[BKMaggert]

I realize that 10.3.3 has fixed some issues with mounting remote volumes on the sidebar, but it has disabled something very important.

Aliases to remote network items no longer work. I get an "original item could not be found" dialog now on all my aliases. I've tried making new ones, but they still don't connect you to the 'remote server.'

This is a feature that has worked since Mac OS 7.0.0 thru 10.3.2. Why was this feature removed? It's going to throw my whole office into disarray. (And I'm sure many others.) Do we now have to teach all employees to *manually* connect each time?'

Is there something I'm missing to make this work again? Surely this can't be permanently disabled.

[Terri]

They still work for me.

Logs right in from the alias without even a dialog, seems to finally store my user id and password properly again.

[mspalacios]

Stopped working for me back in 10.3.2... so not a 'new' issue.

[tooki]

I'm with Terri.

I just made aliases to my servers, and (since I'd saved the passwords in the Keychain) it just re-connected and opened right up without even pestering me for the password, as earlier versions of OS X did.

tooki

[wallaper]

That happens to me once in a while on panther and jag.
A restart fixes it every time.

Wallaper

[Graymalkin]

I always had that problem in 10.3.2 but only with Samba shares, AFP and NFS shares were no problem. After I finally got 10.3.3 downloaded I decided to double click one of my aliases to see if the problem had been fixed. As far as I can tell for me the problem has been fixed.

[jock]

Works for me, no changes since 10.3.2

[slider]

Networking works better for me in general since the update. I for one and glad to see it.

[Millennium]

It bothers me that even though many people complain about networking, few people actually do anything about it. Yes, there is a part of this that it is the user's responsibility to do: namely, to gather as much information as possible about your network, and send it to Apple. Posting it here would also be a good idea, so that setups can be compared.

Why is this? The simple truth is that these bugs being found only come up in some very rare situation, and no one knows exactly what that situation is yet. Apple has apparently not been able to reproduce the problem in their labs. If they can't get it to happen themselves, then there is no way to fix it, because they have no way of seeing exactly what is going on in the machines on the network. Even if they could do that without a duplicate setup, they would have no way of knowing when the bug was fixed, because they have no network to test on.

Let's fix this. Those of you who are having this problem, post your network setups here. We can hunt through all of the information and try to find the common thread -and there has to be one- that exists in all of your networks. There may be more than one common thread; if this happens, then at least we will have significantly narrowed the list of suspects.

For each person who posts, we'll need the following information. It may seem like a lot of info; that's because it is a lot of info. You can get most of the information from System Profiler ("Apple System Profiler" for 10.2 and under), but not all of it. I will provide some sample information about my own home network, as an example.

NETWORK INFORMATION:

• How do you connect to the Internet? Do you use a modem, DSL, cable, satellite, or some other means? I connect via cable modem.
• Is your network completely wired, completely wireless, or a mix of the two? My network is mixed.
• If your network is wireless, do you use an Apple AirPort Base Station (if so, what kind?), some other kind of access point, or some software solution? How is it connected to the Internet? I have an Apple AirPort Extreme Base Station, connected to my cable modem via Ethernet.
• Does your base station use NAT (For AirPort Base Stations, this means that the "Distribute IP Addresses" in the AirPort Admin Utility is checked) or not? My network uses NAT.
• Are there only Macs on the network, or do you have other types of machines on it as well? My network has two Macs and one PC
• Do you use a network printer? If so, what model is it, and does it hook into a computer, the Base Station, or something else? [i]Yes, Canon S630, plugged directly into the Base Station)

COMPUTER INFORMATION (all of this information will be needed for ALL of the computers on the network; I will list only one of my machines to keep this short):

• What is the computer's name on the network? This is probably not strictly needed for debugging purposes, but is useful to help us remember which machine is which. My example machine is named Majel
• What model is the computer? Power Macintosh G5
• How much RAM does it have? Have you ever upgraded the machine's RAM (apart from what Apple installed; if you got more RAM as a package deal from anyone other than Apple then it counts as an upgrage)? 512 megs, never upgraded
• What operating system is installed? Panther 10.3.3
• Do you have any extra PCI cards (or replacement AGP cards) installed? No
• How does the machine connect to the network? If wireless, what type of card is used? Onboard Ethernet, directly into my Base Station.
• Have you used some third-party tool such as Broadband Optimizer to fiddle with the low-level network settings? I have used Broadband Optimizer on this machine

This, if nothing else, is a start. If we get more people posting information like this, we may be able to wade through it and figure out exactly where the bug is. Once we know that, we can send it into Apple with an actual hope of getting it fixed, and we may even be able to discover a workaround in the meantime.

