10.4.7 Update

On 04 Jul 2006, at 10:57 , Jason Campbell wrote:
> This particular "feature" is causing widespread problems amongst
> Mac users, including myself. After installing 10.4.7 you cannot
> POP mail. Resetting the preferences, deleting and re-creating the
> accounts, repairing permissions & re-installing Mail altogether do
> not fix the problem. It has taken me all day to try and fix the
> problem and finally after a message popped up on the Helpdesk
> notices at work I got a solution. The problem arises because the
> "SOCKS fix" turns on SOCKS proxy in system preferences by default,
> even if it wasn't previously configured.

I've just checked all four of my Macs, all running 10.4.7 and none of
them have a SOCKS proxy enabled, and none are having troubling
accessing mail via POP. While I believe this happened to you, it's
not a universal problem.

Here's one discussion on Apple's boards about it:

<http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?messageID=2619254&#2619254>

The real problem appears to be that the SOCKS setting is universal,
so if you need it off for Mail, but need a SOCKS proxy for IM, you
are well and truly stuck (or a SOCKS for anything, though IM seems to
be the most common).

--
My little brother got his arm stuck in the microwave. So my mom had
to take him to the hospital. My grandma dropped acid this morning,
and she freaked out. She hijacked a busload of penguins. So it's sort
of a family crisis. Bye!

On Jul 4, 2006, at 9:57 AM, Jason Campbell wrote:

> This particular "feature" is causing widespread problems amongst
> Mac users, including myself. After installing 10.4.7 you cannot
> POP mail. Resetting the preferences, deleting and re-creating the
> accounts, repairing permissions & re-installing Mail altogether do
> not fix the problem. It has taken me all day to try and fix the
> problem and finally after a message popped up on the Helpdesk
> notices at work I got a solution. The problem arises because the
> "SOCKS fix" turns on SOCKS proxy in system preferences by default,
> even if it wasn't previously configured. To get mail working
> again, you simply need to go into system preferences and turn off
> the SOCKS proxy. (unless of course you happen to be using a SOCKS
> proxy in which case you won't have noticed the problem)
> Alternatively, if your Mac is being managed by an OS X server that
> distributes proxy settings then you won't have noticed the problem
> either because when you logged in after the restart the server will
> have distributed the correct settings.
>
> Thought I'd pass this along to hopefully stop someone else pulling
> their hair out trying to get it going again.
>

Interesting. I just checked my Mini (G4), and the SOCKS proxy is not
turned on. That could be because there are no POP accounts
configured (IMAP and the .Mac IMAP variant only).

SOCKS is also not turned on on my MacBook, which does have a POP
account configured (it is the default account for sending) in the
primary admin user. The normally used ordinary user has no POP;
only .Mac. I usually do not use the machine for mail. SOCKS is also
not turned on on my Dual533 G4 (no POP).

All machines have 10.4.7 (after the MacBook survived a first day
installation). All have the "Manually" setting, not the "Using a PAC
file" setting for "Configure Proxies:"

Also, I know of no SOCKS proxies the machines would be likely to
encounter by "looking around" for them.

It would appear that the problem isn't universal, which is a relief.
I'll nonetheless alert our helpdesk folks. Thanks.


    --John (just now receiving a page. Ugh!)

where is the SOCKS in system preferences and what is it?

For what it is worth. I have had POP enabled for more than one year,
installed 10.4.7 rebooted and everything works as it had in the
past. Socks proxy is not enabled. Have not had trouble with mail -
ever. Unless you count the servers at Apple, then I have had several
problems that were never admitted.

Cheers

CG

On 7/5/06 at 10:10 AM, jwbaxtermac.com (John W Baxter) wrote:

>Interesting. I just checked my Mini (G4), and the SOCKS proxy is
>not turned on. That could be because there are no POP accounts
>configured (IMAP and the .Mac IMAP variant only).

