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TICKET ARCHIVE -> Navigating/troubleshooting in Mac OS 9

cpgallagher - Jan 27, 2008 - 6:57 pm

Hi

I am helping my son's elementary school with a computer problem. I can get around in Windows machines but have no experience with MACS. THe school has a 10 year old server running Mac OS 9 that manages the network and they want to move to a new server that they just bought. I don't know the model of the old server, or even how to find it out.

In addition, a reading application on this server became corrupted and I am trying to zip and copy the files off to put on my PC to send to the vendor's tech support to problem solve.

I have never touched a Macintosh computer before now and I don't even know the basic commands. There seems to be some performance problems on the server, and it freezes every time I try to go into the menu at the top of the server.

I would be very grateful for help on any of the following questions:

1) Could you point me to where i could find a quick start guides on navigating in Mac OS 9 (We don't seem to have a user manual any more)?

2) How do I "zip" files to reduce the size? I have a flash drive that I think I can use with the server. What is the command to "copy"?

3) How do I troubleshoot the performance problem? Every time I try to get into the Mac OS 9 Administrator, the server freezes and all I can do is press the reboot button. In fact, it seems to really hate me touching the menu at the top of the screen and freezes every time I try to click on it.

4) Finally how do I start migrating users off this server onto the nice new server they have?

Any help would be most appreciated - we are trying to get the reading application program going on this server for the kids because their test scores will enable them to participate in an icecream social.

Thanks
Caroline

ScottW - Jan 28, 2008 - 7:14 am

Caroline,

Welcome to Macosx.com. WOW, OS 9. Geeezz... even as a big Mac user back in the day when OS 9 was what I lived and breath, going back to it today requires some archive processing in the memory banks.

None-the-less, I am here to help. If I stumble on something, forgive me, as I am not referencing anything first hand, no machines I have run OS 9, although I have one that runs OS 7, but it is really old.

A popular software program called "Stuff It" was used on Mac OS 9 as the primary compression utility, although there where others. My bet is on there somewhere is Stuffit Expander (which expands .sit files) and Stuffit Compressor (or just Stuffit). Take a look around, you will find these possible in a Utilities folder of some sort. This application is very much like ZIP in that it can compress a number of files/folders into a single compressed file. The typical usage of it is to drag and drop the files/folders onto the compression application and it will automatically compress them. If you can't find this, there are other compression engines, I'd have to look. ZIP compression does exist, but you'd need to find the application to do it. If Stuffit is not already installed, then I can help you find a solution.

To copy files, just drag and drop. If you are copying to another drive, just drag it from one window to the next window where you want it to go. Same as you would in Windows or Mac OS X.

Hard to tell honestly. How much disk space is left on the drive the system folder or boot drive? Typically, when Mac's (or PC's) for that matter get really low on disk space, they tend to be drop performance significantly. Freeing up space (via compression or otherwise) is what you'd want to do. I'd go into the control panel and look at the memory and virtual memory settings. Virtual memory uses hard drive space for memory and sometimes turning this off and rebooting will help you out, although it could mean that there is not enough ram to run everything, so you might have to turn it back on.

What system are the moving too and which OS? Surely not OS 9. Can you tell me what they are migrating too, and what type of "users" are setup in OS 9 you want to migrate. Are these users which are network users? What applications/server do they use on it for which they are still running this older OS?

Well, with each passing day, legacy information on navigating OS 9 is less and less online. Here is a site that provides 8.5-9 basic information. If that is not helpful, searching google for "OS 9 Tutorial" should get you in the right direction.

Of course, respond to this response for more help from me, or even posting in our forums would be helpful as well. There are still people out there using OS 9 on a regular basis for legacy applications so their first hand knowledge would be more in their "RAM" than mine.

Scott

cpgallagher - Jan 28, 2008 - 3:48 pm

Scott - thank you for your extremely useful tips! The site info that you sent is so helpful and I feel more comfortable navigating. Yes, we are planning to ditch OS 9 and get current as soon as we can rescue our reading files from this old server.

I think you are right, we are running out of disk space. I noticed that on the windows I opened, we only had about 128MB storage space left. I emailed the school and told the teachers to start deleting off their files that they don't need to free up space as soon as possible. Do we just need to reboot in order to get the saved space back or do we have to defrag or something ?

I have asked the principal for information about their new server. It was purchased at the end of last year so I expect it is probably pretty current. I will send the info to you shortly.

Sorry for dumb question, but there are two buttons on the server. I always press the left one to reboot. Should I press that or the right hand side one? I was told to press the left hand one to reboot. I suspect that we should be using a menu to reboot, but when the server is frozen we can't.

I now see where the control panel info is, and on Friday I will look into it to get the server specifications. I read about how you have to 'give memory to programs'. Is it possible that they have given away 'too much memory' to the applications running and this is the reason that the server is running slow? How do you tell if this is the case?

All the users are networked users. We will need to move these users to the new server. I know that we will need to migrate their files off and so on, but is there more to it than setting up the new user and moving the files? I am really not a techie!

Thanks again for everything - you have helped much more than you know!

Caroline

ScottW - Jan 29, 2008 - 5:09 pm

Caroline,

Glad I can be of help. The left and right buttons are reboot and the other brings up a box and I vaguely remember typing something in there, it was called the debug menu I believe. But, you don't need to do that. It is a "hard reboot" when you press the buttons on the front and that is fine if your system is locked up.

If you can tell me in what "area" the users are and where you mange them, I can see if there is an easy migration path for you to move to OS X.

There are defrag utilities for OS 9, I know Norton Utilities had it. If that is installed on that computer, you can run that. In OS X you don't need to defrag.

Scott

cpgallagher - Jan 29, 2008 - 8:15 pm

Scott,

the users are networked users-could you explain what you mean by "area" users are in? I am not sure I understand. I can see their accounts on the old server when I go into one of the menus there.

I'll look into defrag utility. Is it called 'Defrag'?

I also found some notes about a bug in OS 9 about not deleting off temp files when an application crashed. I could see some temp files hanging around in the folder with the Accelerated Reader application files. Where else would I look for temp files that I can delete? Are there any other places where i can identify old files we don't need?

My initial plan for migration is very basic: It is to copy the documents for each user off the old server onto my flash drive (I have a 2GB), setup the new user(s) on the new Mac OS X and then copy the files from my flash drive onto the new server. There is probably more to it than that, but I am not sure. Also, we don't have any backup devices attached to teh old server. I am not sure if there are any attached to the new server - another matter to look into!

I go in to the school on Friday and should have more information then.

Is there a way we can help compensate you for the time you have taken to help us? I'm not sure how the site works but it hasn't asked me for any money so I was just wondering.
Thanks again,
Caroline