Mac Mini Server For Kontakt Libraries

09.04.2020
71 Comments

Though it's not easy to hack into or break through a Mac's security, it is possible, especially if someone accidentally installs malware without realizing it. If your Mac is running slow or you're seeing unusual advertisements within your web browser you might have accidentally installed malware at some point. Don't worry. It happens to the best of us (not me, of course). There are things you can do without having to burn it all down.

The problem: Mac malware in the Library folder

Mac Mini Server For Kontakt Libraries Pc

Jan 04, 2018  Hello Apple Community, My question is, is it possible to turn an old Mac Mini (2012) into an Apple Photos home server? My idea is to sign into the Mac Mini with my Apple ID, and place the Photos library in the: Machintosh HD / Users / Shared folder with Read/Write permissions for everyone as well as enable File Sharing. Aug 10, 2013  Mac Mini (Dual 2.7GHz, 16GB RAM) running 64-Bit VE Pro Server. In it are loaded 3 VEP instances (Strings, Perc, Kbd). Each Instance has Multiple instances of Kontakt 5 and G-Player. They are running a combination of Cinesamples, Cinematic Strings (in Kontakt 5), and Giga sounds (GPlayer). Computer-based audio servers were not really a thing in 2003; audiophiles tend to be early adopters of unproven technology at great expense, but a brand-new Apple Mac Mini backed-up with an external LaCie hard drive became our CD player. ITunes was not the only game in town as far as CD ripping was concerned, but if you lived in the Apple. Dec 24, 2012  Where are my Kontakt Libraries. Discussion in 'Technical Issues - KOMPLETE (Archive)' started by chazperx, Aug 22, 2012. Chazperx NI Product Owner. Messages: 20. I have Komplete 7 on my MAC, and everything works perfectly. I purchased Kontakt Elements for Windows 7, and I can't seem to find the libraries. Th is what I have tried.

Serenity Caldwell writing for iMore in 2017:

Jul 30, 2019  While malware on the Mac is rare, it does crop up, as we've demonstrated. Having the right tools to get rid of malware can be an important part of keeping your Mac safe and secure. There are a number of tools that you can choose from, including popular programs like BitDefender and Kaspersky, that will help you keep malware from infecting your Mac.

My father-in-law's MacBook Pro had been running into curious slowdowns for a two-year-old laptop and he kept on seeing weird sites taking over his Safari and Firefox search bars. It was clear to me that his browser had been hijacked.

We got rid of the browser hijack pretty quickly — I suggest using Cella's excellent how-to if you ever run into a browser hijack yourself — but the slowdowns were more curious. Upon further investigation, I found a couple of self-professed 'Mac security programs' that popped up, demanding money to 'clean your Mac from junk'.

Spoiler: These programs were the junk. And worst of all, they'd seemingly added a bunch of nonsense files into this computer's Library folder, with random folder names like 'prestidigitation' and 'beeswax'.

Now, I want to preface: I'd never seen an attack like this on a Mac before in my life, and finding this kind of full-Mac hijack is very rare. It's likely that he accidentally installed one of these 'security' programs (or had it installed), which spiraled out of control from there.

These hijacks didn't appear to be able to do much beyond slow down his machine with endless failed attempts to run a program — the process didn't have admin permissions, so it couldn't execute a thing from the library. But because they were there, they were constantly crashing aspects of his Mac. I knew I had a malfunctioning laptop on my hands, so I turned to my age-old troubleshooting checklist.

Kontakt Drum Libraries

How to fix a corrupted Mac

If you're working on a computer that has slowed down beyond reasonable aging or is otherwise acting beyond the pale, here are my favorite tactics you can take to try and restore it to its former glory.

Update the system software

This is almost always the first thing I do when troubleshooting Macs: Chances are, the user hasn't installed a security update or other software updates that may be slowing their computer to a crawl.

Mac
  1. Click on the Apple menu icon in the upper left corner of the screen.

  2. Select App Store to open the Mac App Store.

    Follow this step-by-step guide to access hidden user library files in macOS when troubleshooting problems with your Adobe products. Can't see user library files in macOS X 10.7 and later. All Apps User Guide Select. After you open the Library folder, you can drag the Library icon from the top of that window to the Dock. How to view the /Library folder in Mavericks and Yosemite. To tweak something using a tip from Macworld, Mac OS X. You simply opened your Home folder to access the Library folder. Can't access library folder mac yosemite. If you don’t know why you’re doing something to a folder (other than the Fonts folder) in your Home/Library, don’t do it. There must be some good reasons why Apple decided to hide the Home/Library folder in OS X Yosemite, and one of them is to keep you from accidentally screwing something up. Jan 12, 2020  You can access the hidden Library folder without using Terminal, which has the side effect of revealing every hidden file on your Mac. This method will only make the Library folder visible, and only for as long as you keep the Finder window for the Library folder open.