[Roy Boy]

work great on mine. I have a 1 month old 15" PB on a all windozes network and 10.3.3 fixed the problems i was having conecting. all is well for me.

[Simon]

I have never experienced many network problems with Panther, actually I've had far less than what some people reported here.

But, there is one nasty samba bug that hasn't disappeared here even with the newest 10.3.3 update. From time to time, when I'm connected to one of our Linux file servers through samba, I can't disconnect the mount. The Finder tells me that it is in use and I should quit programs before unmounting the volume. Well, even if there is nothing more being used on that partition, there are no programs other than the Finder running, I will still get that message. Best of all, I even get it if I log out and log back in. The only way to get rid of the samba mount is to reboot. No way.

Here's my info according to Milleniums debug list:


NETWORK INFORMATION:

• How do you connect to the Internet? Do you use a modem, DSL, cable, satellite, or some other means? I connect via employer's T3.
• Is your network completely wired, completely wireless, or a mix of the two? My network is wired. 100BaseT Ethernet. DHCP server hands out IPs within our local range.
• Are there only Macs on the network, or do you have other types of machines on it as well? My network has several dozen Macs and hundreds of PCs running Win NT, 2000, XP as well as all kinds of UNIX flavors including Linux.
• Do you use a network printer? If so, what model is it, and does it hook into a computer, the Base Station, or something else? Yes, several PS laser printers.

COMPUTER INFORMATION (all of this information will be needed for ALL of the computers on the network; I will list only one of my machines to keep this short):

• What model is the computer? PowerBook G4, 12", 1GHz and an old P4, 1.6GHz FujitsuSiemens Linux (RedHat with kernel 2.2.20) server running Samba 2.0.5a.
• How much RAM does it have? Have you ever upgraded the machine's RAM (apart from what Apple installed; if you got more RAM as a package deal from anyone other than Apple then it counts as an upgrage)? 768 megs, 512 upgraded from 256
• What operating system is installed? Panther 10.3.3
• Do you have any extra PCI cards (or replacement AGP cards) installed? No
• How does the machine connect to the network? If wireless, what type of card is used? Onboard Ethernet
• Have you used some third-party tool such as Broadband Optimizer to fiddle with the low-level network settings? Never.

[ChrisF]

Originally posted by Simon:
What model is the computer? [i]PowerBook G4, 12", 1GHz and an old P4, 1.6GHz FujitsuSiemens Linux (RedHat with kernel 2.2.20) server running Samba 2.0.5a.

Samba 2.0.5a is an ancient version. There have been a lot of security and other improvements between then and Samba 2.2.8 which is the current 2.x version. I'd suggest you consider upgrading.
Chris

[Simon]

Originally posted by ChrisF:
Samba 2.0.5a is an ancient version. There have been a lot of security and other improvements between then and Samba 2.2.8 which is the current 2.x version. I'd suggest you consider upgrading.
Chris

I would really like to and I have suggested this to the admin, but he's an old stubborn guy that has his personal Linux distribution and never changes anything unless you point a gun to his head.

He claims that he can't run the newer Samba versions with his old RedHat 6 and that newer RedHat versions would break some low-level stuff that we need. I don't know if that's true, but I also don't know if that is really causing the trouble. If Panther's the problem, I will not be able to get him to do anything... But, of course I just don't know for sure who's to blame.

[chris v]

Up until now, I've been able to connect with the win 2K boxes on my little LAN through the sidebar Network icon. Now, I get the "Alias could not be opened because the original item was not found" since 10.3.3.

I'm a windows idiot, and don't know where to even find the IP address on a Win 2K box. I don't want to learn, I want it to "Just Work," like it has for the last year-and-a-half. (Don't rag me, I WILL learn, I'm just not happy about it this morning.)

edit: I can get to the Win 2K boxes using smbclient in the terminal-- it's just the aliases that seem to be broken.

CV

[SMacTech]

Originally posted by chris v:
Up until now, I've been able to connect with the win 2K boxes on my little LAN through the sidebar Network icon. Now, I get the "Alias could not be opened because the original item was not found" since 10.3.3.

