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.

This past weekend, I had my first request to set up a catch-all address for a domain in Tiger server. It’s fairly simple, and it requires some command line interaction.

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.