Kibbles & Bytes Blog

I thought I would take a minute to write about the whole Mac vs. Windows vs. Linux debate.

Everyone has their own personal preference, but essentially I see the divide between operating systems like the divide between different flavors of ice cream. At this point, most of the mainstream OSs, (Windows, OS X, Ubuntu, etc.) all have the same basic functionality that most users need. The things that make them different __(on the user side)__ are compatibility with software/hardware and the differences in user interface layout. Having used both Mac OS, Windows 7 and Ubuntu Linux all for quite some time now, I’ve found that most of the time I’m really just using Chrome and maybe iTunes on a day-to-day basis and only having to deal with more complicated software on occasion.

For a good everyday use OS, I recommend Ubuntu Linux to users who are moderately tech-savvy and want more customization than Mac OS or Windows provide. Ubuntu is also completely free and, of course, fully open source. The issues I have run into with Linux are mainly in software compatibility. For example, Microsoft Silverlight (the framework that makes Netflix streaming possible) is not supported on any systems other than Mac OS and Windows (XP, Vista, 7). I also am unable to run the newest version of iTunes on Ubuntu (WINE, the windows emulation software for Linux, only supports up to version 8 of iTunes at this time. If you have an older iPod and want to sync it with a Linux machine, RythmBox is a great alternative program that will let you manage your media library. If you have an iPhone, or even an iPad for that matter, you’re just out of luck.)

Linux is great. It’s extremely customizable (down to every last part of the user interface and installed software). It gives you great core functionality, wonderful performance and ease of use. However, the limitations of software available make Linux difficult to use as a main operating system.

Windows, as we all know, is very clunky. It’s based on a 20-year-old system that has huge security risks and fundamental issues in this day and age. Imagine everyone using touch-screen abacuses in 20 years, and someone using a solar-powered calculator from 1990. It was great for the time, but the software needs to be really stripped down and rewritten from the ground up for Windows to improve at all.

Mac OS X is very tempting for a lot of users. It has the compatibility of Windows (Silverlight, iTunes, Photoshop, etc.) and the security of a Linux OS (mainly stemming from Apple’s constant security updates and the fact that OS X has a smaller market share). Unfortunately Mac OS doesn’t really give you much customization (although it’s pretty much made for everyone), and there are still many pieces of software only available for Windows; however I find that if you are willing to pay a little more and get a Mac, you will appreciate the ease of use and simplicity of the system.

A few weeks ago a customer checked in an iMac with symptoms of increasingly slow response and occasional kernel panics. The initial evaluation turned up the probable cause pretty quickly–the hard drive was completely full. This can affect performance in a couple of significant ways. First off, computers use free hard drive space for what is called virtual memory–essentially using the drive as extra RAM, and lots of it. When your drive gets full or close to it, that drive space cannot be used for virtual memory anymore and performance suffers significantly. Another effect of a full drive can be software and directory corruption due to the machine not being able to write changes to disk when the machine is shut down. These errors accumulate and can lead to apps not opening, lost preferences and a host of other issues including kernel panics, which this machine was experiencing.

Anyway, back to the story at hand: The usual suspects when the drive is full are pictures, music and movies. Those are the things everyone has the most of, and they take up lots of space. This customer had almost nothing on the machine, however. I changed the Finder view options to “calculate all sizes” and took a quick trip through the hard drive. With this option selected and using List view, you can find big folders pretty quickly. I saw that that his mail folder was 475GB, which was obviously why his drive was full. There was a folder inside his Mailboxes folder called Recovered Messages that had hundreds of copies of the same few messages. I tried to open one, but they were all corrupted. I deleted the messages, which freed up his drive, reinstalled his OS to clear any OS-related directory issues and observed for 24 hours to see if the problem recurred. It did not, so I figured it had to do with the message being corrupted and simply deleting and reinstalling had resolved the issue. Home went that machine, and on I went to the next repair.

A week later another machine came in with the same issue and had the same symptom of a large Recovered Messages folder filling up the drive. One machine I would consider a fluke but two raises suspicions, so I started doing some research and eventually found not only other people with the problem but fortunately a resolution as well. It turns out there is a bug in Mail somewhere that very occasionally causes Mail to keep recovering a specific message over and over until the drive is full. It seems to be only related to IMAP servers and triggered by large messages. The definition of “large” appears to mean “big enough to exceed your mail server’s message size limit,” whatever that may be. The message gets bounced back and the error causes it to be replicated over and over into the Recovered Messages folder.

The fix turns out to be very simple but involves a little command-line work in Terminal. First though, turn off your AirPort or unplug the ethernet cable–the machine must be offline while you do this or the problem will come right back. The offending message actually lives in an invisible folder and deleting it is the key to resolving this issue. So the next thing to do is to get your Mac to show you all the normally hidden files and folders.

In terminal type:

defaults write com.apple.finder AppleShowAllFiles TRUE

and hit enter.

Then type:

killall Finder

and hit enter. Now all the folders normally hidden will show up.

The next step is to navigate to:

~/Library/Mail/IMAP-username@yourmail.tld@imap.whatever.tld/.Offlinecache

Inside the offline cache folder you will find the offending message. Delete it and any other messages in there.

Hide all your hidden files again:

defaults write com.apple.finder AppleShowAllFiles FALSE

Hit enter, type:

killall Finder

and hit enter again. Now everything is back to normal. Delete ~/Library/Mail/Mailboxes/Recovered Messages and take your machine back online. All should be well.

After resolving this for the second customer, I contacted the first customer who had been slowly losing space again and got him up and running in just a few minutes.

Happy Tuesday,

This is my first time writing to all of you readers. I want to introduce myself as the new Services Manager here at Small Dog. I also want to share my awesome Christmas card picture of me and my cat with you. I know that I should have a dog, but who can resist something so soft and cuddly? Especially in that festive hat!

Ok, so the picture is not mine. I was photoshopped into it by the marketing department because I did not wear a “*Halloween costume*”:http://blog.smalldog.com/article/2011-halloween-costume-contest/. Unfortunately, I did not win any prizes for the humiliation that I suffered at their hands. But I did get a great laugh, and I hope you do as well.

I did make it out to the sock sale in Northfield. I was able to snag five pairs of socks for under $10. I pushed and shoved my way through the little old lades to get to the $1 pile. I then spent twenty minutes sifting through the pile, finding the best of the damaged socks. I wore those socks all day Sunday.

Sunday was probably the last day to go ride my motorcycle this year, so even though it was raining, I braved it to go for a ride with Small Dog’s CEO Don and his wife Grace. We had a nice ride of about 80 miles through Stowe, Morristown, Elmore and Worcester. It does get dark up here fairly early, so by 4 p.m. it was starting to get cold. But with my new socks, my toes were nice and cozy.

Thanks for reading Tech Tails. We all hope you appreciate the articles we are writing to you.

Jason
“*jasonl@smalldog.com*”:mailto:jasonl@smalldog.com