Mac OS X,  Mac OS X Server,  Mac Security,  Mass Deployment

Setting Up an Open Directory Master in OS X Mountain Lion Server

Open Directory has never been so easy to setup for a basic environment as it is in OS X Mountain Lion Server. It’s also never been so annoyingly simple to use that to do anything cool requires a bunch of command line foo. No offense to the developers, but this whole idea that the screens that were being continually refined for a decade just need to be thrown out and started fresh seems to have led to a few babies thrown out along with them. Not often as I’m kinda’ digging most of the new config screens in OS X Mountain Lion Server, but with Open Directory, it’s just too easy. Features mean buttons. Buttons make things a tad bit more complicated to use than an ON/OFF switch…

Anyway, rant over. Moving on. As with almost any previous version of OS X Server and Open Directory, once you’ve installed the Server app, run the changeip command along with the -checkhostname option to verify that the IP, DNS and hostname match. If (and only if as it will fail if you try anyway) you get an indication that “The names match. There is nothing to change.” then you can move on to setting up the service.

Note: There’s this thing called the Next Steps Drawer. No matter what it says, I still won’t proceed until changeip checks clean. 

To set up the Open Directory Master, open the Server app and click on the Open Directory service. From here, click on the ON button.

For the purposes of this example, we’re setting up an entirely new Open Directory environment. At the “Configure Network Users and Groups” screen, click on “Create a new Open Directory Domain” and click on the Next button.

At the Directory Administrator screen, enter a username and password for the directory administrator account. The default account is sufficient, although it’s never a bad idea to use something a bit less generic.

Once you’ve entered the username and password, click on the Next button. Then we’re going to configure the SSL information.

At the Organization Information screen, enter a name for the organization in the Organization Name field and an Email Address to be used in the SSL certificate in the Admin Email Address field. Click on Next.

At the Confirm Settings screen, make sure these very few settings are OK with you and then click on the Set Up button to let slapconfig (the command that runs the OD setup in the background, kinda’ like a cooler dcpromo) do its thing. When the Open Directory master has been configured, there’s no need to reboot or anything, the indicator light for the Open Directory service should appear. If the promotion fails then look to the preflight options I wrote up awhile back.

Once the promotion is complete, you’ll also see the server listed in the Servers list. Here, click on the server and click on the Global Password Policy option in the cog-wheel menu. This is where you can configure the parameters that passwords must meet in order to be usable on the system.

Clicking on the minus (“-“) button while a server is highlighted runs a slapconfig -destroyldapserver on the server and destroys the Open Directory domain if it is the only server. All domain information is lost when this happens.

Next, let’s bind a client. Binding clients can be done in a few different ways. You can use a script, a Profile, the Users & Groups System Preference pane or build binding into the imaging process. For the purpose of this example, we’ll use the System Preference pane.

To get started, open up the System Preference pane and then click on Users & Groups. From here, click on Login Options and then unlock the lock in the lower left corner of the screen, providing a username and password when prompted.

Click on the Edit… button and then the plus sign (“+”). Then, enter the name of the Open Directory Master (the field will expand with options when you enter the host name.

It’s probably best not to use the IP address at this point as the master will have an SSL certificate tied to the name. Click OK to accept the certificate (if it’s self-signed) and then the system should finish binding. Once bound, I like to use either id or dscl to verify that directory accounts are properly resolving before I try logging in as an Open Directory user.

Provided everything works that’s it. The devil is of course in the details. There is very little data worth having if it isn’t backed up. Notice that the old Archive and Restore options are gone. To run a backup, run the slapconfig command along with the -backupdb option followed by a path to a folder to back the data up to:

sudo slapconfig -backupdb /odbackups

To restore a database (such as from a previous version of the operating system where such an important option was actually present) use the following command (which just swaps backupdb with -restoredb)

sudo slapconfig -restoredb /odbackups

Both commands ask you for a password to encrypt and decrypt the disk image created by them.