DAVE and Leopard

Just discovered another upgrade “gotcha” with Leopard related to Thursby Software’s “DAVE.”

DAVE has been around a long time. Before OSX it allowed Macs to access windows shares and networks with the same credentials/etc. as windows machines. Even when OSX allowed access to Windows file servers and limited Active Directory compatibility Dave and AdmitMac were a much more complete solution, especially when it came to home folders, authenticating to a domain, etc.

Of course, such an extensive system hack intercepting all of the Windows-related CIFS/SMB traffic is likely to break on a major system upgrade, and sure enough it did. If you remembered to remove this before upgrading to Leopard, or first installed the update to version 7, then all was well, and you could still access Windows servers. if you didn’t, your computer would fail to connect.

Fixing this isn’t that tricky, but is non-obvious unless you are paying for an upgrade. In all cases the best way to remove DAVE is to use the removal package (DAVE is one of the few programs on a Mac that really needs an uninstaller). The issue is that the same incompatibility that prevents DAVE from working prevents the version 6 or earlier uninstaller to shut down the services. In this case, download the trial for version 7 (don’t even bother filling out hte form, just download it), and run the uninstaller for version 7. After a restart, your Mac will get back onto SMB servers as reliably as ever.

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