Daily Archives: Friday, 11th June 2010

Samba copy fails after upgrade to Mac OS X 10.6.3

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Ever since upgrading to Mac OS X 10.6.3 I had been unable to copy files from my MacBook to a Linux Samba share, which had previously worked flawlessly. The file copy would fail and Finder displayed the error message: “The operation can’t be completed because you don’t have permission to access some of the items” or “The Finder can’t complete the operation because some data in xxx can’t be read or written. (Error code -36)”.ErrorI found several articles suggesting solutions, the only one that eventually worked for me was to add the line “unix extensions = no” to the [global] settings of the smb.conf file on the Linux server. After a restart of the SMB processes file copying is working again.

Thanks for all the time I wasted on resolving this one Apple!

Apple AirPort trusted networks list

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I was tearing my hair out trying to understand why my MacBook repeatedly joined a WiFi network, despite my removing the SSID from the preferred networks list and deleting the AirPort network password from the System Keychain. I was attempting to force my MacBook to only associate with the 5GHz version of a WiFi network (on an Airport Extreme Base Station), but no matter what I did I would find that the MacBook occasionally reverted to associating with the original 2GHz SSID again.

The mystery was solved with the discovery that as well as the WiFi Preferred Networks list, there is a hidden trusted networks list buried deep within Mac OS X. Even if you remove a network SSID from the visible lists, your MacBook can still silently associate with previously saved networks.

Mac OS X retains WiFi network information and authentication credentials in the com.apple.airport.preferences.plist file which is located in the /Library/Preferences/SystemConfiguration folder.

To remove WiFi networks, either delete the individual networks from the KnownNetworks key using Property List Editor, or delete the file altogether and allow AirPort to rebuild it. It’s probably a good idea to turn AirPort off before editing the file.

There is an old Apple knowledge base article – AirPort: How to reset the trusted networks list – which also describes this.