  3. Click on the Updates tab at the top of the Mac App Store window.

  4. Install all relevant updates. (You may need the Apple ID and password for the machine.)

If the computer is running macOS Sierra, you can avoid having to do this troubleshooting step in the future by turning on Automatic Install in System Preferences, which can automatically download newly available updates in the background, and install them overnight.

  1. With the Mac App Store open, click on App Store in the upper left corner of the Menu bar.

  2. Click on Preferences.

  3. Under Automatically check for updates, check the following boxes:

    • Download newly available updates in the background
    • Install app updates
    • Install macOS updates
    • Install system data files and security updates

Check the disk for errors

If software updates aren't doing the trick, the next thing to check is the hard drive itself. With Apple's Internet Recovery partition, fixing a cranky drive is an easy process.

  1. Restart your Mac.
  2. During reboot, hold down Command-R until it starts up.
  3. Once rebooted, you should be in the Internet Recovery Partition. Select Disk Utility.

  4. Click Continue.

  5. In Disk Utility, click on the First Aid button,

  6. Click on Run to execute.

Your Mac will then run a cursory check on its hard drive to determine if there's anything wrong — and if so — if it can fix it.

Reset the NVRAM/PRAM and SMC

If neither app updates nor disk repair are helping, sometimes a good cache flush can get your Mac running just a bit more smoothly.

To reset the NVRAM (or, on older Macs, PRAM), reboot the Mac and hold down the following keyboard command during startup for at least twenty seconds: Command-Option-P-R.

Open the Finder. You just need to do the following:. The third Library folder is located in System and contains all the files that MacOS needs to run.Spot the difference – compare these three Library folders:How to view a Mac’s /Library folderThere are three ways to easily view your hidden /Library/ folder.In macOS Sierra Apple added a Finder keyboard shortcut that makes it possible to quickly show all the hidden files and folders. Show library folder mac os.

After you reset your NVRAM, you may be required to reconfigure some system settings (like sound and time zones), which are stored in that cache.

An SMC reset is a bit more complicated, and Apple recommends it only after all other troubleshooting avenues have been exhausted.

If you're using a laptop:

  1. Shut down your Mac and plug it in.
  2. Restart the computer by pressing the Power button along with the keyboard command Shift-Control-Option.
  3. Release these keys, then just press the Power button to properly start your computer.

If you're using a desktop:

  1. Shut down your Mac.
  2. Unplug it and wait for at least 20 seconds.
  3. Plug the Mac back in and wait 5-10 seconds.
  4. Restart your Mac with the Power button.

Partition your disk (or erase it)

After exhausting all other avenues, this was the solution we came across to properly fix the broken laptop. The hard drive had been so corrupted by these 'security' programs that there was nothing I could do to fix it. When Safari launched over the login screen after a reboot, I knew my usual fixes wouldn't work: It was time to bring out the big guns.

In most cases, I'd grab an external drive, back up the corrupted disk, then wipe the drive clean with the Internet Recovery partition and start over. But there were a couple of reasons that wouldn't work here:

  • We were on vacation, and lacking any sort of external media.
  • With a semi-corrupted disk, we couldn't just clone the user folder and restore the new disk from a backup — we'd have to do a clean install, which meant moving files over one by one. If we'd missed something and moved all the old files to an external drive, my father-in-law would have had to carry it everywhere just in case.

Given that this laptop had a 500GB hard drive — only 40GB of which was being used — I had an alternate idea: I'd partition the drive, again using Internet Recovery, and install macOS Sierra on the new partition. Essentially, it would be a 'clean' new computer for my father-in-law to work on, but all the original data would still exist on the old partition in case he needed to grab a file.

Note: In order to partition your drive, you'll need enough free space on your drive to do so — at least 30GB. If you're light on space, you may want to back up your corrupted disk to a USB drive, instead.

How to create a partition on your Mac

  1. Open Finder from your dock.

  2. Select Applications.

  3. Scroll down and open the Utilities folder.

  4. Double-click to open Disk Utility.

  5. Select your hard drive in the Disk Utility window. It will be the first drive on the list. It might be named 'Fusion,' or 'Macintosh HD.'
  6. Click on the Partition tab.

