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This article is the At Ease 3.0.3 Updater ReadMe file, and it contains important information about the At Ease 3.0.3 Updater. The At Ease 3.0.3 Updater updates At Ease 3.0 or At Ease for Workgroups 3.0, 3.0.1, or 3.0.2 to version 3.0.3. The changes in version 3.0.3 primarily affect non-workgroups users because previous updates have addressed many issues in the workgroups product.
DISCUSSION Contents Requirements for Updating - Version 3.0 Already Installed - Updating Some or All Workstations - Using an AppleShare Server for At Ease for Workgroups Updating Procedure - Installation Options - Files the Updater Needs to Locate - Updating From the Floppy Disk - Updating Over the Network - Using an Updated Copy of the Administration Program - New Desktop Printer Extension Changes Made in Previous Versions - Using the Lock Startup Disk Feature - System Startup Crashes While Using Open Transport - Possible Hard Disk Corruption on IDE Hard Disks When Using the Lock Startup Volume Feature - Launching Applications From Other Applications - Login Procedure - At Ease Setup Changes Clarifications - Using Kid Pix Studio (Correction to Read Me for At Ease 3.0) - CD-ROMs and At Ease - Documents Created by Approved Applications - Server Mounting in At Ease - Disk Security - At Ease and File Sharing - Maximum Number of Connected Users on an At Ease Server - Bypassing At Ease at Startup on Certain Power Macintosh Models - At Ease and RAM Doubler - At Ease and Hard Disk Toolkit (HDT) - At Ease and QuickMail Major Issues Corrected in Versions 3.0.1-3.0.3 - Users Visible After Update From Version 2.x - No Report of Damaged Preferences File at Login - Shorter Login or Logout Times on Large Systems - Documents Panel Remains Visible - Setup Application Correctly Recognizes Setups - Virex Incompatibility Corrected - Items in the Apple Menu Remain Visible - Servers Mount Correctly - Import Users Function Works Correctly - Middle-Level Administration The At Ease 3.0.3 Updater updates At Ease 3.0 or At Ease for Workgroups 3.0, 3.0.1, or 3.0.2 to version 3.0.3. The changes in version 3.0.3 primarily affect non-workgroups users because previous updates have addressed many issues in the workgroups product. At Ease for Workgroups 3.0.2 users do not need to update to version 3.0.3. All issues with the workgroups product discussed in this document were corrected in At Ease for Workgroups version 3.0.2. (The only change to version 3.0.2 in this update is the correction of a rare issue with the login dialog box: if the login dialog box shows only the user list-not the workgroups list-and the user cancels out of the dialog box, the user list may disappear.) Since this document gives information on updating both At Ease and At Ease for Workgroups, items that apply only to the workgroups product are indicated by "[WG]." Requirements for Updating Version 3.0 Already Installed You can use the Updater only on a workstation that has version 3.0 or later installed. The Updater will not run if you have an older version (2.x or earlier) of At Ease installed. If you have an earlier version of At Ease, you should first update it to version 3.0, then use the Updater. [WG] Updating Some or All Workstations The databases used by At Ease 3.0, 3.0.1, 3.0.2, and 3.0.3 are fully compatible. This means that if you are updating the workgroups version of At Ease, you can update some At Ease workstations on the network and not others. To benefit from all the enhancements in this version, however, you should update all At Ease workstations. [WG] Using an AppleShare Server for At Ease for Workgroups If your At Ease server is an AppleShare volume, all At Ease workstations on the network must have version 3.0 installed. If any workstation with an older version of At Ease tries to access the server, a message will appear reporting that the At Ease Preferences file is bad. Updating Procedure Installation Options There are two ways of updating one or more machines using At Ease: by using the Updater's floppy disk on each workstation or by installing the updated software over the network. Files the Updater Needs to Locate In most cases, the Updater attempts to locate and update the At Ease and At Ease Startup files automatically. If it cannot find either of these files, it will ask you for the location of the missing file. If you cannot find the file, you can click the Skip button to cancel the update, leaving your files untouched. If you have more than one copy of the setup program on your disk, the Updater will require that other copies be removed before the update can take place. You can have the Updater remove the other copies automatically, or you can cancel the update and remove them manually using the Finder. Some administrators remove the setup program on certain workstations. On these workstations, the Updater will ask you to locate the setup program. If you are updating the workgroups version of At Ease and cannot locate the program, click the Skip button to bypass this request. If you are updating the non-workgroups version of At Ease, it is highly recommended that you update the setup program when requested. Since the Updater will probably turn off At Ease on your workstation after it has completed the update, you will need an updated setup program in order to turn At Ease back on. Therefore, it is best not to skip the update. Updating From the Floppy Disk Follow these steps to update At Ease from the floppy disk:
2. Insert the Updater disk. 3. Double-click to open the At Ease 3.0.3 Updater application. 4. Click Begin in the opening screen. 5. If the Updater cannot find a file it needs to update, a message appears asking you to locate that file. If you cannot find the file, click Skip to cancel the update. 6. If necessary, locate any missing files and start the update again. [WG] Updating Over the Network
2. Make sure the application is locked. (To do this, select the Updater's icon, choose Get Info from the File menu, then click to put an X in the checkbox labeled "Locked.") 3. Turn off At Ease on each workstation you are updating. Tip: Before updating any workstations on the network, you may want to turn off At Ease on all machines you will be updating by using the Update Computers feature. After you have updated your At Ease machines, you can turn At Ease on using this same feature. (See the user's manual for instructions, if necessary.) 4. Mount the server volume that contains the Updater application. 6. Click Begin in the opening screen. Using an Updated Copy of the Administration Program Be sure to update the copy of At Ease Setup or At Ease Setup (Workgroups) that you use to administer At Ease to version 3.0.3. You should also remove any old copies of this program from your hard disk (or disks). New Desktop Printer Extension The Apple Extras folder on your Updater disk contains an updated version of the Desktop Printer Extension, an extension used by printer drivers for many newer models of printers. This version of the extension corrects issues that may occur when you are in the restricted Finder mode in At Ease. You need to install this extension (version 1.03 or later) only if you are using an older version of it. If the Desktop Printer Extension is not already in the Extensions folder in your System Folder, or you have a newer version of the extension, do not install it. (Installing this extension will not affect computers that do not already have it, but the extension will occupy a small amount of memory.) If you are not sure what version of the extension you have, select it and choose Get Info from the File menu. To install the extension, follow these steps: 1. Open the Apple Extras folder on the Updater disk. 2. Drag the Desktop Printer Extension icon to the System Folder on your hard disk. 3. Click OK each time a message appears. Changes Made In Previous Versions [WG] Using the Lock Startup Disk Feature A bug in version 3.0.1 prevents the Lock Startup Disk feature from working correctly. Although the feature may appear to be active (indicated by a checkmark in the box next to the feature), it may not be active, in which case users will be able to view the startup volume by starting up from a floppy disk (or another volume). After updating your computers to version 3.0.3, you should first attempt to make sure the feature is disabled, quit the administration application, and then re-enable it. Note that this feature does not work on all Macintosh computers. You should read the section "Disk Security," later in this document, to find out about the compatibility of this feature with your computer. System Startup Crashes While Using Open Transport A change to the At Ease Startup extension in this version corrects an issue with system crashes on 68K machines that have Open Transport networking enabled. (This issue may also show up on certain PowerPC machines, notably the Power Macintosh 7500.) [WG] Possible Hard Disk Corruption on IDE Hard Disks When Using the Lock Startup Volume Feature This version of At Ease prevents a possible hard disk corruption that can occur when the Lock Startup Volume feature is activated on some newer computers using an IDE (ATA) internal hard disk. These computers include the Macintosh PowerBook 190, PowerBook 2300, and PowerBook 5300, but not the Macintosh Quadra 630. If this issue occurs, the computer displays a "sad Macintosh" icon when restarted. Version 3.0.3 does not repair an already affected hard disk. If your hard disk has been corrupted, the At Ease-IDE Utility allows you to recover your hard disk. This utility is available on the Updater disk. See the At Ease-IDE Utility Read Me for additional information. [WG] sub-launching Applications From Other Applications For security, At Ease does not normally allow applications to open, or sub-launch, other applications. You can allow users to sub-launch applications in At Ease in one of two ways: (a) by installing the sub-launched application in the user's setup; or (b) by choosing the Application Preferences command from the Options menu in At Ease Setup and clicking to put an X in the checkbox labeled "Can be launched by other applications" for each sub-launched application. Version 3.0.1 provides one simple way to allow sub-launching for all applications. The User Settings dialog box (which you open by choosing User Settings from the Security menu) now contains a checkbox labeled "Always permit sub-launches." When this checkbox is selected, At Ease always allows applications to open other applications. (This setting takes precedence over any setting in the Application Preferences dialog box.) By selecting this option, an administrator avoids having to select individual applications for sub-launching. The checkbox can best be thought of as a "compatibility mode" feature that allows many applications to work better. Login Procedure To improve login speed, At Ease no longer saves panel or