No support for legacy authentication method in SMB or AFP

As previously mentioned, OS X Lion does not support logging into NAS boxes running Samba or AFP servers that employ the DHCAST128 authentication method. Apple documented this as a security update, in which they outright disabled DHCAST128 in Lion.

People who are running type of NAS system – FreeNAS or store bought boxes will not work in Lion!

Now some people have figured out a workaround to manually enable DHCAST128 in Lion, so if you don’t mind a little hacking in the system go ahead and use it. Otherwise try to enable NFS on your NAS. NFS is support by most NAS boxes running Linux. However, note that NFS does not provide any option for user authentication.

Option 1 – Hacking the OS

SMB/CIFS solution:

1. Upgrade FreeNAS to the latest stable build.
2. Setup your SMB/CIFS shares accordingly.
3. Go to Finder, click on Go->Connect to Server  or simply press command + K.
4. Connect to your server by typing smb://your.ip/hostname or use cifs://your.ip/hostname
5. Login, and you should be good to go.
6. If you don’t see the login pop-up, connect to smb://user:pass@ip  instead.

Do not use the link in Finder under the Shared category. It will not let you connect. It could be my settings somewhere that’s causing the problem, but so far I can’t figure out why it won’t let me connect straight from the Finder shortcut. However, the Connect to Server option works just fine.

Leave a comment if you encounter problems.

AFP solution:

1. Launch /Applications/Utilities/Terminal and do:

• sudo chmod o+w /Library/Preferences

• defaults write /Library/Preferences/com.apple.AppleShareClient afp_host_prefs_version -int 1

• Now restart your computer.
2. From Finder, select an AFP server, or use “Connect To…”.  This will cause the AFP Client to create the full preferences file
3. Launch Terminal again and do:

• sudo defaults write /Library/Preferences/com.apple.AppleShareClient afp_disabled_uams -array "Cleartxt Passwrd" "MS2.0" "2-Way Randnum exchange"

• sudo chmod o-w /Library/Preferences

• Now restart your computer.

To disable DHCAST128,

sudo defaults write /Library/Preferences/com.apple.AppleShareClient afp_disabled_uams -array-add "DHCAST128"

Credit for these command goes to Alexander Wilde, please visit his site for the original post. All credits go to him!

Option 2 Enabling NFS

In FreeNAS, go to Services – > NFS and enable 4 NFS servers.

then configure your NFS shares, the easiest way is to point the share to your main storage folder under and share all sub-folders underneath.

Configure NFS shares

Note that if you do not “Map all users to root” you will not have write access to the share!

Save and apply. Then go to Disk Utilities on your Mac.

Click on File – > NFS Mounts, click on the ‘+’ to add a new mount.

Configure NFS mounts in Disk Utility

Replace the IP and folder names according to your FreeNAS share. Then click on ‘Verify” to close the dialog and close the window to save your settings. You may be asked to login to your admin account in order to save the setting. The mount will be auto-mounted to your system at boot time.

After you set everything up in Disk Utility. Quit it and wait a couple of minutes for it to show up in Finder. Note that even though we mounted it to a folder on the Desktop, it will NOT show up! The easiest solution here is to go to your Desktop in Finder and create an alias to the mounted folder. Or, create an actual folder on the Desktop beforehand then mount the share to it.

This isn’t the safest approach since NFS in FreeNAS does not have any authentication support. But for my personal needs it’s actually quite nice, especially when NFS is about 30-50% faster than SMB in some cases. For many home networks, it’s the only way to stream HD videos over the air.

So please give NFS a shot if you don’t want to hack your system to use AFP!

Mac OS X Lion

Today, Apple shipped MacOS X Lion via the Mac AppStore. It sells for $29.99 USD, and it is topping the charts at the store.
This is the first time Apple went with a complete Internet-based approach to dealing with an OS upgrade. In fact, it’s the only time I have ever heard of an OS being sold strictly via digital download. Words on the street seem to suggest that if you go to an Apple retail store, they will install Lion for you through a local cached version of the OS. Thus, saving you the hassle of downloading 3.5GB over the net. It’s not really a life saver if you ask me, but it’s interesting to see how Apple is handling things for now, and the days to come.

My initial impression of Lion was fairly positive, but not overly impressed with the changes.

Pros:

1. No major compatibility issues with applications. Everything minus a few utility apps works fine on Lion out of the box, or requires a quick downloadable update. I’m guessing since most apps these days were written in Cocoa already, it wasn’t much of an hassle to fix the few kinks in Lion.
2. New Mail app is great! New UI with an option to switch back to the classic view if you want to.
3. System icons are mono-toned. This may be my personal preference, but I think colours can sometimes look a bit messy and disorganized.
4. System pop-ups, and transitions are super fast and smooth. Apple really took everything they learned from making efficient 2D effects on iOS to the desktop.
5. iTunes was rewritten for Lion in 64-bit! This is not really a Lion feature, but it sure has been a long wait.
6. New features – Air Drop, Versions, Resume , Full Screen, FaceTime etc.
7. No notable increase in disk space usage. It didn’t bloat unlike many Windows Service Pack updates.

