[guitar24t]

I don’t know what your budget is, but the best thing to manage mac’s is OS X server (obviously 😀 ).
If you can wait until the new school year, September will see the release of Mac OS X Snow Leopard which will be selling for an amazing $500 (unlimited client)! This seems like the best option to administer macs, but keep in mind you would also need a mac to run it on. Hope this helps,
Robert

[guitar24t]

When you do a reinstall, does the installation disk check out ok?

How old is the xserve? If it’s within 90 days of purchase call apple tech support.

I think your DNS might be the problem judging by your error and another forum I saw. Do you mind posting your domain name? It should be in the form machine.domain.com

To do a proof of concept install (that your machine isn’t broken), reformat and reinstall (I don’t know if you have the time).

[code]Initial install:
For the hostname, type fileserver.contoso.com
The machine name should now automatically be fileserver
Set a static ip to fit your environment and to point to itself as a dns server.

After initial setup:
Update immediately
Once done with all updates, open serveradmin and remove the existing entry for the server and add the entry as fileserver.local
Configure it to use dns
On the dns settings, under the zones tab, add a primary zone contoso.com
Expand that listing and change the machine ns to fileserver and the static ip of the server
Click save
on the primary zone itself, change the name server from ns to fileserver and press save.
Add another a record as contoso.com. (notice the dot at the end) and point it to the ip of your server as well.
Under the reverse lookup settings for fileserver, make sure it resolves to fileserver.contoso.com and NOT contoso.com – if it doesn’t, change the drop down.

Start the service!

now in terminal type

nslookup fileserver.contoso.com

then type (sub the ip of your server)

nslookup 192.168.1.200

compare the results (192.168.1.200 should resolve to fileserver.contoso.com)
then run

changeip -checkhostname

If this verifies (it should), add AFP services, configure and start the service.
Then add the Open Directory services and promote the machine to a master.
[/code]

If this doesn’t work, I wouldn’t know what to tell you 😀 so let’s hope it does!
(Sorry for all the contoso.com stuff, microsoft got to me first)
Good Luck,
Robert

[guitar24t]

The best option in my opinion is to reformat and reinstall the OS. I have had a few bad server installs that I just kept putting more and more time into without fixing the problem. It sounds like something bad! 😀
Good Luck,
Robert

[guitar24t]

Sorry I couldn’t be of more help but I’m thrilled you solved your problem.
Good luck in the future,
Robert

[guitar24t]

WOW! That’s crazy! I suppose a complete OS reinstall is out?
It helps a lot to apply all updates before configuring.

The only other thing I can think of is to try and connect to the server with a .local
Go to system preferences > sharing and look at the computer name
connect to server admin with the computer name and .local
i.e.
fileserver.local
where fileserver is the computer name

If this fails and an os reinstall is out, I would be more than happy to invite you into my vpn and check some of the logs; I don’t know which are needed or if they will help (it is sometimes better just to see first hand). I understand that this might be against your organization policy as a breach of security. If you would like to, go to http://www.studiosoundandvision.com and contact me through email, (I’d rather not post even help user info on a public forum 😀 ). We can arrange a time to both be at the computer (I think your in Perth, Australia (WST)? so that might be tricky, but possible).

I’ll keep looking for solutions, but I’ve never seen anything quite like that. A complete reinstall and update would be the best option.

Robert

[guitar24t]

agreed 😀

[guitar24t]

What is your network setup like?
Are they all behind different routers?
The easy way is to enable screen sharing in leopard and connect through ip address. If each is behind its own router (like a home network) ask them to forward port 5900 to their mac and then connect with their username and password. If you are good at bash and shell, you could forward port 22 to allow ssh (which is much more secure than vnc).

If you would still like to use vnc and still have security, lookup vnc over ssh.
Look into [url]http://www.macserve.org.uk/projects/issh/[/url] for this.

Good Luck,
Robert

[guitar24t]

You’re not really supposed to do that…
but…
download [url]http://www.charlessoft.com/Pacifist.dmg[/url]
open pacifist (wait 15 sec)
Drag the mpkg of iLife to the Pacifist window and wait for it to load.

after that loads, click the install button and make sure you use admin privileges

then run the permissions repair for the disk in DiskUtility

Don’t try to run an application before doing this.

