UPDATE: It appears Parallels changes the group to accessibility and this procedure does NOT work.

Parallels 6 had been running great for quite a while but at some point, restarting Parallels would prompt me to re-enter the activation key; the key in the dialog was from the previous version. For whatever reason, it would not stick.

I realized today that the group permissions on the preferences files for Parallels was different than the others; the files had a group of “accessibility.” To fix it, I changed the group back to what was on most of the other files; your group name most likely will be different.

$ cd /Users/rick/Library/Preferences
$ ls -l com.parallels.*
-rw-------  1 rick  accessibility  21059 Dec 26 19:59 com.parallels.Parallels Desktop Statistics.plist
-rw-------  1 rick  accessibility  23972 Dec 26 19:59 com.parallels.Parallels Desktop.plist
-rw-------  1 rick  accessibility   5430 Dec 26 19:59 com.parallels.Parallels.plist
-rw-------  1 rick  accessibility   1642 Dec  7 16:36 com.parallels.desktop.console.plist
-rw-------  1 rick  rick             905 Feb 11  2009 com.parallels.desktop.plist
-rw-------  1 rick  rick             505 Feb 11  2009 com.parallels.imagetool.plist
$ chgrp rick com.parallels.*

I was successfully able to install MySQL 5.5 on OS X 10.6 according to the following steps.

Download MySQL Community Server 5.5.8 for Mac OS X. I chose to download Mac OS X ver. 10.6 (x86, 64-bit), DMG Archive. The DMG archive is nice as it has a startup package that installs a MySQL control panel (although it dosn’t work from the start without tweaking).

Open the DMG archive and execute the mysql-5.5.8-osx10.6-x86_64.pkg. I had no issues with installation although the ReadMe.txt file suggests that problems may occur.

After successful installation, execute the MySQLStartupItem.pkg. This will install the MySQL Startup startup items. This should complete successfully.

Next, install the MySQL preferences pane by double-clicking the MySQL.prefPane item in the mounted drive. This will install the MySQL preferences item, although MySQL cannot yet be started through it. First, the mysql.server file must be edited by hand to specify the location of the base directory.

At a terminal, cd to /usr/local/mysql/support-files and edit mysql.server (with root privileges, using sudo). Around line 46 locate the lines that read:

basedir=
datadir=

and change them to read

basedir=/usr/local/mysql
datadir=/usr/local/mysql/data

Save the file. MySQL can now be started from the preferences pane. Without it, you will see a message in the Console that reads:

mysql.server: line 256: my_print_defaults: command not found

To enable rails 3 to use mysql, install the mysql2 gem. Next, you’ll need to set the DYLD_LIBRARY_PATH to include the MySQL library directory. To do this, edit your ~/.bash_profile and include the following:

export DYLD_LIBRARY_PATH=/usr/local/mysql/lib:$DYLD_LIBRARY_PATH

The rails server will now successfully start. Without the inclusion of the directory in the DYLD_LIBRARY_PATH, a message about not finding the library would appear and the server would abort.

The error message, from the mysql2 gem, states (in part):

Library not loaded: libmysqlclient.16.dylib (LoadError)

Upon reboot, MySQL will fail to start with a dialog stating:

Insecure Startup Item disabled.
“/Library/StartupItems/MySQLCOM” has not been started because it does not have the proper security settings.

The group permissions need to be changed to wheel on the MySQL directory by executing the following command in the terminal:

sudo chown -R root:wheel /Library/StartupItems/MySQLCOM

This will prevents the startup error dialog. Finally, ensure the Automatically Start MySQL Server on Startup is checked in the MySQL preferences window.

Good luck!

Without prior indication, when starting iTunes on OSX 10.6 .4 I suddenly received the error dialog stating “This copy of iTunes has expired.” And Software Update states that all of the software is up to date.

The simple resolution is that a beta version of iTunes 9.2 that I installed did expire (so much for reading the fine print) and a re-installation of iTunes is required. iTunes can be downloaded on the apple site as a dmg file. When opened and the volume is mounted, run the iTunes.mpkg installer to restore the computer to a happy equilibrium. Fortunately, the beta version of iTunes does not need to be removed prior to installation.

The disk on my MacBook Pro was going bad – S.M.A.R.T. reported imminent failure. I had Apple swap it out for a new one and I restored the new disk with my backup from Time Machine. Unfortunately, with the archaic way Adobe licenses its products, it was the only software I had purchased that did not work after the restore. After two hours online with Adobe support, I was not able to get much further.

After much trial and error, I determined the only way to get the software activated was to fully remove Photoshop CS2 and reinstall. I followed this technote from Adobe to manually uninstall Photoshop CS2, but it was incomplete. I had to remove a license file and only then could it activate successfully. In addition to the files Adobe asks you to remove, the real magic file that needs removal is /Library/Preferences/Adobe Systems/Product licenses_120/B2B86000.dat. After removing that, along with all the others, I was able to get CS2 installed on my machine and successfully activated.

It appears as though the sound is configured correctly on the host machines, but no sound comes from the client when a sound is made. This works when using a Windows Remote Desktop Client but not on the Mac.  It turns out that the audio redirection feature of RDC does not work; you will need a hotfix to resolve the issue. After installing the hotfix and rebooting the server computer, sound now plays on the client!

To obtain the hotfix, navigate to http://support.microsoft.com/kb/973062 and click on View and request hotfix downloads. Click through the license agreement and select the hotfix that corresponds to your operating system. Fill out your email address and submit. Soon you will receive a zipped install executable that will install the fix for this issue. Upon rebooting and reconnecting to the host machine, you will hear sound!