FWIW, the SOCKS proxy did not get enabled when I upgraded to 10.4.7 on my AlBook and the only email accounts I use are POP accounts. So, just having a POP account set up is clearly not enough by itself to cause the SOCKS proxy setting to become enabled as part of the 10.4.7 upgrade.

> For what it is worth. I have had POP enabled for more than one year,
> installed 10.4.7 rebooted and everything works as it had in the
> past. Socks proxy is not enabled. Have not had trouble with mail -
> ever.

I have had no trouble with mail either since the update.
kathie

the trouble i have is when i try to send mail the server window pops
up and it has the right server but i have to click on the "send with
this server " link then it sends it. but it is a pain to have to do
that every time the computer goes to sleep; has any one else
experienced this?

i also have trouble mounting my card readers and camers to download
my images; it just does not mount. apple told me to empty the cache
which i did once and it was okay but then it started not mounting again


[It sounds to me like it might be worthwhile to do an Archive & Install to get a clean installation of Mac OS X. You can then decide to take it to 10.4.6 or 10.4.7, depending on whether you have time to play with the testing. -Adam]


robin

On 05 Jul 2006, at 11:12 , robinsacknoff wrote:

> where is the SOCKS in system preferences and what is it?

It's in the Network Preferences Pane

You can type "SOCKS" into the search field of the system
preferences.. or anything else. Probably the most overlooked feature
of OS X 10.4

On Jul 7, 2006, at 7:40 AM, robinsacknoff wrote:

> the trouble i have is when i try to send mail the server window pops
> up and it has the right server but i have to click on the "send with
> this server " link then it sends it. but it is a pain to have to do
> that every time the computer goes to sleep; has any one else
> experienced this?

I had this problem for a while (both with the .Mac servers and with
our own). That was early in the "career" of this old G4 mini (which
came with Panther--10.3.7 plus an upgrade disk to Tiger). I switched
the machine to Tiger before using it much. I haven't seen the
problem since sometime in the fall of 2005. This machine got an
upgrade install of Tiger, and then a series of Combo updater installs
of each of the Tiger dot releases. I don't remember doing anything
to fix the problem, but it did go away. I regret hearing it can
still happen with newer Mail versions.

>
> i also have trouble mounting my card readers and camers to download
> my images; it just does not mount. apple told me to empty the cache
> which i did once and it was okay but then it started not mounting
> again
>

No experience with this. But then my 30 or so images would hardly
choke a machine. Using iPhoto 5 something on the Mini (I'll do a
family pack of iLife 07 when the time comes--in January as sure as
the flipping calendar pages bring us MacWorld Expo).

>
> [It sounds to me like it might be worthwhile to do an Archive &
> Install to get a clean installation of Mac OS X. You can then
> decide to take it to 10.4.6 or 10.4.7, depending on whether you
> have time to play with the testing. -Adam]

I'd say first do a Combo update to Tiger 10.4.7. If that doesn't
help, then try something like the next paragraph. Note that Archive
and Install is quite likely to bring the problem back from the
archive part of that when you bring Mail's files back.

Also, make a new account in Mail--or at least make some change, and
find the newly modified files that result--a Finder Find command (not
Spotlight) searching for "Last Modified" "Today" should do the trick
if you do it early in the day. Move things that look like
preferences files into directories on your desktop with the same name
they came from--so you can put them back if desired. Be careful not
to throw away the mail storage itself--I don't think any suspects are
anywhere inside
/Users/youruser/Library/Mail

Restart the machine, and do whatever setup you have to do again with
Mail accounts. If that helps, and you're satisfied that you haven't
lost anything, you can toss the suspect files into the Trash.
Otherwise, you can put them back, Restart, and listen to someone else.

Aside: hmmm--I got away with changing sending account and signature
selections after preparing the above--perhaps Mail has finally
stopped treating large chunks of message body as signature during
those actions--perhaps I got lucky (and I did out of habit have the
endangered text in the clipboard).

   --John