29.03.2011

At our small school we have an iMac with Snow Leopard Server X.6.5 and six iMacs for the students with Network User Accounts served by the server iMac.

We have installed Tipp10 on each of the iMacs. Using a local account on the iMacs the program works. In order for the students to be able to return to their individual saved level of progress they have achieved through practice, we would need them to be able to use the program in their individual network accounts.

This however does not work.
Once Tipp10 is launched in a network account, the program shows an alert with error 404 (update abort). Once passed by clicking the OK button, another error appears error 404 (No lessons exist).

Upon first launch a folder "Tipp10" is created in the users network home at Library/Application Support/ wherein a file "tipp10v2.db" is created.
The user has both read and write permissions to the folder and file therein.

The "tipp10v2.db" file is only 13.312 KB in size in comparison to the same file in a local account after first launch (8.1 MB).

In the Tipp10 preferences we have changed the location of the Tipp10 folder to a share on the server, this has had no effect.

We copied the "tipp10v2.db" 8.1 MB file from a working local iMac account and placed it in the proper location in the network user account, without improving the situation.

Could you please give us some advice how we could get this to work?

All help is greatly appreciated!

Kind regards
Gideon Zimmermann

I heard about that problem before and I tried to keep in contact to solve the problem, but I never heard again from the user.

So hope perhaps we both can find the problem, because I don't have a Mac Server here to test Tipp10 in a network.

When Tipp10 starts the first time it tries to create a new database (tipp10v2.db with 13KB) in the user home directory. After that it fills the database with current lesson and keyboard data (tipp10v2.db becomes 8MB). This way it can also update existing databases of previous versions.

The path to the database is stored in the user's preferences and you can change it in the General Settings.

First it seems that in your case Tipp10 can not understand the path to the database file. What I'm wondering is that the creation of the database file seems to work. Why can Tipp10 create a database but can not connect to it? I think here we have to find the problem.

If there is no path to the database given (first launch) I detect the path to the user's home with internal functions and that path I save to the preferences. After that I always take the path from the preferences, not from the internal functions. Can you tell me how a path to the database in your network looks like?

If we don't find a solution I could create a "special version" which outputs the two paths (internal function and that one from the preferences). Perhaps we can see some differences then.

Thanks for your response and offer to help.

a
Does Tipp10 fill the database with current lessons
and keyboard data from data stored inside the app
or from the internet?

b
Could it be that the program has difficulty finding
itself?

c
If so could we make Tipp10 import the lessons and keyboards
from a specific location?
e. g. Server’s Applications folder or a share on the server.

d
Why will Tipp10 not work if I place a “complete”
8 MB database from a local user into the network users
folder. Shouldn’t this database have the lessons and keyboards
in place and ready to use?


Tipp10 allows me to set the database path to another
location in the program preferences and also creates
the “base” database 13 KB.
It then obviously stalls at the second step of filling
the database with the lessons and keyboards.
I can confirm this as the preferences for keyboards
are empty and there are no lessons available.


The student iMacs have got the Tipp10 program
installed locally, just their user profile is stored in
their account that resides on the server. When they
launch a program they always launch it from the local
iMac’s Application folder.

The Application path on the local iMacs is:
OS X/Applications/Tipp10.app
(“OS X” is the client iMac Volume Label)

The path to the network homes on the server is:
Server OS/NetHomes/
(“Server OS” is the server Volume Label)
e. g. If a student is called “U30” his Tipp10 database
would be at:
Server OS/NetHomes/U30/Library/Application Support/Tipp10/tipp10v2.db

a)
The data is stored inside the app. The connection to the internet is only to detect new software versions and to give a notice if so.

b)
I use a special qt command to find "myself". It works good but I know of problems with OpenSuse Linux where the program could not find itself. It only works if you start the software by command line (shell) not by clicking on the binary file with your mouse. Perhaps you can try to start Tipp10 woth the Mac OS Terminal?

c)
At the moment the data is stored (compiled) inside the binary file and not in the package. So you can choose another source without recompiling the whole software.

d)
That's why I think the problem is the path to the users' home folder and not the path to the software itself. You are in right, normally (you can try it local) it's possible to give the user a ready prepared database for Tipp10.

So please try the following steps:
- Run Tipp10 by the Terminal
- Run Tipp10 by the Terminal and transfer a path to the user's database (see http://www.tipp10.com/doc/html/en/content/features.html#database)

I'm really wondering why the database is getting created while the connection does not work.