Avid Behaving Badly #6: ISIS Login Client Doesn't Properly Log Out

If you're like me, well, first off... Why?  That's weird.  Stop it!

Ahem.

If your work set-up is like mine, you have to log on to an ISIS server before launching Avid in order to mount all of your media drives.  If you're a responsible editor who doesn't like to crash and lose all of his or her work, then at the end of the day you quit Avid, log off of ISIS, and shut down your computer.  Except, well, that's not really how the end of the day goes.  It's more like you quit Avid, log off of ISIS, select "Shut Down" from the apple menu, tell ISIS to force eject all mounted workspaces, and then your computer shuts down.

For me, this is not an isolated incident.  This happens every time.

In fact, ISIS failing to log off every drive happens pretty much every time I log out of ISIS, no matter which system in the office I'm using.

Let's take a minute to step back and examine the ISIS Client software.  It does two things, which are to securely log a user into an ISIS server, and then mount specified drives for that user.  When your client software fails to unmount drives, it is pretty much failing at both tasks.  Your logins are no longer "secure" because anyone else who uses the system after you will find a drive mounted that shouldn't be there.  You're not mounting the exactly specified drives, because there are still some leftover drives from the previous login.  Grrr.

In my experience, this is exactly the sort of issue that most editors simply don't notice.  It bothers the living shit out of the Assistant Editors who have to clean up the messes editors leave behind, but the editors literally won't be aware of it.

The problem works like this:  Assistant Editor A logs on to Editor station X to install a new font.  The AE has write access to a whole gang of media drives that the editor doesn't.  The font install being completed, the AE logs out and leaves, not noticing that the Master Sources drive didn't unmount.  The editor then logs himself in, decides he doesn't like the graphics suite that Network approved, and he deletes all of the graphics bins from Master Sources.  Or the editor renders all of his effects to the Master Sources drive - totally oblivious to the fact that he shouldn't be doing that.

The problem also works in reverse:  An editor needs a database rebuilt on a media drive that he doesn't have write access to, so he asks an AE to come fix the problem.  The AE logs out the editor and logs himself in, but doesn't notice that the media drive in question never unmounted (dismounted?) when the editor was logged out.  Lo and behold, the AE does not have write access to the drive now, even though all of his permissions are set correctly in the ISIS Admin tool.

While this is an incredibly easy issue to solve (manually unmount the affected drives every time you log off of ISIS), when it goes unnoticed, it is thoroughly frustrating.  God damn it, Avid, why is everything a big fucking ordeal with you?

Seriously though, I love ISIS.  It blows Unity out of the proverbial water.

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