CS3 Won’t Save To 10.5.3 Server

Despite Apple's encouragement to install OS upgrades as soon as they're released, most systems administrators test updates for a couple of weeks to see if any obvious or significant issues occur in their environment. It's been two weeks since Apple released Leopard 10.5.3, and while the update fixes a laundry list of problems (including Active Directory, AFP, iCal, Time Machine, and SMB issues), it breaks one simple feature that most Mac users simply can't live without: With 10.5.3 on client or server machine, some Adobe CS3 applications (primarily Photoshop, but occasionally InDesign) can no longer save to network shares.

It's hard to tell who to blame for this disaster, if blame is important to you. The fact that saving documents to the server worked just fine in 10.5.2 (and that multiple sources have reported that the functionality returns in 10.5.4) makes Apple look like the bad guy. On the other hand, Adobe has very publicly resisted modernizing portions of its underlying application code, and their antiquated position of not officially supporting direct server usage is bewildering to anyone computing in the 21st century.

The obvious solution is to avoid installing 10.5.3 at all (or roll back to 10.5.2 if you've kept a Time Machine backup of your system volume) until the problem is solved. The immediate (and far-less obvious answer) is to always use the "Save As" option, which continues to work perfectly on servers of all types.

Update: On June 30th, Apple released their 10.5.4 update. Among it's improvements, they list "Resolves an issue with saving and reopening Adobe Creative Suite 3 files on a remote server".

Recommended Reading: The normally-reasonable John Nack (Senior Product Manager, Adobe Photoshop) first reported issues saving CS3 files to 10.5.3 servers in his otherwise entertaining blog. For those with strong stomachs, some very angry commentary can be found on Apple's own discussion boards.

Completely Uninstall Adobe CS3

If your job is to administer Macintosh computers, odds are that much of your time is spent working with Adobe's Creative Suite. And while many have been tempted to uninstall CS3 out of frustration, removing Creative Suite entirely can be an important troubleshooting step when faced with a corrupt, damaged, or expired installation.

The only way to completely remove Creative Suite 2 from a system is do so manually, using the list of CS2 files posted at Adobe's own support site. Unless you have a pressing need to continue using the older version, it's best to remove it before ever even installing CS3.

Loading Creative Suite 3, on the other hand, isn't always as easy as following a checklist. The installer can become convinced that some or all of the suite is already present, even when there isn't any usable software available. For this very reason, Adobe has a script to uninstall the Photoshop CS3 beta, the non-bundled version of Acrobat 8, or even just a previous install that somehow went wrong.

CS3Clean, once double-clicked, runs in the Terminal to remove every application, file, preference, and driver that might be preventing a fresh installation. The script offers three "levels" of cleaning, the first removing everything *but* Acrobat 8, the second removing all CS3-associated files, and a mysterious third option which isn't listed (or explained) but is often recommended by Adobe's phone support representatives.

The script also uninstalls CS3 in about 10% of the time the programs actually take to install initially. That means that rather than installing CS3 individually on the machines that require it, you can often save time by including Creative Suite in company-wide disk images, then removing it on the workstations where it isn't needed.

Recommended Reading: If you're considering a full uninstall procedure to merely address a licensing issue, check out how to reserialize Adobe CS3 instead at the CreativeTechs QuickTips blog.

Acrobat 8 Crashes On Launch

Although Mac OS X has excellent built-in PDF support, there are some jobs that only Adobe's Acrobat can do. The ability to combine existing documents, create editable forms, and encrypt sensitive data all make Acrobat an indispensable tool. It's too bad, then, that the application has such a checkered history when it comes to stability. Acrobat 8 Professional, for instance, often crashes right out of the box. If it's doing so in your environment, there are several ways to get things running smoothly again.

There's a known issue in Acrobat 8 where corrupt or improperly-permissioned support files can cause the application to quit without warning. The problem centers around Adobe's Updater plugin, which by default checks for software patches when Acrobat first starts and causes the program to crash. Armed with this knowledge, it's easy to choose a solution appropriate for your environment.

The simplest method of dealing with this is to disable the plugin by selecting Acrobat in the Finder, choosing "Get Info" from the "File" menu, and unchecking the "Updater.acroplugin" box in the "Plugins" section of the Info pane. This method will prevent Acrobat from quitting unexpectedly, and is simple enough to walk users through over the phone or email. Unfortunately, it doesn't address the underlying issue.

The next approach is to replace the Updater plugin entirely. Adobe offers a fix for the Updater Plugin [963 KB]. To install the new plugin, right-click Acrobat 8 and choose "Show Package Contents", then open the "Contents" folder and place the new file in the "Plugins" directory. Though the publisher notes this doesn't work in every case, it allows Acrobat to run properly in most environments with the auto-update mechanism.

Finally, in most large environments, the best solution is to remove the offending plugin entirely. To do this, once again right-click Acrobat 8 and choose "Show Package Contents", this time going into the Plugins folder and removing the file named "Updater.acroplugin". This not only returns Acrobat 8 to full functionality, but prevents future issues that might be caused by unscheduled or user-initiated updates.

Recommended Reading: If you're looking for greater control of the update process, Adobe offers patches for manual download, testing, and installation at its Acrobat for Macintosh support page. If you're looking for more information on this issue, take a look at the Adobe Product Forums or the Acrobat for Macintosh list at Google Groups.

Retrieve Keychain Passwords

With the ability to store and encrypt any password on Macintosh systems, the Keychain can be a mixed blessing. It's easy for users to save time and effort with a single sign-on system for email, website, and file sharing access. It's equally easy to lose track of passwords that, thanks to a secure and convenient alternative, people seldom type themselves. Most users know the pain of an important but forgotten password. Next time it happens, there's a painless way to save their day.

In the Utilities folder you'll find the often-overlooked Keychain Access. Open it, and scroll down the main window to find the password item you need. If a user has multiple keychains, you may have to search more than one, but you can skip those named "System" and "System Roots" in Leopard (as well as "X509Anchors" and "X509Certificate" in Tiger). Select "Get Info" from the file menu to see the entry details, then click on the "Show password" button and enter the owner's main keychain password.

If your users can't rescue an essential password from their memories, this approach can retrieve it from the OS X Keychain instead.

Recommended Reading: Giles Turnbull has an extensive overview of Keychain Access available at the extensive O'Reilly MacDevCenter.

Resize Macintosh Partitions

In the past, changing the size of a Macintosh volume has been a significant undertaking, requiring third-party tools, offline reformatting, or both. This tended to complicate storage management, and made it difficult to handle unexpected demand.

Fortunately, all that changes in Leopard. In the newest version of OS X, you can grow or shrink any HFS+ partition, whether it's a local hard drive or a mounted network array. The resizing is done live, while the disk is online, and can even be performed on a mounted boot volume (though you'd want a good backup before trying it).

Open Disk Utility and select the storage device you're resizing in the left column, clicking the "Partition" button on the pane to the right. What you'll get is a graphical representation of the entire storage space, with the portion currently being used in purple and the available space left on that partition in white.

To grow a volume to fill the whole disk or array, grab the diagonal markings on the active partition and pull down until it reaches the size you need. To shrink a volume to repurpose unused space, simply drag upward on the same boundary. If you need to add or subtract empty partitions, you can do so with the "plus" and "minus" buttons. Once you've made your adjustments, just click "Apply" and your Macintosh partitions can finally be resized instantly.

Recommended Reading: Back when it was an undocumented feature available only on the command line, Kirk McElhearn wrote about how to resize partitions on the fly with OS X 10.4.6 (and a whole lot of luck) for MacWorld magazine.