• Mac OS X Server

    Apple Releases Service Migration Guide for macOS Server

    Apple won’t be keeping all of the services in macOS Server after the next few months. In the meantime, we have a big old guide to read. I have some overlapping articles I’ve been working on, but I’d say we’re in a similar headspace. The Apple macOS Server Services Migration Guide is available at https://developer.apple.com/support/macos-server/macOS-Server-Service-Migration-Guide.pdf and covers bind, vpnd, freeradius, manual netinstall with bootp and tftp, apache, wordpress, CalendarServer, and ftp. It’s pretty technical, but nothing too crazy in there!Overall, an easy read and I’m glad to see some content coming out to help admins!

  • Synology

    Install Web Services on a Synology

    Web services was always easy to install on macOS Server and it’s no different on a Synology. To do so, open Package Manager from the home screen.Click All in the sidebar and enter web into the search box.Click Web Station.Click Install. This installs a few dependencies. Click Open once the install is finished.Click General Settings. Note that the default web server is Nginx. You can install Apache and then Apache will be available in the HTTP back-end server list. If you’ll be using a different service (Apache) then do the switch before you proceed. Otherwise (or after you switch to Apache), click on Virtual Host.Click on Create.Click into the hostname field…

  • Mac OS X,  Mac OS X Server,  Mac Security,  WordPress

    Replace the Web Services in macOS Server with MAMP Pro

    In an earlier article, I mentioned that MAMP Pro was still the best native GUI for managing web services on the Mac, now that macOS Server will no longer serve up those patchy services. After we cover the management in this article, you’ll likely understand why it comes it at $59.  So you’ve installed MAMP. And you need more than the few basic buttons available there. So MAMP Pro came with it and you can try it for a couple of weeks for free. When you open MAMP Pro, you’ll see a screen where you can perform a number of management tasks. This is a more traditional side-bar-driven screen that…

  • Mac OS X Server

    Websites and Apache on macOS Server 5.4 on High Sierra

    Web Services in macOS Server, Linux and most versions of Unix are provided by Apache, an Open Source project that much of the Internet owes its origins to. Apache owes its name to the fact that it’s “a patchy” service. These patches are often mods, or modules. Configuring web services is as easy in macOS Server 5.4, running on High Sierra (10.13), as it has ever been. To set up the default web portal, simply open the Server app, click on the Websites service and click on the ON button. After a time, the service will start. Once running, click on the View Server Website link at the bottom of the pane. Provided…

  • Mac OS X Server

    Run An Apache Web Server On macOS Server 5.2

    Web Services in macOS Server, Linux and most versions of Unix are provided by Apache, an Open Source project that much of the Internet owes its origins to. Apache owes its name to the fact that it’s “a patchy” service. These patches are often mods, or modules. Configuring web services is as easy in macOS Server 5.2, running on Sierra (10.12), as it has ever been. To set up the default web portal, simply open the Server app, click on the Websites service and click on the ON button. After a time, the service will start. Once running, click on the View Server Website link at the bottom of the pane. Provided the…

  • Mac OS X Server

    Reset Apache In OS X Server To Factory Defaults

    The serveradmin command can also be used to run commands. For example, to reset the service to factory defaults, backup then delete the configuration files for each site and then run the following command: sudo serveradmin command web:command=restoreFactorySettings This is pretty timely as I’ve seen a very high rate of pretty messed up configurations from the Server 4 to Server 5 upgrades. Basically, what seems to happen is that older servers, that were running let’s say Server 2 and Server 3 and Server 4 and now Server 5 will have a little cruft. Sites with older configurations that are incompatible with the latest proxy-based config. And finding the specific problem vs the…

  • Mac OS X,  Mac OS X Server,  Mac Security

    Enable The Built-In Web Server In OS X

    OS X has a built-in web server called Apache. It’s been there for a long, long time. Once upon a time, you could enable web sharing using System Preferences. This is no longer a feature in the Sharing System Preference pane, but you can actually enable it quicker than you could before. To do so, we’ll use apachectl: /usr/sbin/apachectl start To then stop the web server: /usr/sbin/apachectl stop To see the apache status: /usr/sbin/apachectl status Or: /usr/sbin/apachectl fullstatus The default site is stored in /Library/WebServer/Documents. You can then edit this there, or replace the index.html.en file with a file/hierarchy that you wish to have. Enjoy.

  • Mac OS X Server,  Mac Security,  Mass Deployment

    Run A Web Server On Apache Using OS X Server 5

    Web Services in Mac OS X, Mac OS X Server, Linux and most versions of Unix are provided by Apache, an Open Source project that much of the Internet owes its origins to. Apache owes its name to the fact that it’s “a patchy” service. These patches are often mods, or modules. Configuring web services is as easy in OS X Server, running on Yosemite and El Capitan, as it has ever been. To set up the default web portal, simply open the Server app, click on the Websites service and click on the ON button. After a time, the service will start. Once running, click on the View Server Website…

  • JAMF,  Java,  Mac OS X,  Mac OS X Server,  Mac Security

    Troubleshooting Apache, Proxies, and Tomcat in OS X Server 5

    OS X Server 5 dropped last week. It’s the first time I’ve seen an OS X Server version drop before an OS release. I’m guessing there was an impetus to get it out the door before OS X 10.11 ships, so that caching and software update servers can facilitate quicker adoption and tools like Profile Manager will work on 0-day. But, there are some funny issues that are popping up. One of these is OS X Server usurping some ports that would otherwise potentially be used by other tools. Notably for Casper administrators, this includes port 8443. So here are some issues I’ve seen with Apache in the latest OS…

  • Mac OS X,  Mac OS X Server,  Mass Deployment

    Cascading Software Update Service Updates In Yosemite Server

    The swupd.plist file used to daisy chain multiple servers so they act as a cascade of software update servers. The new path for the property list is /Library/Server/Software Update/Config/swupd.plist. Here, the metaIndexURL key is sill the location that points to an internal Software Update Server that the server you are editing should look to for updates. The default server is http://swscan.apple.com/content/meta/mirror-config-1.plist. To set a server to look at another internal server for software updates, edit the metaIndexURL key in the /Library/Server/Software Update/Config/swupd.plist file to include the path to the new server. The path should always have /content/meta/mirror-config-1.plist after the FQDN of the host name. So if your internal software update…