page information. Thus, when a user logs back in to the panels environment, she or he will always be brought to the first page of the "brown" panel. [WG] At Ease Setup Changes When At Ease Setup starts up, it now checks the internal databases. This check can take from a few seconds (when no users are logged in to the At Ease server) to almost a minute (on slow networks, when users are already logged in to At Ease). A message informs you that this check is taking place. Clarifications Using Kid Pix Studio (Correction to Read Me for At Ease 3.0) In the Read Me file for At Ease 3.0, the section "At Ease for Workgroups 3.0 and Kid Pix Studio" explains how to use At Ease 3.0 with Kid Pix Studio. The information about setting up subprograms with the Application Preferences command contains an error for the file "KPS 5." The file creator for "KPS 5" should be "Kid5," not "Kid4." Note: Due to web browser limitations, certain characters are not viewable. Therefore, in the paragraph above Kid5 and Kid4 have an "option i" rather than an "i" character. Note: To create the option i character, hold down the option key and type the letter i, then release the option key and immediately type i again. CD-ROMs and At Ease An administrator can allow only certain CD-ROM discs to be used on a workstation. This feature applies only to CD-ROM discs that are used from the CD-ROM drive of the user's computer. It does not apply to discs in CD-ROM drives that are connected to an AppleShare file server. These drives appear to At Ease as AppleShare volumes, not as CD-ROM drives. Documents Created by Approved Applications A document that is available to users may be opened if the application that created the document is on the "approved" list of applications. At Ease creates this list by searching locations to which the users of a setup have access, including the setup folder, the Apple Menu Items folder, the Control Panels folder, and the Startup Items folder. If any documents (or stationery pads) exist in those locations, At Ease assumes that the application that created them is also approved. For example, if the Apple Menu Items folder contains a SimpleText stationery pad, and users of that setup have access to "other items" in the Apple menu, those users will be able to open any SimpleText documents, no matter where the documents are located. This is true for both panels and for the restricted Finder. [WG] Server Mounting in At Ease The administrator decides whether users of a particular setup can (a) start up with the last server volumes used or (b) use the Chooser's marked startup volumes instead. At Ease permits only one of these options for a given setup. This option can be set in At Ease Setup (Workgroups) by selecting a setup and then putting an X in the checkbox labeled "Always remember the user's last-used AppleShare logins." When the checkbox is selected, any AppleShare volumes mounted at logout will be remembered by At Ease and remounted the next time the user logs in. When the checkbox is not selected, any server volumes that were set in the Chooser to connect at startup will mount with the same privileges as were set with the Chooser. Because this feature operates on a user-by-user basis, the setting must always be the same for any user who belongs to multiple setups. If a server has volumes (such as a CD-ROM drive) to which you want users to have access when they log in, you should leave the "remember" checkbox unselected and use the Chooser to set up the volumes to be mounted on each workstation. You must do this on each computer because the AppleShare information is stored in the System Folder of the workstation, not on the server volume. [WG] Disk Security The disk security feature in At Ease prevents users from starting up a workstation from a floppy disk and then accessing the startup disk. This feature was introduced in At Ease 2.0. In version 3.0, you set this feature using a checkbox labeled "Lock Startup Volume" in the User Settings dialog box. If At Ease detects that the security option cannot be used on a workstation, it dims the checkbox for this option. There are two primary reasons why the Lock Startup Volume option cannot be used: * Unknown hard disk driver If you have reformatted your startup disk with a non-Apple hard disk driver, the disk security option may not work with that driver. If the Lock Startup Volume checkbox is dimmed, please contact the driver software manufacturer to see if that disk driver is compatible with this At Ease feature. * Non-partitioned IDE drives Some Macintosh computer models use a hard drive mechanism called IDE (or ATA) for the startup disk. (Computers that use this drive type include the Power Macintosh 5200, 5300, and 6200, and the Macintosh PowerBook models 150, 190, and 5300.) The security in At Ease requires that the startup hard disk drives be partitioned. All SCSI hard drives are partitioned at the factory, and in the future the IDE drives will be partitioned. But for current Macintosh models with IDE drives that are not partitioned, the disk security will work only if the IDE drive is reformatted using a partitioned driver. One program that can partition these drives is Drive7, from Casa Blanca Works. (The IDE hard drive must be reformatted in order to partition it. You cannot update the driver on the disk.) At Ease and File Sharing Turning on file sharing on a computer using At Ease version 3.0 or 3.0.1 is not recommended. At Ease attempts to turn