the IT helpdesk thinking that they'd be able to forward it to whichever member of staff actually knows about Macs. About a week later I got a reply saying "I presume it's a laptop" (no, it's my Macbook desktop that I lug into college with me every day) and that if I bring it into IT in Daedalus they might be able to advise me. Daedalus set it up like this in the first place.

When I brought my first Mac to the Daedalus (about 2 years ago now) to get it registered on the network it took 3 people to work out what to do with it. Second Mac... I didn't bother

Red Alert

those instructions worked for me too this morning.

I never used a Mac before (although did use Linux) and I had it up and running on my home network (which has a secure user/password proxy) in no time. It's not rocket science, if you just know what settings you entered from windows it's very easy CS seem to hire people who don't know about computers - weird!

Breezer

OK, I guess I'll try that then. Thanks guys. It's the only laptop I've had on the UCD network. In desperation I actually did try Linux on a virtual machine - that didn't work either. Although to be fair I "tried" for roughly 10 seconds and have no idea what settings, if any, I used

Breezer

OK, I tried those settings last week and had no luck. Just now I tried them and they worked. Then within 2 seconds I'd been disconnected. Weird. Though maybe it's a problem with MSN, I'll try again tomorrow. Thaks for all the help guys - though still if anyone has any other ideas send them this way!

Red Alert

MSN seems to have issues with any OS (including GAIM on Linux) on the wireless LAN!

Breezer

Oh really? Well that's fair enough then I guess. It just bugged me that IT Services claim to support Macs but don't support them to the same level as Widows machines. I guess I'll get hooked up to the wired LAN one of these years. Thanks everyone!

sutty

Ok, I've gotta post in this thread as its been bugging the hell out of me. To answer some questions and comments in it.

First off:
Pop Mail (POP), External Imap or any other type of mail, will not work on the UCD network. If you want to look at external mail, use their webmail viewer. Its not up to ucd to support other peoples mail. Plus it leave the network open to PC's that are infected with POP broadcasters and spam mail servers (this happens a lot when there are thousands of out of date student laptops and other machines on the network that are incorrectly maintained by the user)

Chat clients, these aren't supported on the network at all. CS staff dont need to get these working for you. But will try anyway. Just to enlighten ye mac users. Its Mac based clients that seem to have the worst problems making connections. IE: Skype on a PC will connect as it uses its own proxy server settings. But Skype on a Mac wont or at least I've never seen it work.
So if you have one working, all good. If you dont and staff in the student centers tried, then sorry. But it just may be one of the many clients that dont work.

Mac Support. As Macs are a vast minority of the notebooks on the ucd network, support is limited. The same is said for Linux/Unix support. These are minority OS systems, get used to it. You want better support, install windows on your mac. You may find more of the programs will work anyway :rolleyes:

Computer Science. Right, this network, while in ucd and on the UCD network is run by computer science them selfs. They require that for accessing THEIR wireless network. You must have your wireless mac/hardware address registered to receive a IP address from the DHCP servers. Where as the rest of the campus, this means your wireless will not work. As the DCHP servers are trying to assign you to the wrong vlan. So that will be why you can work anywhere but Comp Sci.

Last off, Leave the Computer Services bashing out of it. The people on the student desks do what they can for people. Given time and amount of people waiting to be served. The helpdesk are limited as they are on the phone and cant see what you see. Try figuring out a problem with a person describing things as "the beach ball" and "Its just not doing it" Its not easy!

Red Alert

Surely the UCD network at the networking level should be OS-agnostic?

humbert

never gonna happen in reality and with limited resources, shouldn't. however if they say they support macs they should and there are instructions on the ucd website about configuring skype for the ucd network so if they fail I think the person is entitled to look for support from computer services.

irlrobins

No, I think any network admin is well within their rights to say "we only support X operating system". Think of it as a work network (which the ucd network is closer to then say an ISP network). If an employee came along and installed Linux on their work laptop, their IT dept would quickly tell them where to go.

I think Sutty's comment on minority OS's get minority support is a fair response. UCD recommend student's to use Windows. If the student decides to ignore that advice, then they have to accept a lower level of support.

Breezer

sutty wrote:

Plus it leave the network open to PC's that are infected with POP broadcasters and spam mail servers (this happens a lot when there are thousands of out of date student laptops and other machines on the network that are incorrectly maintained by the user)

UCD Connect email accounts work perfectly with these programs. So the network is vulnerable anyway.

sutty wrote:

Its Mac based clients that seem to have the worst problems making connections.

Yes, this is the problem. And the problem is not with the clients, they work grand on other networks. UCD's proxy is the problem - if they support Macs, as they claim to, they should at least let the major clients (iChat and/or Microsoft Messenger for Mac) work just as Windows Live Messenger does.

sutty wrote:

As Macs are a vast minority of the notebooks on the ucd network, support is limited. The same is said for Linux/Unix support. These are minority OS systems, get used to it.

Mac OS X has a higher market share than Windows 2000 which is supported by UCD.

sutty wrote:

The people on the student desks do what they can for people.

