Mac OS X 10.4.2 (#10): FireWire drives refusing to unmount, solutions; Mail.app 2.0.2 password/send solutions; more

FireWire drives refusing to unmount -- solutions We continue to cover an issue where FireWire drives refuse to unmount -- or are very slow to do so -- under Mac OS X 10.4.2

Though the causes for this issue are potentially many, there are two primary conflicts that have afflicted the majority of users:

Turn off Norton AntiVirus "Auto-Protect" In some cases, the "Auto-Protect" component of Norton AntiVirus (NAV) can prevent FireWire drives, and potentially other devices, from properly unmounting. The solution is to either use the "Disable Auto-Protect" option within Norton AntiVirus' preferences, or remove the utility entirely.

Uninstall instructions for Norton Anti-Virus are as follows:

• Drag the Norton AntiVirus (OS X) folder (located in the Applications folder) to the Trash.
• Open your user Library preferences directory (~/Library/Preferences) and remove the Norton Application Aliases folder.
• Empty the trash

Disable Spotlight In some cases, Spotlight's indexing of mounted volumes can interfere with their ability to properly unmount.

To temporarily kill Spotlight's active processes, you can simply use the Activity Monitor (located in Applications/Utilities) to end the "mds" and "mdimport" processes.

Alternatively, you can open the Terminal (located in Applications/Utilities) and use the following process:

• Type top -u and find the process ID (PID) number (located in the first column) of the mds process
• Type sudo kill -9 PID (the PID number you found in the first step)

The mds process will launch immediately again, but you may now be able to successfully unmount your drives.

If not, you may want to try disabling Spotlight indexing for specific volumes, or turning Spotlight off completely as discussed in our Mac OS X 10.4.x (Tiger) special report.

Mail.app 2.0.2 -- solutions for getting passwords accepted, sending We continue to cover an issue where users of certain ISPs (particularly Comcast) are repeatedly asked for their password when using Mail.app 2.0.2 (included with Mac OS X 10.4.2). We've now identified a few potential solutions to this issue:

Use MD5 Challenge-Response Some users have reported that switching password authentication to MD5 Challenge-Response, using port 465, and turning on SSL (secure socket layer) for problematic e-mail accounts resolves the persistent password requests.

These settings are found in the "Accounts" pane of Mail.app's Preferences, after clicking the "Server Settings:" button.

Removing extraneous ":" from username, server field MacFixIt reader Ita Vellek reports that Mail.app 2.0.2 inexplicably added a colon (:) to the server and username entry fields in the applications Account preferences. Removing the colon, in his case, resolved the issue.

Ita writes:

"I have experienced the same inability to send Comcast mail as did my daughter. I've remedied this problem by starting Mail.app > Preferences > Account Information > Outgoing Mail Server. On both of these computers some update or other seems to have added a ':' plus the user name. Click server settings, top line type in server address with out the : and name. Then under authentication select "None." Now no problems."

Use Port 25 without authentication In the Server Settings section of the Account Preferences pane, you may want to try using port 25 with no authentication. For some users, this has resolved issues with sending mail -- and of course, you will not be prompted for a password via this route.

Eudora causing potential sleep problems One MacFixIt reader reports that Eudora was interfering with his Mac OS X 10.4.2 system's ability to properly sleep. Turning off all Eudora plug-ins resolved the issue.

The reader writes:

"I have found a fix for my problem of 10.4 not going into deep sleep from the Energy Saver settings when Eudora (6.2.3) is active. I have found several other Tiger users on various forums with the same problem so I am posting this fix. I have had this problem starting with 10.4 and it has continued through 10.4.2.

"Navigate to the Eudora app, select it, and then go to File/Get Info. Down towards the bottom of the Eudora Info panel there is a small triangle for Plug-ins. Click on it and you will see many plug-ins with check boxes next to them. I unchecked all of them except Eudora Icons 6.0. My system will now sleep from the energy saver settings. I have not experimented with turning back on the Plug-ins 1 at a time to see which ones were causing the problem because I have not noticed any change in Eudora functionality that I use."

Feedback? Late-breakers@macfixit.com.

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