Cons:

1. 

   No support for legacy authentication method in SMB or AFP

   Major compatibility issues with accessing Samba and AFP shares! This was certainly bad news for us who are using my FreeNAS build guide and are accessing files through either SMB or AFP. Apple decided that the authentication method – DHCAST128 was insufficient and they disabled support for it in Lion! This will break compatibility with all over-the-counter NAS boxes, including our DIY NAS. However, there are remedies that you can follow to work around it. Check out my later post.

2. Time Machine does not work over non-Apple network shares! This is a huge deal for people who use a thirdparty NAS box to host Time Machine backups. Unless your box can support the latest AFP stack in Lion, Time Machine will NOT work! You can put a sparsebundle on it… but it simply will not work. Time Machine only works through the latest AFP stack.
3. New features.
• Air Drop is Lion-only. There is no Air Drop app for previous versions of Mac OS.
• Versions is only an API that apps can be written on. It is not a system wide feature, and it is up to the developer to implement.
• Resume can be really annoying if you are using Safari and don’t want your web page views saved all the time! The setting to turn it off is also very hidden. You have to go to System Preferences -> General -> uncheck Restore Windows when quitting and re-opening apps.
• Full Screen is also app specific and requires the developer to provide support. Don’t know why they could just implement it some other way to resize the window to full screen.
4. Mail database took a good 15min. It was surprisingly slow! Maybe I had too much stuff in there.
5. No Java runtime in the OS. But the OS is smart enough to automatically download it when you need it, through Software Updates.
6. 

   Multi-touch gestures in Lion

   Super weird scrolling and gesture changes! The scrolling direction by default in Lion is the complete opposite of what you are used to. Apple call this the “natural” direction. But it’s really not so nature to me – natural is what I am used to. Don’t fancy me Apple. Thankfully, you can change this through System Preferences -> Touchpad -> uncheck scrolling directions. Apple also changed gesture to do Expose (now known as Mission Control), honestly this will need some getting used to. There are no settings to give you back the familiar Expose gestures. (ex. four finger down = show desktop, up = expose all windows, no more 3 finger scroll to get to the top of bottom of a page)

7. Minor annoyance – Launchpad shows all the uninstaller apps as well. This is terrible if you have Adobe CS installed. You will get a bunch of uninstallers listed with the apps and it’s almost impossible to find your apps! Yes you can do folders, but if you have a lot of apps… good luck sorting all of them. Launchpad is especially useless in this situation when a Spotlight search can open you any app with a few keystrokes.

To sum up, I’m not overly impressed with Lion. Especially the decision to drop legacy SMB/AFP authentication! I think if Apple didn’t sell it for $29.99 I wouldn’t even recommend it to people. Some of the changes are certainly nice, but nothing groundbreaking as you would expect from a major OS release. In fact, many of the neat features you saw during WWDC are app-specific and it will only benefit you if the developers choose to use it. Apple likes to build only the API and leave the rest to the developers, where from a customer’s perspective we like Apple to implement it in the system so all apps may take advantage of it. This is especially true regarding Versions. Apple could have improved the filesystem to support version control natively.

Having said that, I do think it is worth the $29.99 it sells for and Apple is certainly on the right path of revamping its OSes to stay ahead of the curve.

However, lately I realized my iPhone tethering is no longer working. The Macbook cannot see the phone in Network Preferences, and iTunes spits out an unknown error (0xE800006B). I did everything from resetting my settings on the phone, and deleting iTunes’ plist file. Nothing worked! Every time I plug my phone in, the same error message pops out… didn’t know what to do.

I eventually realized the problem was caused by the 64bit kernel and the lack of proper driver support for it… and apparently iTunes (as of 9.0.2) was not rewritten like most other apps for Snow Leopard.

That made me wonder… Apple has a Windows 64bit version of iTunes but not a Mac version?  What is going on here?

Anyway, I thought I’d let the world know since this problem isn’t documented by Apple.

Short answer… Fresh Install > Upgrading

Long answer… it depends on how the upgrade went and what you are looking for. I recently did an upgrade from Leopard to Snow Leopard and noticed very little problems. the most noticeable problem was the long bootup time… and I know that Snow Leopard had specific optimizations to decrease boot time. Furthermore, I had some apps that were incompatible with Snow Leopard… so I finally decided to give the system a good wipe and install from scratch. and since then… all the problems have been solved… especially after installing the 10.6.2 update. Just always remember to backup your data and apps before wiping things out. Time Machine is very useful in this respect.

