Clean up your PHDs and remove the trailer park of mobile homes you have lying around. If you run a lab that uses mobile accounts , one of the problems that probably you deal with is the rabbit droppings effect: where users create accounts in the local netinfo database on your lab machines by virtue of logging in.
We all know about those little tear-off things in the bottom right hand corner of Server Admin, right? They're a very handy way of backing up your config before making a change. Just drag it off to your desktop, make your changes and if it all goes pear-shaped, just drag it back and sanity is restored.
There's no doubt that the Command Line Interface can be a powerful way to control any machine. Many also call it fast, which IMHO isn't always the case. Mundane tasks like changing directories and performing repetitive commands (as opposed to using keyboard shortcuts) and the lack of Undo/Redo can sometimes be anything but quick.
So a few people on the macos-x-server mailing list noticed that recent versions of OS X Server seem to be building up large numbers of Disabled/Asleep connections on their AFP servers, even with appropriate disconnection settings when users don't have files open.
Script to configure client mail settings So I thought I would post this before I grow too old and forget about it. I have been working on a command line based configuration script for Mail.app, it does some fancy things like create Mail bundles and Package installers for deployment,it still has a couple of bugs so use it wisely.
I wrote this script for a client for whom I had set up an iChat server last spring. They asked if it would be possible for the server, in addition to its standard functions, to also maintain a buddy group containing all their local accounts (a feature my wife calls a "persistent buddy list").
There's been a fair amount of discussion recently regarding filename renaming, and while this is indeed one of those things that there are as many ways to do as there are to skin a cat, here's an example of one way…
Ever had to change the IP on a server that's without any local supervision, behind who knows how many firewalls, in another country, with only SSH accesss sticking out of it?
Custom AD add-ons continue! A script to manage who can log on to a machine. Ed. Note: It would be possible to do this with a loginwindow SACL on the local systems, but this login hook will match the local machine's hostname with a list of acceptable machines held in AD.
In 10.3 and later, Macs bound to and and autheticating against AD kindly warn you when your password has expired and allow you to change it at the login screen.