These are not volunteers, they are IT professionals who I am paying, through my fees, to provide a service. Hugh Brady has ambitions to place UCD on the world stage of universities - IT is a major part of this and an IT service that "does what it can" is not good enough. If they claim to support Macs the staff should be trained to support them.

irlrobins wrote:

No, I think any network admin is well within their rights to say "we only support X operating system".

Except thats not what UCD says - they say they support both. Student-accessible Macs are to be found in many places on campus, including the Daedalus building and Health Science building. Prior to this year, Earlsfort Terrace was home to two labs filled with iMac G3s running OS 9 which students were forced to use for classes whether they liked it or not. The vast majority of my lecturers use Macs (one actually spent a year and a half preaching to us about the virtues of Macs and how awful Windows is). Many staff in the Conway Institute use Macs.

If IT Services can support all of these, I don't see why they can't support student laptops.

irlrobins wrote:

If an employee came along and installed Linux on their work laptop, their IT dept would quickly tell them where to go.

You can't compare the Mac to Linux in terms of running on a network. Linux comes in several hundred different distributions, each with different versions, all of which can be customized with different desktop environments, window managers, an entirely different kernel, etc. It is also notoriously bad with wireless. It would be impossible to support it on the UCD network. Mac OS X is Mac OS X. There are some differences between versions like 10.3 and 10.4 and if UCD wished to only support the latest version, that would be reasonable - many software developers take the same stance so most people upgrade anyway. But you cannot compare these differences to the vast differences that exist between Linux distros.

This thread was posted as a request for help from fellow Mac users in UCD. It was not intended to be a Mac vs Windows debate, there are enough of them floating round on the web already. It has served it's purpose - I now know that UCD will not support external POP accounts and that IM is flaky, at least on wireless. Thanks to everyone who helped. Perhaps a mod could kindly lock this before it gets out of hand.

Red Alert

To address the proxy thing: the proxies are based on a program called Squid. Squid couldn't care less what OS accesses it. So that point is moot, the college proxies are essentially ok.

I don't accept the point that this is entirely a 'work' network. In a business, most of the PC's are owned by the business and serious restrictions are placed on what can be done with them - this applies whether the machines are running Windows, Mac OS (thing graphic design shops) or Linux (development companies). However the college network contains a mix of staff machines, privately owned machines and public machines.

Computer services are quite entitled to install whatever OS they choose on public machines, and currently Windows XP fits the bill for what most people want to use it for. However, at the same time I'm entitled to install whatever OS I like on my laptop, which I own. And they are entitled to choose whatever support level (if any) that they want to give it.

On the other hand, it looks very bad for computer services to be a 'microsoft fanboy'. Especially seen as I'm not using some whizz-bang linux distro, I'm using the main market competitor to windows. The network is for the most part standards compliant. They could make it more so by opening up things like the H: drives to normal windows file sharing. So supporting Macs should be very easy indeed - they run a limited set of hardware, which the OS supports right out of the box. So a very quick set of 10 steps, a bit like the connect and protect page could be done.

Linux and UNIX are another matter entirely. They are very hard to 'support' due to fragmentation. (Gentoo vs. Fedora, OpenBSD vs FreeBSD). In a well done network, these should be able to be used without a problem, and indeed I have found that to be so here too. They tend in general to be used by people who do know how to configure them correctly, and as such a simple page containing all of the network instructions (like proxy settings etc) on a 'best effort' basis is all that is needed. Unless a department or somewhere is using a large base of Linux machines like CS are that are standardised then more support is just unfeasable.

sutty

Breezer wrote:

UCD Connect email accounts work perfectly with these programs. So the network is vulnerable anyway.

You seem to misunderstand how a locked down network works. Ports are only open to the registered servers and Vlans on the network.

Yes, this is the problem. And the problem is not with the clients, they work grand on other networks. UCD's proxy is the problem - if they support Macs, as they claim to, they should at least let the major clients (iChat and/or Microsoft Messenger for Mac) work just as Windows Live Messenger does.

Messenger live will not work if a proxy.pac file is used. It can only access a proxy directly through a proxy dns address. IE: proxy.ucd.ie:8484. Every program has its little do's, donts and cants. Saying X program works, so Y should to, is just wrong I am afraid.

Mac OS X has a higher market share than Windows 2000 which is supported by UCD.

Windows 2000 is a 7+ year old operating system, Microsoft have since released 2 other OS. XP and Vista. That is the sole reason for its low market shares at current times. Both XP and 2k being based on NT. Mac OS X is supported and Student center staff will set up your wireless and get your web access working. Currently not support for Mac's is Printing and Chat clients. They cant even try to get printing working, as it requires a tested and approved Iprint client. Which has not been released as of yet. As for the Chat clients, Student support can try enter in the proxy settings, but if it doesn't work. What are they meant to do? They dont run the proxy servers, network or write the code for that program. All of which contribute to it not working.

These are not volunteers, they are IT professionals who I am paying, through my fees, to provide a service. Hugh Brady has ambitions to place UCD on the world stage of universities - IT is a major part of this and an IT service that "does what it can" is not good enough. If they claim to support Macs the staff should be trained to support them.