I think this will install all the content files and everything; you won’t have much control if you install the mpkg

I’ve never done this before 😉
well, not quite this way

Good Luck,
Robert

[guitar24t]

What I meant was [code]nslookup 192.168.0.101[/code]
instead of ip_of_your_server 😆 😀
that should resolve to the same as hostname (if the server only has one name)

see if [code]nslookup xserve.rapidlearning.com.au[/code] resolves to your server ip

Another thing to try is [code]sudo mv ~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.ServerAdmin.plist ~/Desktop[/code] on the local server
this will reset your Server Admin server list (and the rest of your preferences 😀 )
As this is an issue on multiple machines this is most likely not the case, but it never hurts to try

post the results of
[code]nslookup google.com[/code]
and try to access google and 74.125.67.100 in a web browser (I don’t know if this is a dns issue but this may or may not affect server admin depending)

If at all possible, set the server’s dns in system preferences to (opendns)
[code]208.67.222.222
208.67.220.220[/code]
run
[code]sudo mv ~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.ServerAdmin.plist ~/Desktop[/code]
then open server admin and try to add your server by ip address

I made a mistake in my prior post. serveradmin list won’t help at all.
This might
[code]#! /bin/bash
sudo serveradmin status afp > ~/Desktop/status.txt
sudo serveradmin status dhcp >> ~/Desktop/status.txt
sudo serveradmin status dirserv >> ~/Desktop/status.txt
sudo serveradmin status dns >> ~/Desktop/status.txt
sudo serveradmin status ftp >> ~/Desktop/status.txt
sudo serveradmin status ipfilter >> ~/Desktop/status.txt
sudo serveradmin status jabber >> ~/Desktop/status.txt
sudo serveradmin status mail >> ~/Desktop/status.txt
sudo serveradmin status mysql >> ~/Desktop/status.txt
sudo serveradmin status nat >> ~/Desktop/status.txt
sudo serveradmin status netboot >> ~/Desktop/status.txt
sudo serveradmin status network >> ~/Desktop/status.txt
sudo serveradmin status nfs >> ~/Desktop/status.txt
sudo serveradmin status radius >> ~/Desktop/status.txt
sudo serveradmin status smb >> ~/Desktop/status.txt
sudo serveradmin status swupdate >> ~/Desktop/status.txt
sudo serveradmin status vpn >> ~/Desktop/status.txt
sudo serveradmin status web >> ~/Desktop/status.txt
sudo serveradmin status xgrid >> ~/Desktop/status.txt[/code]
Put that in a .bash file and run it as sudo
(make sure you don’t have an important file named status.txt on your desktop as it will be overwritten)

Post the contents of the file status.txt on your desktop and sorry for my mistake
Robert

[guitar24t]

Has the attachment already been downloaded from the server?
Is the mail server the OS X server?
Or is this a problem that you cannot open the attachment after you download it?
Robert

[guitar24t]

I don’t have experience with that many mac clients, but I happen to believe that if you had an XServe with enough ram, processor and network bandwith, you could serve a much larger number of clients. I think that the stability of this scenario would be limited by the network speed. Gigabit ethernet wouldn’t hurt 😀
Robert

[guitar24t]

I’m not quite sure what you’re trying to do with it. If you tell me what you are trying to do, i.e. setup dhcp to resolve internal dns queries and still provide internet.
Just need a little bit more info. I know it’s been a while since your post, sorry.
Robert

[guitar24t]

Try using the Disk Utility and repairing the disk (has to be run from the installation DVD). While you’re at it, try repairing the permissions.
Don’t know if you still have this problem.
Good Luck, Robert

[guitar24t]

I had a similar problem (I think?).

10.5.7 fixed it for me.
Don’t know if you’re still looking into this,
Robert

[guitar24t]

I believe you cannot access the internet because your dns server is not setup to forward non-authoritative lookups to other servers. Add these IPs under the forwarders list box on the dns setup tab
[code]208.67.222.222
208.67.220.220[/code]
These are OpenDNS servers’ ips and work well for WAN.

If I had to bet, I would say the problem with your mail accounts was the firewall. I have had multiple problems with OSX firewall. I got so fed up, I turned it off and all my problems went away (literally). I had allow all traffic and all the ports I needed open and still nothing worked. I then setup a WAN firewall (in a router) and now turn off all the firewalls on all my servers (windows, linux or mac!).

Try turning off the firewall and check sending your mail again. Also, verify the dns settings on the client machines are provided correctly from the DHCP.

Sorry for not being able to do more; I don’t do much with mail, but the write-up was very descriptive 😀
Good Luck, Robert

[Author]

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