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Our experiences migrating Panther Server -> Tiger Server, the kitchen sink

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  • September 28, 2006 at 6:16 am #367132
    jonosx
    Participant

    Ok, I’ve had to post this in chunks because some idiot piece of software here keeps thinking this is spam.

    Our experiences migrating Panther Server -> Tiger Server, the kitchen sink.

    This is a journal, so to speak, to hopefully be of some assistance to others.
    I wont go into full detail, I’ll just post it as do’s and don’t so as to be succinct.
    There are some remaining questions from us too, so any answers to those would be nice.

    Keywords: Panther, Tiger, Server, XServe, G4, G5, XRAID, firmware, migration, shares, SMB, AFP, NFS, 32bitclients, Open Directory

    The situation:

    An entire tertiary school, between 200 and 300 users.
    A heterogenous network composed of Linux Fedora, Mac OS X and MS Windows (XP Pro).
    One server serving AFP NFS and SMB to the entire school, as well as performing authentication (SMB and LDAP).

    From:
    Xserve G4
    Panther Server 10.3.9 + updates
    XRAID

    To:
    Xserve G5
    Tiger Server (we’ll get to the versions in a minute)
    XRAID (same XRAID unit).

    Ok, here we go.

    First – Install Carbon Copy Cloner !!

    This is essential – use it liberally throughout the process to save snapshots of the system in progress. There are quite likely going to be several points where you will have to roll back and CCC can make the difference between days of work and hours.
    You can either save to a disk or save to an image ON disk, both are useful.
    I continually saved images to disk along the way and labelled them with the date and time.

    Upgrades: Tiger and XRAID

    Upgrade the target server to the absolute latest version of Tiger Server, + updates.
    At writing this is 10.4.7.
    Do this before doing anything else.
    All versions prior to 10.4.7 are broken in one respect or another and will shoot you in the boot, particularly if you are thrashing the server as hard as we are.

    Upgrade the XRAID’s firmware to the lastest version, this is essential!! (Particularly if you are, as we were, going from a G4 to G5 Xserve).
    The firmware upgrade comes with the free RAID Admin app, downloadable from the Apple site.
    Get the .app version in the .dmg file, NOT the plain .jar version which is slightly broken.
    The .app version comes with the firmware upgrade and dumps it in Utilities, from where you can find it and apply it. Even if the app version is the same as you already have, the firmware may be newer.
    At writing its url is:
    http://wsidecar.apple.com/cgi-bin/nph-reg3rdpty2.pl/product=08511&cat=1&platform=osx&method=sa/RAID_Admin15.dmg
    The symptoms of having old firmware in your XRAID is that the new server wont be able to see any volumes on it!

    IP Address and Hostname

    Set the target server up in its own little ‘sandbox’ network.
    We used an ethernet switch and had one of each OS type machine plugged into the server, simulating everything except the XRAID.

    You CANNOT change the IP Address and Hostname of the server once you have commenced migration! Lots of people will tell you you can, using ‘changeip’ and other tools – they are Wrong[tm].

    Make sure the new system begins life with the exact personality it will have in production, and the only way to safely do that of course is with a sandboxed network.

    September 28, 2006 at 6:17 am #367133
    jonosx
    Participant

    Migrating Users

    I followed the instructions given here:
    https://www.afp548.com/article.php?story=20050615173039158

    They worked (power to the authors!) but it took quite some trial and error.
    Again I cannot stress the usefulness of Carbon Copy Cloner (CCC) enough – the rollbacks during the process were much more painless thanks to it.

    After the users were migrated there were still some minor breaks which had to be touched up by hand.
    Eg.
    In WGM, the group memberships were not reflected properly, even though the command line was showing the correct information. The only cure I found was to manually re-add the members to the groups, but for some groups this would not be practical.
    The cause is that the schema in OpenDirectory doesnt quite come across properly with respect to groups. With enough fiddling with the dscl util and cunning shell scripting, the repair could be automated I’m sure.

    September 28, 2006 at 6:22 am #367134
    jonosx
    Participant

    Ok I’m giving up on this idiot forum software at this point because it keeps:

    1) Losing text it took me a while to type

    2) Thinking the text is spam, even though I am a registered user.

    I’ll put my findings up on the UniMac Tech list or somewhere else that actually has functioning software.

    Jon

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