Sorry to burst your "I pay for your job" bubble, but you dont. The people in the Student centers, Helpdesk and Staff Deskside support are out sourced from a 3rd party company and are paid by Grants from the government.

Except thats not what UCD says - they say they support both. Student-accessible Macs are to be found in many places on campus, including the Daedalus building and Health Science building. Prior to this year, Earlsfort Terrace was home to two labs filled with iMac G3s running OS 9 which students were forced to use for classes whether they liked it or not. The vast majority of my lecturers use Macs (one actually spent a year and a half preaching to us about the virtues of Macs and how awful Windows is). Many staff in the Conway Institute use Macs.

If IT Services can support all of these, I don't see why they can't support student laptops.

All of those systems where out of date and have ether been replaced or where going to be. If someone wants to say X OS is better than Y OS, then all good to them. Doesn't mean that its true and that all networks everywhere should give full and undoubted support to it. Going by that statement, we should all use UNIX then.

You can't compare the Mac to Linux in terms of running on a network. Linux comes in several hundred different distributions, each with different versions, all of which can be customized with different desktop environments, window managers, an entirely different kernel, etc. It is also notoriously bad with wireless. It would be impossible to support it on the UCD network. Mac OS X is Mac OS X. There are some differences between versions like 10.3 and 10.4 and if UCD wished to only support the latest version, that would be reasonable - many software developers take the same stance so most people upgrade anyway. But you cannot compare these differences to the vast differences that exist between Linux distros.

There was me thinking that OS X was based on Unix... which Linux is based on.... hmmmmm

This thread was posted as a request for help from fellow Mac users in UCD. It was not intended to be a Mac vs Windows debate, there are enough of them floating round on the web already. It has served it's purpose - I now know that UCD will not support external POP accounts and that IM is flaky, at least on wireless. Thanks to everyone who helped. Perhaps a mod could kindly lock this before it gets out of hand.

Indeed it was, just simply stating that if you want the best support, use the same as the Majority, other wise you are an Minority and thus going to get less support.

Red Alert

UNIX as-such is the BSD family of operating systems like OpenBSD, NetBSD and FreeBSD. Some bits of BSD unix and another thing called Darwin are used in Mac OS X.

Linux is more closely related to so-called System V UNIX, but was written from the ground up with no unix parts.

I'm convinced that Macs can be made talk to iPrint but i'll have to do some testing on that one. Will post here again if i find a solution

sutty

Red Alert wrote:

UNIX as-such is the BSD family of operating systems like OpenBSD, NetBSD and FreeBSD. Some bits of BSD unix and another thing called Darwin are used in Mac OS X.

Linux is more closely related to so-called System V UNIX, but was written from the ground up with no unix parts.

I'm convinced that Macs can be made talk to iPrint but i'll have to do some testing on that one. Will post here again if i find a solution

Testing is ongoing by computer services, so there is no need as of yet.

Breezer

I'm not going to respond to the majority of your arguments because quite frankly I'm sick of this discussion. However, the following three annoyed me and I feel obliged to respond.

sutty wrote:

Sorry to burst your "I pay for your job" bubble, but you dont. The people in the Student centers, Helpdesk and Staff Deskside support are out sourced from a 3rd party company and are paid by Grants from the government.

And the money for those grants comes from my tax revenue and registration fee.

sutty wrote:

There was me thinking that OS X was based on Unix... which Linux is based on.... hmmmmm

Please drop the sarcasm. If you take the time to read what I wrote, I pointed out that Linux can be customized to such an extent that it would be impossible to provide full support. OS X cannot be. The fact that they are based on the same architecture is irrelevant.

sutty wrote:

Indeed it was, just simply stating that if you want the best support, use the same as the Majority, other wise you are an Minority and thus going to get less support.

This is equivalent to the sort of rubbish you see Mac zealots writing in OS debates. Someone asks for help with a virus issue they are having on a PC and they get told to buy a Mac. If they wanted a Mac, they'd buy a Mac, not ask for help with their PC. The converse applies to me. Having had no joy with IT services, I came on here because I reckoned there would be someone who had experienced the same problem who would try and help me. Which, in fairness, is what happened. Then you decided to come and preach at me.

I see no point in continuing this discussion, it has served its purpose. I'm going to PM the mods now and ask them to close it. Thanks everyone who tried help, particularly Red Alert, I appreciate it.

Red Alert

I wish I could have been more help on this one, but I've been tied up for the past week or so with labs and other stuff...

I think what this thread has really shown is the actual inadequecy of 'self support' options that computer services offers. Compare our own support pages to those in trinners http://www.tcd.ie/iss/ and you'll see what I'm talking about.

There are about 4 basic types of users in UCD:
1) Windows & Dell & Microsoft Word - what more do you need?
2) 'Power' Windows Users and Gamers
3) Mac OS Users
4) Linux, UNIX, whatever you're having yourself

What everyone would benefit from is a basic/advanced support page on each topic. The basic one would walk through the settings on Windows, and the advanced page would have all the dirty stuff. Most of those in (2) or (4) would be able to use that to figure out what they need to do.