off file sharing when a restricted Finder user starts up. You should be sure that file sharing is turned off (by checking in the Sharing Setup control panel). [WG] Maximum Number of Connected Users on an At Ease Server Because At Ease can open up to four files on the server for each machine that is in the login screen, it is possible that some versions of AppleShare will not allow as many machines to connect as may be indicated in the AppleShare Admin File Server Preferences dialog. Version 4.2 of AppleShare should eliminate this restriction. Bypassing At Ease at Startup on Certain Power Macintosh Models Certain newer Macintosh computers using system software version 7.5.2 may allow users to bypass At Ease by holding down the Shift key when starting up. This issue has been fixed in system software version 7.5.3, but you can also prevent users from bypassing At Ease by clicking to put an X in the checkbox labeled "Don't allow shift key at startup to disable extensions" in the setup application. You may need to do this for each machine on which the issue has occurred. At Ease and RAM Doubler RAM Doubler version 1.6 is not compatible with At Ease 3.0.1. The computer may freeze when users launch applications from At Ease if RAM Doubler is installed. Apple recommends that customers contact Connectix Corporation to determine whether an updated version of RAM Doubler is available. For more information, contact Connectix at 800-950-5880 or 415-571-5100. [WG] At Ease and Hard Disk Toolkit (HDT) In rare cases, if your internal hard disk has been formatted with certain versions of the Hard Disk Toolkit (HDT), activating the Lock Startup Volume feature in At Ease for Workgroups may prevent your internal disk from starting up. If your internal hard disk has been formatted using HDT, you should back up the data on your hard disk before activating the Lock Startup Volume feature. Because all internal hard disks on computers sold by Apple are formatted using Apple software, not HDT, you will not experience this issue unless you have reformatted the internal hard disk with HDT. To determine if your internal hard disk has been reformatted with the Hard Disk Toolkit, select the hard disk, choose Get Info from the File menu, and check the Info dialog box for "<name of hard drive>, FWB." At Ease and QuickMail When a user attempts to save a file from QuickMail, he or she may be prompted to save the file in a location other than the user's documents folder. If the user clicks Cancel and then chooses Save again, the file will be saved in the user's documents folder. Major Issues Corrected in Versions 3.0.1-3.0.3 Users Visible After Update From Version 2.x After an update from version 2.x to version 3.0, users already registered in At Ease occasionally did not show up in the setup application. (The setup window showed setups, but no users.) Users should appear after the automatic update from 2.x to this version (3.0.3). No Report of Damaged Preferences File at Login On some networks (especially if workstations were not turned off periodically), a message appeared when a workstation logged in indicating that application preferences might be damaged, even though other computers on the network were working properly. Restarting the server usually cleared up this issue. The issue has been fixed in versions 3.0.1 or later. [WG] Shorter Login or Logout Times on Large Systems In server-based At Ease networks with many users, workstations took an excessively long period of time to log in or out of the system. In versions 3.0.1 and later, the login and logout times have been reduced for very large networks. Apple recommends that you use version 4.2 (or later) of AppleShare if you are encountering issues with long login or logout times. [WG] Documents Panel Remains Visible When an At Ease user was logged in, a message occasionally appeared indicating that the server had been disconnected, and the documents panel disappeared, even though the server volume had not actually been disconnected. This issue has been corrected. [WG] Setup Application Correctly Recognizes Setups The setup application occasionally interpreted one or more setups as locked, so that they could not be modified by the administrator. This issue has been corrected. Virex Incompatibility Corrected The Virex application was not compatible with At Ease 3.0. If both programs were installed, the user experienced a system crash when starting up the computer. This issue has been corrected. Items in the Apple Menu Remain Visible Occasionally some aliases in the Apple menu were deleted when a restricted Finder user returned to the login screen. This issue has been corrected. [WG] Servers Mount Correctly Server volumes selected in the Chooser occasionally could not mount when a user logged in. This issue has been corrected. Note: This feature works only if the user's setup has the "Always remember the user's last-used AppleShare logins" option turned off. See the user's manual for instructions. [WG] Import Users Function Works Correctly A number of changes were made to the "import users" function. an issue that prevented the cancellation of importing when many errors occurred has been corrected. [WG] Middle-Level Administration Middle-level administrators can now add users to setups that they own. |
| Document Information | |
| Product Area: | Apple Software |
| Category: | At Ease |
| Sub Category: | At Ease 3.0 |
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