[macmanjc]

I am also looking into this for several clients after growing increasingly frustrated with Retrospect. CrashPlan looks very interesting, but I am concerned about its apparent lack of support for off-line storage of the backups. Perhaps I am overlooking something, but they specifically state on the website that they do not offer any sort of connectivity to any tape backup system. However, perhaps it is possible to move the CrashPlan data to an external hard drive and then store that drive off-site. Does anyone have any experience with such a setup? Or does anyone who is currently using CrashPlan have some alternate method of handling off-site storage?

Any information would be very helpful!
-John

[macmanjc]

The domain name in question is aclu-md.org.

DNS should have A records for 3 internal servers and 1 external (the web server that is run by our hosting company).

Record 1: master.aclu-md.org = 67.95.163.251
Record 2: bum.aclu-md.org = 67.95.163.250
Record 3: fmdocs.aclu-md.org = 67.95.163.252

Let me know if you are seeing something different or any oddities that I am missing in the DNS info that is returned.

-John

[macmanjc]

[QUOTE BY= maccanada] 2. Up until 10.4.2 the daily learning jobs did not run. 10.4.3 fixes that; my server has been running the jobs at 1:30 am every day since the update.[/QUOTE]

One follow-up question: in which log are you seeing the daily entry?

Thanks so much for the info!

-John

[macmanjc]

Thinbits (et al.),

First, being totally new to running mail services on OS X Server (and not being very comfortable with UNIX in general) I am a little confused by this thread. Can someone give us newbies a simple step-by-step breakdown of what files are supposed to be where? All of your testing and you patience is greatly appreciated!

Second, does anyone know if the supposed automatic daily sa-learn –spam and –ham actually works? According to the Mail Service manual a cron script runs at 1am and checks junkmail and notjunkmail accounts, but I don’t see anything like that listed in /etc/daily. And since I don’t know what log file(s) to check to see what SA is doing, I am sort of in the dark.

Any help would be greatly appreciated!!!

-John

[macmanjc]

[QUOTE BY= Brian B] TCPdump doesn’t show anything obviously wrong (at least to me – not that I’m the world’s greatest at deciphering this info) except for packets with bad checksums. It looks like the packets are exceeding standard MTU of 1500 (does the packet header add bytes?) and the switch/router may be stripping parts out. Some of the packets look garbled when viewed through any type of packet sniffer.

The only thing I can think of at this point is it’s either the 10.3.9 clients or something misconfigured on the switches and/or router.
[/QUOTE]

Brian,
Have you taken a look at this thread?
https://www.afp548.com/forum/viewtopic.php?forum=25&showtopic=7322&mode=&onlytopic=&show=10&page=1

Reading through it there is a lot of discussion about probable network causes for this issue (see post by chiefgeek on down). He suggests using Helios LANTest to test the client/server connection. I personally have not been onsite at my client’s since I saw his post, but I am definitely going to try this when I am in next time, since it might indeed show some interesting problem areas in the network.

Also, are you using any of the same networking equipment that the other posters are referring to?

-John

[macmanjc]

I am having the same problem but I have found a way, at least in my setup, to avoid it. Unfortunately, I think that the solution raises more questions than it answers.

First, the setup: 1 older G4/766MHz acting as the OD Master w/ DHCP and DNS running. 1 first generation XServe G4/1GHZ acting as an AFP/SMB file server and running FileMaker Server 7v3. 1 XServe G5/2x2GHz acting as a Mail server and running Retrospect 6 for backups.

I installed OS X 10.4.2 clean on each of these machines on Saturday and configured them as described above over the weekend. As I was logging into the clients via Remote Desktop and logging into the server to test connectivity I noticed that the activity lights on the XServe G4 were maxed out. I immediately ran Activity Monitor and noticed the same thing that everyone else is reporting: AppleFileServer was running as two separate processes, one of which was running at between 85%-100% of CPU capacity.

I immediately kicked the clients and it settled down. Since I needed to get the clients up and running for Monday morning, I decided to configure all of the clients to bind to the Open Directory server and get their mobile accounts working, and then troubleshoot the AFP issue.

Here is where it gets interesting!

I found that any client that logs into the server as part of the Login process (via an alias to the share point in Accounts -> Login Items) did not cause AFP to go crazy. In fact, after getting all 21 users configured and attached to the server, it was running at about 5% CPU capacity.

Just to see what would happen, I ejected the share point on one of the machines and then logged into it through the CMD-K Connect To interface, and even though it still authenticated using Kerberos, it still instantly caused the usage to skyrocket! I then ejected the share point and tried going in through the Network icon, and the same thing happened: instant CPU peak.

