Problem with File Services for Mac

Hi.

We have a small network consisting of about 15-20 clients
and devices. We were using SBS 2K until this weekend when
I did an upgrade (Actually I did a clean install because
I wanted to change some things around.) Anyways, 3 of our
clients are mac in the art department. They connect to 2
shares on the PC server with SFM installed, Graphics and
Graphics18. With SBS 2K, I was able to mount these shares
on startup. I don't remember how I did it though because
when I first tried it it told me I couldn't mount those
during startup, but I got it to work. I need them mounted
at startup because all our fonts are on those disks and
we're using Adobe Type Manager Deluxe. If they're not
mounted, ATM takes FOREVER to startup and gives me many
errors. My issue is that now on SBS 2003, I can't get
them to mount at startup. I'm desperate to get this to
work so my graphics department can get back to work. Is
there a way to make this happen or a way around it? Even
if I have to use 3rd party programs I'm open to any and
all suggestions I can get. Thank you so much for any
responses.


Paul Carrero

On 2/2/04 9:04 PM, in article 91d601c3ea02$7fd78210$(E-Mail Removed), "Paul"
<(E-Mail Removed)> wrote:

> Hi.
>
> We have a small network consisting of about 15-20 clients
> and devices. We were using SBS 2K until this weekend when
> I did an upgrade (Actually I did a clean install because
> I wanted to change some things around.) Anyways, 3 of our
> clients are mac in the art department. They connect to 2
> shares on the PC server with SFM installed, Graphics and
> Graphics18. With SBS 2K, I was able to mount these shares
> on startup. I don't remember how I did it though because
> when I first tried it it told me I couldn't mount those
> during startup, but I got it to work. I need them mounted
> at startup because all our fonts are on those disks and
> we're using Adobe Type Manager Deluxe. If they're not
> mounted, ATM takes FOREVER to startup and gives me many
> errors. My issue is that now on SBS 2003, I can't get
> them to mount at startup. I'm desperate to get this to
> work so my graphics department can get back to work. Is
> there a way to make this happen or a way around it? Even
> if I have to use 3rd party programs I'm open to any and
> all suggestions I can get. Thank you so much for any
> responses.

Hi Paul!

I would suggest not opening fonts from the server in the first place. This
may be convenient in the conventional sense, but fonts aren't conventional
files.

What I did for our department, since I didn't have a font management server
solution such as Suitcase server, was to create a disk image on the Macs
using the Disk Utility. I cleaned all the fonts and put them into this
read-only image and then placed this image on every Mac with an alias in the
Startup Items folder.

By making the disk image read-only, I avoided corrupt fonts and also
controlled font versions. Additionally, if the server ever became
unavailable, I wouldn't experience the same problem that ATM has when it
can't load its font sets.

If you absolutely need your server to mount at startup, you should be able
to do this by logging in to the server using the Chooser and then selecting
the checkbox to the right of each volume that needs to mount. You might try
clearing out the Servers folder in the System Folder of each Mac first. This
usually contain many aliases to server volumes and can get bloated.

Hope this helps! bill
--
William M. Smith
(Microsoft Interop MVP)
A great resource for Mac OS X deployment
http://www.macosxlabs.org