• Unbind client from LDAP directory
• Open Terminal
  • sudo rm -rf /Library/Managed\ Preferences
  • sudo rm -rf /Library/Preferences/com.apple.TimeMachine.plist
  • Close Terminal
• Open Keychain Access (in your Applications/Utilities folder)
  • Go to the System keychain and remove the entry for your backup server.
  • Close Keychain Access
• Reboot client
• Login and run all Software Updates.
• Reboot client and continue running Software Update until all updates have been installed, even ones you don’t think you need (i.e. Camera Raw, etc.)
• Once all updates have been installed, re-join client to the LDAP directory and reboot client.
• Login as the user you want time machine to run backups as, start backups.

First, here is our setup. We have an Open Directory database in place that identifies which machines are supposed to perform Time Machine backups and where they backup to. Our OD setup does not require (nor allow) client computers to authenticate as that always caused us nothing but problems. For the most part, they work fine. Occasionally we run into problems. Up to this one machine if we just reset their TM settings it would start working again. This time, we got the -5023 error and were stuck.

IP 10.0.2.82 - - [11/Dec/2009:17:51:13 0100] “Login daniel” -5023 0 0
IP 10.0.2.82 - - [11/Dec/2009:17:51:13 0100] “Logout daniel” -5023 0 0

Here is what we finally did to resolve it.

First stage: Unbind the client from Open Directory. From Workgroup Manager also delete the client computer record. Then reboot the client computer. Setup TM manually to point somewhere, it doesn’t really matter where. Then turn TM back off so it un-configures itself.

Second stage: Reboot the client again and change the local user’s password to anything else (say “password1″). Change the directory password as well to “password1″. Open up Keychain Access and delete any time machine passwords or other passwords referencing your TM backup server. Now go to the TM backup server and delete the old backup image.

Third stage: Reboot the client again and re-join the domain - you must do this as the user who is to be backed up (i.e. the primary user). From Workgroup Manager put the computer back in and re-add it to the TM backup group. Reboot again to pick up the Managed Client settings.  Login again as the primary user and attempt to start a TM backup.  It should work at this point. Cancel the backup.

Fourth stage: Perform the first 3 stages again, only this time change the password back to the original password and don’t cancel the backup. Everything should work.  It may work to change the password back to the original immediately after changing it to “password1″, but I can’t be sure. Feel free to try it.

Once the next big piece is up I can turn the power back on and be able to work on the all the plaster and painting in the evenings.

Unfortunately I think this means that we will not have my garage door back up by tomorrow. We will see how it goes. I would like to get the door up since I will probably not be able to work on the garage again until next weekend. It gets dark at 6:30 so there is really no time before it gets dark to work.

Because of all the random modifications we had to do we didnt get very far today. That and Matt (pictured below dancing to Josie and the Pussycats) forgot he had to drive down the hill today. We only got about one and a half walls hung but we did get all the braces we needed installed so it should go a lot faster tomorrow.

I so look forward to hanging 10 foot drywall sheets on the ceiling tomorrow.

We went through 54 battes of insulation. I dont think we let a single scrap of it go to waste. Unfortunately we were about 8 feet too short. I decided I didnt care enough to go down and buy another 64 feet just to fill one small section for my garage. But we got it all done and have a good game plan for hanging the drywall tomorrow.

My garage has been a disaster since I bought my house 2 years ago. It is a separated garage from the main house. It was also never properly sealed so there a massive gaps everywhere. It is so bad that when I parked my bicycle for the first time in there, 2 days later it was covered with cobwebs. I decided that meant it was time to cleanup.

I spent all day Wednesday cleaning it out and sealing all the cracks and holes. I went through a total of 4 tubes of silicon seal and 6 cans of spray foam. I got the garage door all separated and ready to remove. While not that heavy, being 18 feet wide I decided not to risk the wind catching it and destroying a panel by taking it down myself. I called my friend Matt who lives down the street. He said he would be happy to help, so I did a little insulation and then called it a night.

It seems like it would be easy to setup a single High Desert Church project with categories for the small projects. If we do a large project, like CCCEVs check-in system, it can become its own project. But now I have everything in version control and can easily take feature requests or even have people submit ready-to-go patches that I simply merge into trunk.

Personally, I find the bug tracker and discussion section to be of the most use. Having a spot to populate bugs that I have found that I need to fix at somepoint, or bugs that others have found, is a valuable resource to development.

The one question I think I need to answer before I propose this is to find out if a project can be private so it either does not show up, or at least limits who has access to get to the code. I can see some cases where somebody might not want the code available but wants to take advantage of discussions and bug reports. I will have to ask Nick or Jason about that since they already have a project up.

We spent about 3 hours getting Windows, SQL Server, etc. installed; taking snapshots along the way.  We saw that VMWare had a max virtual HDD size of 2TB, so we made a 2TB disk for Arena, might as well, right?  Wrong.  Found out when we went to install Arena (and I went to see how many snapshots we had taken) that none of the snapshots took.  Apparently VMWare needs to resize a disk image to add 4GB per 256GB when it first starts doing snapshots, which would have pushed the drive to over 2TB.  oops.

So at around 2pm we started again with a 1TB volume and made sure the snapshots took.  Windows Server 2008 went in fine (except for the fact we had to wait for it to download SP2).  SQL Server 2008 also installed fine.  Though both are far more complex than their predecessors to get through the installers.  We installed all the “extra” software again with no problems. Arena also went just fine.  We installed 2009.1.100.  Imported our data. Re-ran 2009.1.100 (we had been running the beta before).  Did a quick test and then patched to 2009.1.200.

From there it was another few hours of fixing virtual host names, redirects, SSL certs, etc.  We finally finished and went home. We have a few things left to test, but we are up and running.  We still need to add all the kiosk printers (ugh) and then test them all, but we don’t expect any trouble from that.

It is a glorious day. The birds are singing, the sun is shining, and the wind is blowing at about 500 miles per hour. Ah, the desert… But check-in is over for the three big services, and it was a resounding success.

All told we checked in 1,174 kids over three services so far this weekend (1,328 for the entire weekend). The largest service was 527 kids. We used sixteen check-in stations, which is overkill, but made the whole process go very smoothly and quickly. By our testing calculations on Friday we can checkin roughly 100 kids per kiosk per service, not counting the task of entering families. Using the planned twelve stations (the extra four are for other classes and other parts of the campus, but we are using them for the first month or so) we should be able to checkin up to about 1000 kids per service, roughly twice what we have at our biggest service.

This photo was taken at 10:59. Last week at this time there were six lines out the door of people waiting to get to the check-in tables. This week there were a lot of people, but the lines moved quickly and most were able to checkin in under a minute. The longest amount of time was spent explaining to parents what the three labels were for. Next week, those explanations won’t be necessary, making this even faster still.

We found one bug in a beta arena dll (created for us to code around a microsoft problem) that we will get resolved this week. We also found that parents don’t believe that their kids are ever “new walkers” they are only “confident walkers” so we will remove the new walker designation… Still, the weekend was a resounding success.

Thanks again to Jason and Nick at CCCEV for writing the checkin module we are using, and to the guys at Arena for creating a database powerful enough for us to pull this off. Also props to the volunteers around HDC that helped us pull this off. From the kids team to the IT volunteers to the guys that helped us fit out the kiosks, build the back panels for power and ethernet, fill the bottoms with sand etc. it was a true team effort.

Time to celebrate!

Joel (Original post here)