CV

You should see the IP address when using findsmb in terminal. Then connect to it again and recreate the aliases you need. It will look like shown below.

IP ADDR NETBIOS NAME WORKGROUP/OS/VERSION
---------------------------------------------------------------------
10.0.0.2 ODO [xxxx.COM] [Windows 5.0] [Windows 2000 LAN Manager]
10.0.0.3 DAX *[xxxx.COM] [Windows 5.0] [Windows 2000 LAN Manager]
10.0.0.12 AMANDA [xxxx.COM] [Windows NT 4.0] [NT LAN Manager 4.0]
10.0.0.16 MILES [xxxx.COM] [Windows 5.0] [Windows 2000 LAN Manager]

[chris v]

Originally posted by SMacTech:
You should see the IP address when using findsmb in terminal. Then connect to it again and recreate the aliases you need. It will look like shown below.

IP ADDR NETBIOS NAME WORKGROUP/OS/VERSION
---------------------------------------------------------------------
10.0.0.2 ODO [xxxx.COM] [Windows 5.0] [Windows 2000 LAN Manager]
10.0.0.3 DAX *[xxxx.COM] [Windows 5.0] [Windows 2000 LAN Manager]
10.0.0.12 AMANDA [xxxx.COM] [Windows NT 4.0] [NT LAN Manager 4.0]
10.0.0.16 MILES [xxxx.COM] [Windows 5.0] [Windows 2000 LAN Manager]

This is why I love MacNN.

Thanks.

CV

[peterwynne]

I have the same problem as mentioned above.
I found this in Apple's discussion boards it may help you - although hasn't been the solution in my case : Windows "Original Item Cannot be Found" Fix

NETWORK INFORMATION:


How do you connect to the Internet? ADSL through ethernet router

Is your network completely wired, completely wireless, or a mix of the two? 100BaseT Ethernet between router + 2 PCs - then Airport Extreme to PB. DHCP server on router.

Are there only Macs on the network, or do you have other types of machines on it as well? My network is 2 W2k machines and 1 PB12"

Do you use a network printer? HP DJ990 - networked through W2k machine - works well.


COMPUTER INFORMATION

What model is the computer? PowerBook G4, 12", 1GHz - 1800AMD PC running a clean install of W2k.

How much RAM does it have? PB has 768MB

What operating system is installed? Panther 10.3.3

Do you have any extra PCI cards (or replacement AGP cards) installed? No

How does the machine connect to the network? If wireless, what type of card is used? Airport Extreme

Have you used some third-party tool such as Broadband Optimizer to fiddle with the low-level network settings? Never.



The above link mentions the following:

Shared folder's name must be under 8 characters. [have checked]
You can't share a whole drive on its own - best to share individual folders. [have checked]
Norton AntiVirus can cause problems with sharing. I've done a clean W2k install to irradicate this possibility. [have checked]

After all this - I'm still getting the 'Original item could not be found' problem. Buuuut, it's only happening on 1 of the 2 W2k machines. I've tried to find any differences in the 2 PCs - but I cannot see any - they are very basic setups [both in their hardware - and installed software - basic [but uptodate - copies of Windows 2k] and a couple of simple apps.

Anyone else got any further with this issue ?

[SMacTech]

You need to connect to the server again and recreate the aliases to fix this issue. After doing that you should have no problems.

[peterwynne]

Originally posted by SMacTech:
You need to connect to the server again and recreate the aliases to fix this issue. After doing that you should have no problems.

So I connect to server smb://ServerName/ShareName/ - how do I recreate the aliases?

Sorry - I'm new to OS X - switcher

Thanks for your help!

Peter.

[SMacTech]

If you have the Network icons showing on your desktop, you can control-click or right click and select Create Aliases. The Finder preferences allow you to control what appears on the desktop.
You can also drag the icon to your Finder toolbar which doesn't create an alias, but will connect with a single click.
Aliases can also be put in your user account's start-up items so they mount when you log in.

[peterwynne]

If I do 'findsmb' in terminal I get a list of the machines - I then use Go >> Connect to Server - entering SMB://10.0.1.4/Share/ - but this returns "SMB could not be found" [or something similar (sorry not at mac at the moment)].

Still getting Item could not be found when I click on the icon in the network folder. Am I doing something completely wrong?

[SMacTech]

Using caps in the connect to server with SMB:// won't work for me. I must use smb:// or I get connection failed, no response from server.