On the Windows side, I successfully upgrade from Windows Vista to Windows 7 without a glitch. The two systems are extremely similar under the hood, and I did not notice any problem after upgrading. I even did a clean install of Windows 7 and noticed no improvements. To be fair, I didn’t have anything installed in Vista anyway… just Office and Adobe CS.

Since now I own both systems… I think I can bring some new perspectives and observations to the table.

First of all… I’ve been a loyal Windows user since the 3.0 days. and I guess that’s how long this endless debate has been going on for… However, we are looking at a completely different landscape than those old days.

The common myth that Apple made “better” hardware than your average PC is dead now that everyone is on the Intel train… and we have normal PCs running hacked versions of MacOS… and Intel Macs booting Windows XP and Vista. (official Win 7 support is also coming.) So if you really look at what Apple is offering and charging for… is basically your average hardware stuffed in a fancy chassis. Surprisingly enough… according to official stats there are now more people who are willing to pay the premium for Apple’s fancy design.

But here is my story… I’ve been a Windows user for quite a while… and the ONLY reason why I now own a Macbook Pro is because I needed to run the iPhone SDK. It may not have been the wisest 2 grands spent… but the new Macbook Pros are amazing looking machines! I have to say… cosmetically I have nothing to complain about the machine! The fact that I can get a Dell with similar specs doesn’t bother me at all.

What bugged and is still bugging the hell out of me… is when Mac users… Apple officials and loyalists portray their OS as the best in the world for anything you do!

This is simply UNTRUE! MacOS looks fancy but it is not the ultimate saviour when it comes computing! It is not! Even with the latest Snow Leopard release… it is not even close!!!
Like Mircosoft Windows… it has flaws! If you install too much stuff… it will get slow… if you don’t do regular maintenance… something will go wrong… The number one thing about OS… not one system out there right now will “just work”. If you don’t take care of it… it will not take care of you. Get used to it!

I’ll give you an example… ever since Leopard MacOS had this weird problem where it cannot open files if they were downloaded from the Internet. The only thing that will fix it… REBOOT! That is until Apple released an update a few days ago to address the problem. This is a problem that existed in Leopard and Snow Leopard. As you can imagine I was extremely annoyed by this problem… because even my Windows machine didn’t have to be rebooted this many times to fix a stupid problem like this.

Second annoyance – Video playback. The codec support for MacOS is extremely poor. Codec packs like Perian are still incomplete when you ever come across one of those rare codecs. Needless to mention WMV support… trying to play a HD WMV file on a Mac is simply PAINFUL. You can either use VLC or Flip4Mac… VLC doesn’t have great performance and Flip4Mac will not let you seek the file unless the file is completely buffered. Bottom line… video playback is years behind the performance you get on Windows.

Third annoyance – Lack of software. especially quality free apps. Trying looking for a decent MySQL client for your Mac… paid or free… I bet you cannot find a single one worth competing with SQLyog! Also… when Apple wants you to think that their iWork bundle is any competition to MS Office… DON’T BELIEVE THEM! I’m a university student, and I have to say Numbers is years behind what MS Excel is capable of… same thing with Pages. The only thing I like is probably Keynote… it makes your presentation looks a bit prettier. =p

If you are a Windows user. Be ready to tolerate these annoyances because they are likely to stay for a long time. You might miss that good old Windows UI… I’ll bet you on that one!

On the “dark side” of things… Microsoft just released Windows 7 not too long ago. and big thanks to the University of Waterloo I was able to get an early copy of the OS. I have to say… Windows 7 is everything that I hoped it will be. It is a smart and stable system that is light years away from what Windows Vista had become… and performance-wise Win 7 even leaves XP in the dust! I love it. and I am really considering switching back to Windows for my general computing needs… especially when more Windows Live apps are being released Windows-only.

The bottom line is… Mac was never meant to be a mainstream machine! Its design is amazing… but there are so many things that aren’t perfect on the software end. I honestly think you might find it useful to run Windows on a Mac to get the most out of it.
While Apple keeps bashing Microsoft for the lack of innovation… Microsoft has made a very strong point with Windows 7 and their Windows Live series of services and software. It will be interesting to see how the game plays on from now on…
However, as a consumer I think people should always remember that nothing is ever exactly as advertised. nothing is ever perfect. just because you have spent a lot of money on something… doesn’t mean it’s worth it.
To be happy with your purchase… you need to think about what compromises are you willing to accept… it doesn’t matter how much money you have… you can’t have everything. =)