Need help with XServe (Tiger) rebuild- ultra simple lab

[DavidLevine]

Need to rebuild an XServe that serves a small college graphic design lab with a couple of networked printers all connected via a single 48-port switch and ethernet cables. This mini-network is a “standalone” Mac island, not connected to the campus LAN (and therefore no internet!!).[Except the server does have one of its 2 NICs connected to LAN so I can VNC to it.]

There will be around 100 users who I would like the server to authenticate and to host their home directories. The workstations are clones and host all the applications. If I build the server first I can NetInfo-join the workstation image prototype to it. Other than print queue, the server doesn’t have to do anything else.

The way it should work is that a user can log onto any workstation and get their own docs and settings via their home profile folders on the server. This worked nicely for a couple of years, and after shutting down the server for a rest last summer, it decided that it didn’t feel like authenticating users anymore. All support advice suggested that I would need to rebuild the server, but I didn’t have time for that. Now I do, but I hope that I can do it myself. We originally hired an Apple sub-contracted tech, back when the server was brand new, but Tiger was also new then and he wasn’t quite up to speed on it so it took a lot of swearing. He ended up setting up kerberos. DNS provided lots of “entertainment” too. As I said there was a lot of swearing and time on the phone with Apple…

MY QUESTION (FINALLY!): Can anyone point me to some nice simple step-by-step documentation for setting up Workgroup Manager most effectively? I’m comfortable with installing and updating the Server OS, and also the workstation image, but I’m dreading issues with DNS, BIND, and that crap. Does it always have to BITE?!

This little lab is the simplest imaginable setup, and I hope that some kind soul who built a similar lab in some school setting somewhere took the time to document their process

Thanks! 😀

[DavidLevine]

I think I may have found the type of info I was looking for in the whitepapers section of this site:
[url]https://www.afp548.com/filemgmt_data/files/quickstart_tigerserver.pdf[/url]

If anyone has anything further or some gotchas in that pdf, please post a reply.

Thanks! 😀

[xdavid]

Things are probably a lot more stable now compared to when you first installed it. Are you familiar with John De Troye’s documents ? (He works for Apple). Lots of stuff suitable for your type of installation environment…

http://homepage.mac.com/johnd/album.html

-david

[DavidLevine]

Thanks a bunch for the link [b]xdavid[/b]. I will be checking out those movies soon. Already downloaded his server planning pdf. Encouraged to hear that the server OS is more “mature” now- thanks for that comment. Hope Workgroup Manager is too- it’s had more than its share of quirks.

Sorry about all the questions … these are to the general forum …

Has there been any feedback on Server 10.4.10? Our XServe is PPC. Naturally I plan to build the server first and then update to 10.4.10 before configuring it. Then we’ll build a prototype G5 PPC workstation to that server. We may be getting some new Intel G5 workstations to throw into the mix. Should I be worried about that? And I assume that I’ll need to create two workstation images, a PPC and an Intel. True? I need to worry about whether my apps are Universal or not, right?

Our workstation image will be pretty loaded … 10.4.10 plus Adobe CS2 Premium Suite, Flash, AfterEffects, Office 04, Extensis Suitcase Fusion, etc. It’s gonna suck to have to make 2 images …

Thanks In Advance 😀

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