  7. Click the plus (+) button.

  8. Change the size of the partition you wish to use by dragging the resize controls. The used space is represented in blue.
  9. Name the new partition.

  10. Click apply.

Disk Utility will check the disk and make changes. This will take several minutes.Disk Utility will then make the changes. After that's completed, quit Disk Utility to return to the main Internet Recovery menu.

  1. Click on Reinstall macOS.

  2. Click Continue.

  3. Click Agree to agree to Apple's licensing agreements.
  4. Choose the New Mac hard drive as the disk you'd like to install macOS onto.

  5. Press Install.

  6. The Mac will download a fresh copy of your operating system from the App Store and will install it. The speed of this process entirely depends on your Mac's connection speed to the Internet. You can wait an hour or longer on a slower connection.
  7. Your Mac will restart automatically into the new partition once the software has downloaded, then the installation of the operating system will continue.

After you finish setting up the new hard drive, it's time to move your files over. Because of the way partitioning works, your old hard drive partition will show up next to your currently-active partition, just like an external drive; you can then grab any files you need from it.

  1. Launch a Finder window.
  2. Under Devices in the sidebar, locate your original Macintosh HD.

  3. Copy any files you'd like to keep from your old hard drive to the new machine.

Note: If you want to copy over applications, I'd strongly suggest redownloading them from the source — the Mac App Store or the company's website — rather than trying to copy them over from the old partition.

From here, you can follow instructions for setting a Mac up from scratch when it comes to installing and customizing anything else.

I generally recommend keeping the old drive partition around for at least a few months in case you or your family member forgets to move something over; after that period, however, you can easily delete the old partition and move to the new partition full time.

Consider additional anti-malware protection

While malware on the Mac is rare, it does crop up, as we've demonstrated. Having the right tools to get rid of malware can be an important part of keeping your Mac safe and secure. There are a number of tools that you can choose from, including popular programs like BitDefender and Kaspersky, that will help you keep malware from infecting your Mac.

Questions?

Do you have any must-follow troubleshooting steps? Let us know in the comments.

Updated July 2019: Added a sub-section regarding anti-malware protection.

Serenity Caldwell contributed to an earlier version of this guide.

Keep yourself secure on the web

Main

We may earn a commission for purchases using our links. Learn more.

Money well spent

You can save the cost of a MacBook Air by buying a refurbished Mac Pro

Apple's current Mac Pro is now available as a refurbished item from apple.com.

You can upgrade to the latest version of macOS Server from the Mac App Store. If you move to a new server, you can use Migration Assistant to copy server data and settings from your previous server.

Before you begin

If your Mac uses macOS High Sierra or later, you can upgrade and migrate to the latest version of macOS Server. If your Mac uses an older version of macOS, learn how to upgrade your macOS Server from an earlier version.

Before you upgrade or migrate your macOS Server, follow these steps:

  • Back up your server with Time Machine or another method.
  • Make sure that your target server meets the system requirements for the latest versions of both macOS and macOS Server.
  • If your server relies on DNS or DHCP servers, make sure that they're turned on during the process.
  • Prepare for changes to macOS Server.

Upgrade your server

  1. If your Mac uses macOS High Sierra or macOS Mojave, check for any updates for macOS. If an update is available for macOS, click Update.
  2. Check for any updates to macOS Server. If an update is available, click Update, then open the Server app and finish the setup.
  3. Upgrade to the latest version of macOS Catalina.
  4. Update to the latest version of macOS Server.
  5. Open the Server app and finish the setup.

Migrate your server

You can use any one of the following sources to migrate your server data to another Mac:

  • A server connected in target disk mode
  • A local hard drive or volume
  • A Time Machine backup

You can’t use a network connection from a Time Machine backup or an existing server to migrate a macOS Server.

How to migrate your server data

  1. Install the latest version of macOS on the target system.
  2. Connect your previous server or backup device to the target system.
  3. Open Migration Assistant on the target system and follow the onscreen instructions.
  4. Select your previous server or backup device when prompted.
  5. When the migration finishes, install macOS Server.
  6. Open the macOS Server app and complete the setup.

Update your server on macOS Sierra and earlier

If your Mac uses macOS Sierra 10.12 or earlier, you have to delete the macOS Server app and your server data before you can update to the latest version. Here's how:

  1. Move the Server app and /Library/Server to the Trash, which deletes your Server data.
  2. Upgrade to the latest version of macOS and download the latest version of macOS Server.
  3. Launch the Server app and complete the setup.