Getting all the Xsan pieces straight in your head

When Xsan came out, it was the first time that the average Apple System Administrator had seen a Storage Area Network (SAN), and as a result, there’s a lot of questions about how to best deal the very fundamentals of an Xsan setup. Here we’re hoping to cover a lot of the questions that are being asked, and help you on your way to the healthiest Xsan environment you could get.

I have to admit, when I first heard that Apple was adding ACLs to the next version of OS X, I got a pretty nasty lump in my throat and ordered another pint of ale. I was first introduced to ACLs in DFS on AIX and I still have nightmares and flashbacks of files which can’t be deleted by root and will forever remain on the disk until the next newfs. After reading through Apple’s new File Services manual however, I’ve learned to stop fearing and start loving the ACL. Apple’s implementation of ACLs on Darwin is actually very intuitive and makes a whole lot of sense.

Q: Ok there has to be a way to do this… I just upgraded to tiger and I have some sharepoints that many users access. When a user creates a file or folder in the share point it gets the standard 755 umask. I used to be able to get around this by changing the AFP protocol to inherit permissions instead of POSIX behavior. Now the only way to get that functionality in tiger is to disable ACL’s!. When I use NT boxes I can add an “everyone” user into the ACL list. Does this exist in Tiger? Help!

I noticed that squirelspell is not working on Mac OS X Server. I found an outdated article at this site. Using that article and searching internet, I compiled this article. I hope this will be useful to many OS X Server administrators.

Help your Windows users love your Xserve as much as your Mac users do!

The MacEnterprise.org group will be presenting a Webcast on iPods in Education on Tuesday, April 26 at 1:00 pm EDT. Representatives from two higher education institutions will each present on their own innovative and highly regarded iPod integrations.

Xsan has been out for a few months now so it seems like a good time to go over some Storage Area Network (SAN) stuff and then go through a typical Xsan setup.

Get RADIUS authentication working with Open Directory and more on OS X Server

RADIUS allows for 802.1x, WPA Enterprise and other forms of authentication. Between RADIUS and LDAP you should be able to authenticate just about any network service that you need.

Right, we all hate ads, don’t we?

Good. Then if we could use the DNS built in to OS X server to block the ads from appearing on any client that uses
that DNS server, it would be a good thing, wouldn’t it?

On behalf of the MacEnterprise.org Steering Committee, we would like to extend an invitation to everyone to attend the MacEnterprise Day in San Francisco. This FREE meeting and conference event will be held Sunday June 5, 2005, one day prior to the opening of Apple’s WWDC 2005.

We will be discussing topics relating to all aspects of deployment of macs in the enterprise, including:

-Directory Services
-Beginning your Enterprise deployment
-Network Home Directories and Directory Services
-Parallel computing, including XGrid and Pooch
-Apple Remote Desktop innovation
-Advanced troubleshooting
-Enterprise Streaming Services, including Audio and Video

as well as roundtable discussions about what’s hot in the enterprise today!

Registration is now open, and seating is limited. For more information, please visit:

http://macenterprise.org/enterpriseday