ucd mac question ?

ant043

Well guys

Just got my macbook set up in ucd today for the wireless network. I'm home at the moment and now it will not connect to my eircom wireless router. Any ideas about what settings i have to mess around with.

Thanks

The Black Oil

You've probably tried it but sometimes I forgot to change the location when I come back home so the system thinks it's in Trinity, then I change it to my house/town and it picks up the eircom wireless.

I don't think I had to do a whole lot to get it going on eircom wireless, check the eircom CD or their website. Sorry I can't remember exactly what I did as I set mine up in September.

Passenger

Ah yeah, just open up Network in System Preferences and change the Location.

ant043

Thanks for the reply

It says it is connected and shows up in airport as connected but it will not load web pages. It works when i use ethernet but not wirelessly. I don't know a lot about macs to be honest. Still a noobie but would it be something to do with the proxies in network diagnostics

Passenger

It could so you need to check the proxy address for your college and click on the 'Manual proxy configuration' setting in your web Browsers Network Settings, which is in your Browsers Preferences.

Breezer

Yes, it's the proxies. You need to set up a separate location for Home and UCD (bear in mind that I'm running Tiger and I think the following process has changed a bit on Leopard, if anyone running Leopard wants to rewrite this guide please do ):

System preferences -> Networks. Click on the location drop down menu and select 'New Location.' Name it 'Home' (or whatever you like). Click on the 'Show' menu, then on 'Airport', then on the 'Proxies' tab that appears below. Make sure none of the boxes are ticked.

Now do the same again, except this time name the location 'UCD' or something. When you go into the 'Proxies' tab, click the 'Configure proxies' menu and select 'Using a PAC file.' In the 'PAC File URL' box that appears, enter 'http://proxy.ucd.ie/proxy.pac' (without the quotes). Click 'Apply Now' and exit system preferences.

Now, whenever you are at home, go to the Apple Menu -> Location -> Home. In UCD, select Apple Menu -> Location -> UCD. Give it a few seconds and it should kick in.

You should be able to use the 'Automatic' profile to automatically switch the proxy settings but I never got it working in UCD.

EDIT: Oh, if you're running Firefox you can skip all that by setting it to automatically detect the proxy settings. It's in the Firefox preferences somewhere (I don't have Firefox installed so can't check where exactly, but it's there).

ant043

Thanks mate

Did what you said and its up and running.

Breezer

No worries. The amount of times I've asked/answered questions on this topic on Boards - I wish the Computer Science folks make 'Macs in UCD' an elective or something, I'd ace it at this stage

ZENER

Breezer wrote: »

No worries. The amount of times I've asked/answered questions on this topic on Boards - I wish the Computer Science folks make 'Macs in UCD' an elective or something, I'd ace it at this stage

The Campus in Clonskeagh has a very active Mac community - a very good friend of mine works there, I think it's Richview ?? Anyway he helps a lot of the students there with Mac setups - helps me too from time to time

ZEN

Breezer

I wish the rest of the campus did. IT Services really couldn't care less and the Business School (which thankfully I don't study in) seem to think Macs are the Devil.*

*To any potential flamers: I've already acknowledged and accepted their reasons for doing so elsewhere on this board. So go away about your business please (very bad pun intended)

conor2007

eh

very few problems you can run into with a mac in ucd , imo

less than a dell/vista

Breezer

Try printing wirelessly. Try using MSN. Try using it on a business course. Etc. Haven't we been over this before?

conor2007

wireless printing

usb is so dificult to use
msn - meebo

if i wanted to do business - i would use my macbook - if tehy have a problem id make it an issuse

Breezer

My point is UCD's network setup isn't Mac friendly. Of course there's workarounds, all I'm saying is that UCD don't go out of their way to facilitate Mac users. Regarding using your Mac in the Quinn school, others have tried and have been told where to go.

Look I'm not getting into this again, it's been done to death and it's not like ranting here changes anything.

conor2007

vista hasnt got support either from what i see

i would even go near quinn tbh - hte business

but if i had to go there , and they had a problem , id tell them where to go

ant043

so is it not possible to print wirelessly in ucd from a mac ?

Breezer

I knew a guy who got it working but it was insanely complicated. I'd consider myself pretty decent with computers (I'm the guy who fixes things for people) but his way of doing it left me staring open-mouthed and unable to say anything but 'Huh?' He's now gone to Bristol so I can't ask him.

My solution: install Parallels/VMWare Fusion and Windows XP. Put the file you want to print in a shared folder. Print wirelessly from the Windows virtual machine. Put up with it for your time in UCD (this is the only thing I keep XP on the laptop for. Well that and scanning, because I'm not bothered buying OS X drivers from HP for my relatively old scanner, but I could do that using Ubuntu if I didn't have XP installed anyway).

ant043

yeah sounds complicated. Don't really want to have to use windows again. There is still leaflets in the health science building telling you how to wirelessly print from a mac. I tried it today but would not download the file

Breezer

AFAIK this refers to the iMacs on-campus. The iPrint client for Mac offered by UCD is for the Classic Mac OS, not OS X.

ant043

ok suppose i'll have to print using my usb key.

Red Alert

I'm figuring this out at the minute - the iPrint server will accept an IPP connection but I'm trying to figure out exactly how it's supposed to be done.

ant043

In my ucd connect email account, it won't allow me to compose mail. Everytime i click it, it fails to open.

Any ideas ?
Thanks

conor2007

firefox works grand for me

safari , i had that problem