Archive for category: Tips

Thursby’s ADmitMac is a full-featured SMB/CIFS client that contains a lot of great features to hook Mac OS X into an Active Directory infrastructure. Be aware, though, that there is a downside involved. Thursby chose to implement a different method of handling resource forks on non-AFP filesystems than Apple uses in its samba-based SMB client. Basically, Thursby’s method takes advantage of multi-fork-savvy filesystems (like NTFS) whereas Apple’s doesn’t.

The upshot of this is that if you have two Mac clients, one using ADmitMac and the other using the "stock" SMB client, both accessing an SMB share, neither will be able to see resource forks saved by the other system. This is no big deal for some files (notably those with a known DOS-style 3-letter filename extension like ".doc" or ".xls"), but it can make other files completely unusable. For example, Eudora files rely on the type/creator codes in the resource fork; without the resource fork, Eudora doesn’t know what to do with the various files.

I quizzed a Thursby engineer on this incompatibility, and he pointed out that their DAVE product, which was the first SMB client for Macintosh, used this method because it adhered to Microsoft’s Services for Macintosh standard. They are simply carrying on the tradition of doing it the Microsoft-recommended way.

This incompatibility is a huge issue that Thursby seems reluctant to address. Thursby’s implementation may be superior to Apple’s on technical grounds; nonetheless, they need to either convince Apple to do it their way, or change ADmitMac (or at least offer an administrative option) to do it the Apple way. As it stands now, unless sysadmins go with an "all or none" approach to ADmitMac in their organization–now and into the foreseeable future–they’re asking for trouble. That’s an expensive prospect.

The MacEnterprise.org group will be presenting a Webcast on the Casper Suite of Macintosh Management Tools on Tuesday, September 13 at 1:00 pm EDT. Zach Halmstad, a Support Specialist and Developer from JAMF Software, will be presenting.

The Webcast will cover the 3 main functions of the Casper Suite: Inventory and Asset Management, Imaging and Remote Deployment, and Maintenance. Case studies will be presented by Jason Wudi of the University of Wisconsin and Eau Claire and Bill Hansen from Colle + McVoy.

For more information on how to watch this Webcast, please visit the MacEnterprise.org website:
http://macenterprise.org/webcasts

The broadcast ID needed to view the webcast is ‘macenterprise‘. Starting with this webcast, QuickTime 7 will be necessary to watch the live webcast. To download this and the most up-to-date version of the cast:stream software, please go to:
http://webcast.training.apple.com/instructions

In Tiger Server, some typo has been added to the daily scripts, which are located in /etc/periodic/daily/

These scripts are activated by the Server Admin GUI when enabling log rotation on the Mail logs.

The problem here is that the amavisd log is rotated but the amavisd master process is not HUPed, so the amavisd.log file stays empty till this is done… Not very useful.

The problem is located in the 700.daily.server.cyrus file in the /etc/periodic/daily folder.

%logsAndProcesses = ("/var/log/mailaccess.log","syslog",
"/var/log/amavis.log","amivisd",
"/var/log/clamav.log","amivisd",
"/var/log/freshclam.log","freshclam",
"/var/mailman/logs/*","python.*mailmanctl");

Yes, read it closely… amivisd… Apple programmer who must have really been tired and fed up with writing config files…

Change the amivisd to amavisd and your problem is solved…

The implementation of Blojsom by Apple for Tiger Server 10.4.x has one serious flaw, which users should be aware of and will lead to a close-down of the whole Blojsom context.

When Users add their blog in the /weblog/ context they should use their short names (with no spaces by default) or use long names which have no spaces.

The name which is added to the blojsom-users directive in the blojsom.properties file in /Library/Tomcat/blojsom_root/webapps/ROOT/WEB-INF/ is not escaped and thus the blojsom parser will choke on this entry.

So please check the file for spaces and replace those names with short names… There is no further implication to this…

One of the great gems of Apple Remote Desktop 2, and while it’s not hidden in the documentation, no one seems to have sung its virtues – until now.

Read on for more…

Inspired by the recent excellent launchd overview on afp548, I needed to set up a CVS pserver on our new Tiger Xserve box, migrating from an old Linux server.

Have you ever wanted to run the Xserve Remote Diagnostics without setting up a netboot server? Well now you can. Full instructions can be found at the following web site.

http://homepage.mac.com/javaist/xrdiags.html

SquirrelMail’s configuration script (/etc/squirrelmail/config/conf.pl) gives a handy piece of advice upon exiting. It recommends running SM’s built-in check script, by browsing to this address:

http://www.example_domain.com/webmail/src/configtest.php

This give a nice list of pass/fail info on your SM setup.

For those of you out there that use the mailman feature of OS X Server this is important. I have had to rebuild the Cyrus DB on more then one occasion. I don’t often go into the mailman site to fix anything since it is the way I want it for now. When I do I have had a problem with both the Mail List Admin and Site Admin passwords being reset.

I did some tweaking of our default OSX server weblog. The files were buried but I found them, if you would like to do this they can be found in:

Example:
http://www.macprofessionals.com/weblog/

/Library/Tomcat/blojsom_root/webapps/ROOT/blojsom_resources

Images are located in:
/Library/Tomcat/blojsom_root/webapps/ROOT/blojsom_resources/images/

Stylesheets (CSS):
/Library/Tomcat/blojsom_root/webapps/ROOT/blojsom_resources/stylesheets/

On your Tiger server.