Blognote » OSX

Apple Mail.app Exchange sync problems and solution

Edward — Wed, 24 Nov 2010 14:35:51 +0000

At our company we have decided to relocate our mailserver to an hosted Exchange 2010. We’ve been using Zimbra for the past three years, but we feel that development of Zimbra isn’t moving into the direction of better OSX support (we are all using MacBook Pro’s) but is more focussed on enhancing their webclient and own desktop-mail-client. In the meantime OSX has received good Exchange support. So after a test-period with a limited number of users we decided to all switch to Exchange 2010.

My sync problems started when I was trying to move complete folders with hundreds of e-mails to my Exchange account. I use a big folder-structure within my Exchange account to separate all kinds of e-mails by customer and by action. Mail and Exchange than got angry with each other. Mail was slowing down to an unusable state, refused to sync some mailfolders and started throwing errors:

23-11-10 19:07:28 Mail[34524] *** Assertion failure in -[EWSConnection sendMessage:forRequest:], /SourceCache/Message/Message-1082/MessageStores.subproj/EWSConnection.m:374

Received an unexpected error: Error Domain=EWSExchangeWebServicesErrorDomain Code=165 UserInfo=0x119f3b210 “The operation couldn’t be completed. (EWSExchangeWebServicesErrorDomain error 165.)”, response: (null)

(

0 Message 0x00007fff83bbc6e4 -[MFAssertionHandler _handleFailureWithPreamble:description:arguments:] + 137

1 Message 0x00007fff83bbc649 -[MFAssertionHandler handleFailureInMethod:object:file:lineNumber:description:] + 220

2 Message 0x00007fff83afe01b -[EWSConnection sendMessage:forRequest:] + 1117

3 Message 0x00007fff83b095b9 -[EWSGateway sendMessage:forRequest:] + 79

4 Message 0x00007fff83b1ca63 -[EWSRequestOperation executeOperation] + 104

5 Message 0x00007fff83bcaab9 -[MonitoredOperation main] + 229

6 Foundation 0x00007fff832e7de4 -[__NSOperationInternal start] + 681

7 Foundation 0x00007fff833c6beb __doStart2 + 97

8 libSystem.B.dylib 0x00007fff86bea2c4 _dispatch_call_block_and_release + 15

9 libSystem.B.dylib 0x00007fff86bc8831 _dispatch_worker_thread2 + 239

10 libSystem.B.dylib 0x00007fff86bc8168 _pthread_wqthread + 353

11 libSystem.B.dylib 0x00007fff86bc8005 start_wqthread + 13

)

These errors wouldn’t stop, the syncing wasn’t complete, OMG

Apparently I wasn’t the first to encounter these problems, but the solutions either sounded too far off for me, or were to rigorous for my taste.

I have found a much easier and faster method to get Exchange and Mail back to communicating with each other.

1 ) Remove Exchange account from Mail

2 ) Remove Exchange account from iCal

3 ) Remove Exchange account from Address Book

4 ) Close all three programs

5 ) Verify that the local mailbox was removed. In ~/Library/Mail there shouldn’t be a directory named EWS-[USERNAME]@[EXCHANGE-SERVER] if it is there throw it away, and empty thrash.

6 ) Start Mail

7 ) Add Exchange-account using the Wizzard

8 ) Only move tiny batches of e-mail between accounts

Although tedious, it does work

Parallels Explorer is gone, Parallels Mounter is the new kid

Edward — Fri, 13 Aug 2010 14:04:36 +0000

It’s a tool I rarely use, Parallels Explorer. It enables you to browse a Virtual Machine Disk from OSX without booting the whole Virtual Machine. Today I needed the tool, but I couldn’t find it anywhere. Tried Google and searching the Parallels Support Forums, but nowhere any explanation where the Parallels Explorer could be found. So I started a chat with Parallels Support, and it appears that Parallels Explorer was available in Parallels Desktop 4.0. In Parallels Desktop 5.0 it is replace by a tool called Parallels Mounter. You don’t start it directly from your Applications folder, but you can select it from the Open With… list after you’ve right-clicked the VM Harddisk in Finder.
As I couldn’t find this information myself via Google, I hope this post will help anybody in search for Paralells Explorer.

Citrix SA Client for Mac OSX

Edward — Tue, 30 Mar 2010 11:14:25 +0000

Some time ago for a specific client I needed to connect to some protected infrastructure using some proprietary Citrix client. The firewall protecting the infrastructure only allowed access via VPN technology as implemented in the Citrix SA Client. At the time I couldn’t find a Mac OSX client, and the Administrator of the firewall protected environment also told me that no such software was available. So I ended up using parallels with a windows OS and running the client on that platform. Today I had some serious connection problems from windows to the aforementioned firewall, the connection would drop and reestablish every 15 seconds, not workable. I suspect there is something wrong with the parallels network driver within windows in combination with the Airport wireless network I’m using since a couple of days.
This let me to search for the Citrix SA Client once more, and guess what; I found it! Installed like a charm, and now Remote Desktop-ing to the servers from OSX. I hate it when I need specific software for setting up a VPN, but I love it when it works like a charm.

Snow Leopard with Ruby 1.9 and Rails 2.3.5

Edward — Thu, 24 Dec 2009 09:39:44 +0000

I’m working my way through “Agile Web Development with Rails – Third Edition” and the latest version of the PickAxe “Programming Ruby – Third Edition” books of the Pragmatic Programmers.
As Snow Leopard is my OS I need to update the default shipped Ruby and Rails versions to get to Ruby 1.9 and Rails on top of that.

I’ve been installing and uninstalling multiple things before finally settling on my ultimate recipe for installing the correct Ruby version and Gems:
(Within Terminal and already running the latest version of macports )

sudo port install ruby19 +nosuffix
sudo port install sqlite3
sudo gem update --system
sudo gem install sqlite3-ruby
sudo gem install rails

Great Visual Diff/Merge tool for OSX

Edward — Tue, 08 Dec 2009 10:12:34 +0000

Back when my primary dev-environment was Microsoft I would use the open-source tool WinMerge for all my Diff/Merge needs. Great tool, good performance, does the job.
Now that I’ve switched to the Mac I had to find a new visual Diff/Merge tool, and I want it cheap, or better free
Searches in the past didn’t turn up any satisfying results, but I think I’ve found the tool to do the job. Sourcegear, a company I knew from the past for their Vault product, which is a compelling replacement of Visual SourceSafe, has been so kind to distribute their Diff/Merge tool as a standalone and free cross-platform tool.
Downloaded, used it for comparing and merging FAST indexprofile files (which are plain XML), loving it.
Oh, I’m not affiliated to Sourcegear in any way, just like their Diff/Merge tool on OSX.