So…. I’m curious if any of the people who have reported this problem are using the same setup that I am, and getting different results, or are your users logging in through one of the Connect methods?

Also, one caveat to this:

I needed to mount the two sharepoints from the XServe G4 on the XServe G5 so that Retrospect can back them up. I decided to try the path of least resistance first, and used the CMD-K Connect To method to select the file server, and then authenticated through Kerberos… and they mounted with no problem! No strange CPU spikes when connected manually to the XServe G5. So then I tried the same thing from the G4/766 server, and the usage went up to about 65%; not as bad as when a client connected, but still more than when the other XServe connected.

So, is it something to do with the XServe hardware? Something to do with the difference between OS X Server and OS X client? (BTW, the clients that are connecting are almost all 10.3.9, but I did connect with two clients that are running 10.4.2 and had the same issue).

I hope all of this long-winded information is helpful to someone out there!

-John

P.S. I am also posting this to the following thread, since these topics are virtually identical:
https://www.afp548.com/forum/viewtopic.php?forum=25&showtopic=8080&lastpost=true

[macmanjc]

I am having the same problem but I have found a way, at least in my setup, to avoid it. Unfortunately, I think that the solution raises more questions than it answers.

First, the setup: 1 older G4/766MHz acting as the OD Master w/ DHCP and DNS running. 1 first generation XServe G4/1GHZ acting as an AFP/SMB file server and running FileMaker Server 7v3. 1 XServe G5/2x2GHz acting as a Mail server and running Retrospect 6 for backups.

I installed OS X 10.4.2 clean on each of these machines on Saturday and configured them as described above over the weekend. As I was logging into the clients via Remote Desktop and logging into the server to test connectivity I noticed that the activity lights on the XServe G4 were maxed out. I immediately ran Activity Monitor and noticed the same thing that everyone else is reporting: AppleFileServer was running as two separate processes, one of which was running at between 85%-100% of CPU capacity.

I immediately kicked the clients and it settled down. Since I needed to get the clients up and running for Monday morning, I decided to configure all of the clients to bind to the Open Directory server and get their mobile accounts working, and then troubleshoot the AFP issue.

Here is where it gets interesting!

I found that any client that logs into the server as part of the Login process (via an alias to the share point in Accounts -> Login Items) did not cause AFP to go crazy. In fact, after getting all 21 users configured and attached to the server, it was running at about 5% CPU capacity.

Just to see what would happen, I ejected the share point on one of the machines and then logged into it through the CMD-K Connect To interface, and even though it still authenticated using Kerberos, it still instantly caused the usage to skyrocket! I then ejected the share point and tried going in through the Network icon, and the same thing happened: instant CPU peak.

So…. I’m curious if any of the people who have reported this problem are using the same setup that I am, and getting different results, or are your users logging in through one of the Connect methods?

Also, one caveat to this:

I needed to mount the two sharepoints from the XServe G4 on the XServe G5 so that Retrospect can back them up. I decided to try the path of least resistance first, and used the CMD-K Connect To method to select the file server, and then authenticated through Kerberos… and they mounted with no problem! No strange CPU spikes when connected manually to the XServe G5. So then I tried the same thing from the G4/766 server, and the usage went up to about 65%; not as bad as when a client connected, but still more than when the other XServe connected.

So, is it something to do with the XServe hardware? Something to do with the difference between OS X Server and OS X client? (BTW, the clients that are connecting are almost all 10.3.9, but I did connect with two clients that are running 10.4.2 and had the same issue).

I hope all of this long-winded information is helpful to someone out there!

-John

P.S. I am also posting this to the following thread, since these topics are virtually identical:
https://www.afp548.com/forum/viewtopic.php?forum=25&showtopic=7322&mode=&onlytopic=&show=10&page=2

[macmanjc]

[quote:ed8450360d=”BobC”]I got it! I didn’t fill “Local host names” field and the mail server didn’t know whom to deliver emails :!:[/quote:ed8450360d]

Thank you Bob for finding this for me – I have been struggling with this for days, and I was just getting ready to post this exact same question!

I don’t know if you were tripped up by the Admin guide as I was, since it appears to be inaccurate; it says:

Adding or Removing Local Names for the Mail Server
Your mail service has a list of all the domain names for which it is responsible. You should add any names that are likely to appear after @ in the addresses of mail directed to your server. For example, the list might contain variations of the spelling of your domain name or company name. Your mail settings apply to all domain names in this list.
[…]
Note: If youíve set up MX records, you donít need to add anything to this list. Your mail service will add names as it discovers them in the course of its daily operation.

I was all set to add my names to the Local Hosts box until I read the note. I should of ignored the manual and tried this days ago.

Thanks again for your help.

-John

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