Reply to: Mac Woes

[Peoplesoft bloke]

Finally got appleworks 6 running on the new(er) machine by deleting it and reinstalling from CD on the old iBook, then upgrading it on there and moving to macbook and upgrading on there. Thanks to all for help and suggestions. Unfortunately can't turn Time Machine as it seems she's on 10.4 os X.

[NickFitz]

No - I cannae change the permissions on a CDR I've already burned - although I could copy the files I guess - but why would they have the wrong permissions anyway?

They wouldn't, and if they did, it wouldn't matter. As John Gruber explains in the article I linked to above, it's just a bit of voodoo

Insofar as the "Run Disk Utility and Fix Permissions" incantation does anything at all, it only affects system files; it has nothing to do with user data.

[Peoplesoft bloke]

Assume you've done the normal things like repairing permissions?

No - I cannae change the permissions on a CDR I've already burned - although I could copy the files I guess - but why would they have the wrong permissions anyway?

[NickFitz]

Assume you've done the normal things like repairing permissions?

waving a voodoo chicken over the keyboard

[interested]

Assume you've done the normal things like repairing permissions?

[Peoplesoft bloke]

And in the future, get her to turn Time Machine on...

Thanks, will do.

[Peoplesoft bloke]

One thing that springs to mind is the question of how you are copying the Appleworks documents from the older Mac to the newer.

I believe (although I may be wrong) that Appleworks on Mac OS 9 (and below) used the resource fork of the file, which (as you probably know) is a separate stream associated with the file containing important metadata and so forth (similar to alternate streams in NTFS).

If you're transferring by copying to a USB stick or external drive, that will probably be formatted using FAT or FAT32, which will only copy the data fork and lose the resource fork, meaning the file can't be opened.

If this is the case, try attaching a USB drive and formatting it on the old Mac (HFS, I believe, is the necessary format) and copy the files to that using the Finder, then copy them off there onto the new machine. This should ensure that the resource forks also get copied.

We backed up the files to cd some time ago from the macbook(OSX). iWork wont read them, but if I load the CD into the old iMac, Appleworks reads them no problem. They were all created using Appleworks 6 - nothing earlier so according to the Apple support stuff I have found, iWork should load them, but it doesn't.

[Moscow Mule]

actually, it's not the time machine i have problems with but the time capsule. thing worked perfectly for about 4 months and then fell over in a hissy fit of backup drive permission failure. tried erasing and starting again using the various solutions proposed by apple support but still no good. that was a month ago - i must try and see if there are any new fixes...... not ideal spending all that company money on a flash backup if that dang thing won't work. i'm using big usb's in the meantime. which reminds me - i must do a backup,

Never used the Time Capsule thingie, but I do use Time machine on a firewire drive & this to backup to a network drive. Seems to work so far...

[DS23]

actually, it's not the time machine i have problems with but the time capsule. thing worked perfectly for about 4 months and then fell over in a hissy fit of backup drive permission failure. tried erasing and starting again using the various solutions proposed by apple support but still no good. that was a month ago - i must try and see if there are any new fixes...... not ideal spending all that company money on a flash backup if that dang thing won't work. i'm using big usb's in the meantime. which reminds me - i must do a backup, i must do a backup, i must do a backup, i must do a backup, i must do a backup, i must do a backup, i must do a backup, i must do a backup, i must do a backup, i must do a backup, i must do a backup, i must do a backup, i must do a backup, i must do a backup, i must do a backup, i must do a backup, i must do a backup, i must do a backup, i must do a backup, i must do a backup, i must do a backup, i must do a backup, i must do a backup, i must do a backup, i must do a backup, i must do a backup, i must do a backup, i must do a backup, i must do a backup, i must do a backup, i must do a backup, i must do a backup, i must do a backup, i must do a backup, i must do a backup, i must do a backup, i must do a backup, i must do a backup, i must do a backup, i must do a backup, i must do a backup, i must do a backup, i must do a backup, i must do a backup, i must do a backup, i must do a backup, i must do a backup, i must do a backup, i must do a backup, i must do a backup, i must do a backup, i must do a backup, i must do a backup, i must do a backup, i must do a backup, i must do a backup, i must do a backup, i must do a backup, i must do a backup, i must do a backup, i must do a backup, i must do a backup, i must do a backup, i must do a backup, i must do a backup, i must do a backup, i must do a backup, i must do a backup, i must do a backup, i must do a backup, i must do a backup, i must do a backup, i must do a backup, i must do a backup, i must do a backup,

[DS23]

i wish i could get my time machine to work.

[Cowboy Bob]

And in the future, get her to turn Time Machine on...

[NickFitz]

One thing that springs to mind is the question of how you are copying the Appleworks documents from the older Mac to the newer.

I believe (although I may be wrong) that Appleworks on Mac OS 9 (and below) used the resource fork of the file, which (as you probably know) is a separate stream associated with the file containing important metadata and so forth (similar to alternate streams in NTFS).

If you're transferring by copying to a USB stick or external drive, that will probably be formatted using FAT or FAT32, which will only copy the data fork and lose the resource fork, meaning the file can't be opened.

If this is the case, try attaching a USB drive and formatting it on the old Mac (HFS, I believe, is the necessary format) and copy the files to that using the Finder, then copy them off there onto the new machine. This should ensure that the resource forks also get copied.

There are a few command line utilities on OS X that deal with resource forks correctly; you might be able to use one of them to examine a file and see if this is the case, before starting the above process. Google can probably help you with this more than I can - I no longer have an OS 9 machine to experiment with

[Peoplesoft bloke]

Can I (tentatively) suggest you have a look at this -

http://www.panergy-software.com/prod.../features.html

It claims it will open Appleworks files.

If not working on said files is an option, maybe this would be the most expedient rather than trying to screw around with appleworks, especially since you've got a version of iWork now...

Many thanks - top idea - looks just the job, I'll download it and see if it will help.

[darmstadt]

I know diddley squat about Macs but isn't OSx a Unix based OS so do you have the attributes for the files you wish to open set correctly, perhaps some security settings have changed with the re-install?

[Moscow Mule]

Can I (tentatively) suggest you have a look at this -

http://www.panergy-software.com/prod.../features.html

It claims it will open Appleworks files.

If not working on said files is an option, maybe this would be the most expedient rather than trying to screw around with appleworks, especially since you've got a version of iWork now...

If you don't fancy that, what happens when you run software update on the ibook?

Getting updates immediately (Mac OS X 10.2.8 or earlier)
From the Apple menu, choose System Preferences.
From the View menu, choose Software Update.
Click Update Now.
In the Software Update window, select the items you want to install, then click Install.
Enter an administrator account name and password.
After the update is complete, restart the computer if a restart is required.
You can repeat these steps to see if more updates are now available. Because some software updates are prerequisites for others, you may need to repeat these steps several times to complete the software update sequence.