Not exactly an OS X Server issue, but still a question for the admins here: I admin a smallish design studio (15 or so users) and am working to put together a schedule for regular maintenance. As it is, backups and a few things happen automatically, but tasks like permissions repair, clearing caches, directory repairs and optimisation – the stuff that requires I kick someone off their machine – tend to happen only sporadically, when a user goes on vacation, or on nights and weekends when I’d rather be doing other things. I’ve also got several laptop users that take their machines with them every night, so it’s hard for me to get anything done on them without disrupting their work. Are there any suggestions from the peanut gallery for a realistic maintenance schedule – how often should I really be running these things? – as well as a realistic way of keeping up with it? i.e. do folks set iCal reminders, cron tasks, sticky notes?

Recently I was writing a shell script in which I needed to create a disk image, mount it, write to it, and dismount it. The command in OS X that manages disk images at the command line is hdiutil, and the man page is rather long. The syntax for the command is simple, but there are a lot of options to consider. In this particular example I’m going to create a sparse image that is only as large as the data contained within the image. You can adapt the command to create images to fit your needs.

Read on for more…

I am part of a team designing the infrastructure for a 1:1 Laptop Program. We will have roughly 1,000 users, four different buildings, and mobile home directories. In addition, we will have several graphic labs (G5’s), lit labs (eMacs), and libraries (iMacs). Lastly, we will also have several labs of windoze machines for business apps.

Originally, we were looking to one Dual G5 X-server loaded with memory to serve as an Open Directory Master to manage desktops, laptops, and host the users’ home folders. Recently, we were advised to explore adding replica servers to lessen the load on the single box.

Are we expecting too much out of a single machine?
How many additional replicas should we add for 1,000 users?
Is there a guideline – for example – 100 users per replica?

Any help would be appreciated. Thanks!

As the networking infrastructure guy, I occasionally have the need to update hardware or backup settings using the TFTP protocol. I’ve noticed that there are plenty of good instructions for how to make this work with Panther, but almost none for Tiger.

Piecing together all the information in the tiger server docs is a pain. I created these two pages to show people how to setup Tiger server as an Open Directory Master and share out Home folders.

Ed. Note: We have some more in-depth versions of this in our downloads section, but these are good overviews for the impatient.

OD Master setup

Network home folders

A while back Joel put up a script to backup the key components of the mail store for 10.3 server. With Tiger, we got the added benefit of AMaViS/ClamAV/SpamAssassin so I made a few changes…

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

I wanted to have a consolidated list where myself and others can conveniently find digital asset management solutions. Specifally at the moment, this list excludes records management and web content management software. The software listed varies between business- and enterprise-class scalability and flexibility. Clearly amateur or small-scale solutions are excluded.

Getting syslogd to be network aware in Tiger

While we have an earlier article on this, it was only for 10.3. So here’s an updated version that will walk you through using syslogd with launchd.

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…