TOPIC This article covers the main points of interest for the preferences located in the At Ease Items WG folder for At Ease 4.x and 5.x. The list is not meant to be complete or exhaustive, but is merely meant as a guide for troubleshooting. DISCUSSION The best method for troubleshooting the At Ease Items WG folder is to treat the entire folder as one item and restore from backup when you encounter problems that the consistency check cannot fix. However, if you don't have a reliable backup, or if you need an interim fix, this information will help you troubleshoot the items kept on the server. At Ease Preferences Contains general preference information used by the At Ease server. This includes: - Log settings used when printing log out in Admin app - All the password settings (e.g., minimum length of password) - If the user should logout if idle for n minutes - For panels, names of the applications and document panels (or if user name should be used) - For older versions (before 4.0), the administrator password and clue was in here - Welcome Message, Login Message, and Workgroup Message - The information for mounting the At Ease server (for 4.0 and later) - If sublaunching is allowed - If all local CD-ROMs are allowed - If disk security should be turned on - If At Ease is saving internet preferences (for 4.0 or later) - Saved userID of the last administrator that logged in - Various database flags for how often database is checked, etc - Login dialog preferred (i.e., does At Ease list all users or prompt users to type in their name) - If shift key can disable the extensions - For older versions (before 4.0), the name of the administrator - For older versions (before 4.0), if At Ease is actually on ; after 4.0 it's always on In version 4.0, this file also contained the server and printer settings (as described below). In 5.0, this information was moved into its own file. Users.data A database of all the users. Each user is assigned an userID. Any workgroups that a user belongs to is stored here, saved by their workgroupID. Users.idx An index file to the user database. This file, if trashed, will recreate itself. Note that when a consistency check is run, it deletes this file and recreates it. It does not contain any "data". This file should only be trashed if At Ease can't seem to find users. Setups.data A database of all the workgroups. Each workgroup is assigned a unique workgroup ID. If a workgroup contains users, their userIDs will be stored here. Notice that there is a redundant mapping here of workgroups to users, and users to workgroups. This was done for speed. Setups.idx The index file for the setups database. The same rules apply here as they did with the Users.idx file. At Ease Cache A localized cache of administrators, workgroup administrators, and users. By having this cache, it's faster to get a list (for example) of all the administrators. The administrators cache is stored in memory when At Ease runs. CDROM Preferences If the admin is limiting local CD-ROMs, then this file contains: - Name of the CD-ROM - Volume modification date of CD-ROM (to uniquely identify this CD-ROM) - List of items on CD-ROM that are visible - stored as a resource for each CD-ROM Application Preferences Contains information only if the Application Preferences dialog has been used to change preference information for a particular application. At Ease Log Contains the log entries for At Ease. Each workstation keeps its own log, so the file on the server is a compilation of all the logs, updated when a workstation is in the login dialog. New in 5.0 Setup Preferences New in 5.0, this information was (for 4.0) stored in the At Ease Preferences file. It contains information for: - Any server or desktop printer in the Access to Volumes/Printers list will be stored here. Each item also may contain setting information in it (like whether or not print quotas are active, or the login information used on a certain server volume) -Special Folder information is also kept here. At Ease Web Preferences Contains the options you see in the Web Preferences dialog At Ease eMate Preferences Contains the preferences you see in the eMate Preferences dialog Troubleshooting Notes: - Removing the .idx files shouldn't cause any problems, but running the consistency check will perform the same function. - The two .data files are the At Ease databases. If you remove the .data files, you've effectively trashed that particular database. If one database becomes corrupt, you can remove just that one .data file, since each database is for the most part standalone. If you do this, be sure to run a consistency check. There would be no links between the databases left, of course. - Many of the other preferences files are standalone as well, so you could remove one of them, and only affect the particular function that that pref file handles. The main exception is the Setup Preferences, which has a link of the Access to Volumes/Printers and Special Folders information to any workgroup that is using the information. Note: Pre-5.0, removing the At Ease Preferences file will cause volume/printer information to be lost as well since it was stored here. |
||||||
| Document Information | |
| Product Area: | Apple Software |
| Category: | At Ease |
| Sub Category: | At Ease 4.0 For Workgroups; At Ease 5.0 For Workgroups |
| Keywords: | katease |
Copyright © 2000 Apple Computer, Inc. All rights reserved.