Q: mac mavericks after sleep: every time wi-fi seems ok but browsers don't connect. Needs restart, or Wi-Fi network removal-addition in System Preferences. Please help.

A

Remove "VirusBarrier" by following the instructions on this page. If you have a different version, the procedure may be different.

Back up all data before making any changes.

B

Some of your user files (not system files) have incorrect permissions or are locked. This procedure will unlock those files and reset their ownership, permissions, and access controls to the default. If you've intentionally set special values for those attributes, they will be reverted. In that case, either stop here, or be prepared to recreate the settings if necessary. Do so only after verifying that those settings didn't cause the problem. If none of this is meaningful to you, you don't need to worry about it, but you do need to follow the instructions below.

Back up all data before proceeding.

Step 1

If you have more than one user, and the one in question is not an administrator, then go to Step 2.

Enter the following command in the Terminal window in the same way as before (triple-click, copy, and paste):

sudo find ~ $TMPDIR.. -exec chflags -h nouchg,nouappnd,noschg,nosappnd {} + -exec chown -h $UID {} + -exec chmod +rw {} + -exec chmod -h -N {} + -type d -exec chmod -h +x {} + 2>&-

You'll be prompted for your login password, which won't be displayed when you type it. Type carefully and then press return. You may get a one-time warning to be careful. If you don’t have a login password, you’ll need to set one before you can run the command. If you see a message that your username "is not in the sudoers file," then you're not logged in as an administrator.

The command may take several minutes to run, depending on how many files you have. Wait for a new line ending in a dollar sign ($) to appear, then quit Terminal.

Step 2 (optional)

Take this step only if you have trouble with Step 1, if you prefer not to take it, or if it doesn't solve the problem.

Start up in Recovery mode. When the OS X Utilities screen appears, select

          Utilities ▹ Terminal

from the menu bar. A Terminal window will open. In that window, type this:

resetp

Press the tab key. The partial command you typed will automatically be completed to this:

resetpassword

Press return. A Reset Password window will open. You’re not going to reset a password.

Select your startup volume ("Macintosh HD," unless you gave it a different name) if not already selected.

Select your username from the menu labeled Select the user account if not already selected.

Under Reset Home Directory Permissions and ACLs, click the Reset button.

Select

           ▹ Restart

from the menu bar.

C

Back up all data.

Run the following command in the same way as before. It moves to the Trash "semaphore" files that have not been cleaned up by the system and may be interfering with normal operation. The files are empty; they contain no data. There will be no output this time.

find L*/{Con*/*/Data/L*/,}Pref* -type f -size 0c -name *.plist.??????? -exec mv {} .Trash/ \; 2>&-

Log out or restart the computer and empty the Trash.

You seem to have removed the VB files, but the code is still running. Restart the computer and test.

This thread is becoming less and less clear as it gets longer. Sometimes the problem seems to vanish for no apparent reason, then it comes back. I'm not sure what is really going on, but you still have a pretty heavily modified system. I'm going to rely on your statement that you can't reproduce the problem in safe mode.

Back up all data to at least two different storage devices, if you haven't already done so. One backup is not enough to be safe. The backups can be made with Time Machine or with Disk Utility. Preferably both.

Erase and install OS X. This operation will destroy all data on the startup volume, so you had be better be sure of the backups. If you upgraded from an older version of OS X, you'll need the Apple ID and password that you used, so make a note of those before you begin.

When you restart, you'll be prompted to go through the initial setup process in Setup Assistant. That’s when you transfer the data from a backup.

Select only users and Computer & Network Settings in the Setup Assistant dialog—not Applications or Other files and folders. Don't transfer the Guest account, if it was enabled.

After that, run Software Update.

If the problem is resolved after the clean installation, reinstall third-party software selectively. I can only suggest general guidelines. Self-contained applications that install into the Applications folder by drag-and-drop or download from the App Store are usually safe. Anything that comes packaged as an installer or that prompts for an administrator password is suspect, and you must test thoroughly after reinstalling each such item to make sure you haven't restored the problem. I strongly recommend that you never reinstall commercial "security" products or "utilities," nor any software that changes the user interface or the behavior of built-in applications such as Safari. If you do that, the problem is likely to recur.

Before installing any software, ask yourself the question: "Am I sure I know how to uninstall this without having to wipe the volume again?" If the answer is "no," stop.

Never install any third-party software unless you know how to uninstall it.

If you have solved the problem, there's no need to do anything else.

Adalgeir wrote:

 

The browser's connection has been stable since yesterday, it was cured immediately after I turned off whatever it was that Tunnelblick was trying to do. Besides I now have a computer that has been thoroughly cleansed of unneccessary stuff like the VB-files and feels like a new one. Again thanks for your guidance and help!

What Tunnelblick was trying to do was what it does: connect to a VPN. You  had Tunnelblick set to connect to a VPN when it (Tunnelblick) was launched, so that's what it did. The VPN was connected when you put the computer to sleep, but apparently there is a problem that causes the VPN to fail and block all Internet access when waking from sleep.

If you want to use Tunnelblick (if you are unclear about what it does, perhaps you don't want to use it), you might want to make sure you are using the latest version of Tunnelblick, currently version 3.5.0. You can check that on the Tunnelblick Downloads page. After updating, test for the problem by having Tunnelblick connect to the VPN manually, checking that websites work, sleeping the computer and waking it up, and then seeing if websites still work. If you still have problems, you should ask for help on the Tunnelblick Discussion Group. Ignore its Read Before You Post and just post that you are "having trouble reaching the Internet when your computer wakes up from sleep if a VPN was connected when the computer went to sleep". You'll get help specific to your situation.

If you don't want to use Tunnelblick but want to keep it, you can leave it alone in the menu bar (as long as it isn't connecting to a VPN "when Tunnelblick is launched" or "when the computer starts"). It doesn't take up much in the way of system resources when running if there is no VPN connected. Or you can click on the Tunnelblick icon and select "Quit" to quit Tunnelblick; it won't be launched the next time you log into the computer, and it will use no system resources except twenty or thirty megabytes of space on your hard drive.

If you want to uninstall Tunnelblick, use the instructions at Uninstalling Tunnelblick. Don't just drag the Tunnelblick application to the Trash because that leaves a bunch of files on your boot volume. (They won't do any harm, but you might as well clean things up properly.)

Thank you for your very detailed account of what is happening. This is the cause of the troubles you are having:

• On your Mac, with your OpenVPN and Tunnelblick setup, if a VPN is connected when your computer goes to sleep, OpenVPN leaves the network messed up and can't recover when your computer wakes up.

There are several things that can cause this, but fixing it may be as simple as putting a check in Tunnelblick's "Reset the primary interface after disconnecting" checkbox, which is on Tunnelblick's "Advanced" settings page. If that doesn't solve the problem, there are some other  things to try; for those please use the Tunnelblick Discussion Group as I described earlier.

There are three things you should know:

1. Tunnelblick is a user interface for OpenVPN, which is a separate program (which is included inside Tunnelblick). It is OpenVPN that actually creates the VPN.
2. OpenVPN runs by itself (without Tunnelblick) when you restart a computer and a configuration is set to connect "when computer starts".
3. Tunnelblick launches when you log in only if it was running when you logged out (or shut down or restarted your computer).

It is extremely common for people to not know about or fully understand #3. Because you have brought this to my attention, I may change that behavior so that Tunnelblick also launches when you log in if OpenVPN is running, which I think would be more natural and easily understood by Tunnelblick users. So thank you for bringing this up by providing such a detailed explanation of the problem.