• Mac OS X Server

    Demote an Open Directory Server using the Server app

    macOS Server 5.4 running on High Sierra can have problems with Open Directory. Sometimes, you just need to reset your directory service. You can demote and restore the server if needed. But buyer beware, you may end up screwing things up while the directory server is being demoted and you’re restoring a backup. Or if you haven’t built out the directory server, you may end up just demoting the server and starting over. In this article, we’ll look at demoting the server. Note: If you demote the service, and you don’t have a replica, you will destroy all users and groups. To get started demoting the Open Directory master, first open the…

  • Mac OS X Server

    Manage Groups In macOS Server 5.4 Running On High Sierra

    There are a couple of ways to create groups in macOS Server 5.4, running on High Sierra. The first is using the Server app, the second is using the Users & Groups System Preference pane and the third is using the command line. In this article we will look at creating groups in the directory service with the Server app. Once a server has been an Open Directory Master all user and group accounts created will be in the Local Network Group when created in Server app. Before that, all user and group objects are stored locally when created in Server app. Once promoted to an Open Directory server, groups are created in the…

  • Mac OS X,  Mac OS X Server

    Update Ruby to Install Rails on macOS 5.3 Server

    I thought there might be an easier way to do this. So there’s this binary called serverrails that I assumed would install rails – no wait, actually it’s a ruby script that tells me to ‘gem install rails’ – which fails: cat `which serverrails` #!/usr/bin/ruby # Stub rails command to load rails from Gems or print an error if not installed. require 'rubygems' version = ">= 0" if ARGV.first =~ /^_(.*)_$/ and Gem::Version.correct? $1 then version = $1 ARGV.shift end begin gem 'railties', version or raise rescue Exception puts 'Rails is not currently installed on this system. To get the latest version, simply type:' puts puts ' $ sudo gem…