Mail is one of the hardest services to manage. Actually, mail is pretty simple in and of itself: there’s protocols people use to access their mail (such as IMAP and POP), protocols used to communicate between mail servers and send mail (SMTP, SMTPS) and then there’s a database of mail and user information. In OS X Server 5 for El Capitan and Yosemite, all of these are represented by a single ON button, so it really couldn’t be easier. But then there’s the ecoysystem and the evil spammers. As a systems administrator of a large number of mail servers, I firmly believe that there is a special kind of hell where…
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Use Verbose Logging With Profile Manager
Verbose logging can help you isolate a number of problems with Profile Manager. Turn on verbose logging by writing a debugOutput key with a value of 3 into /Library/Preferences/com.apple.ProfileManager.plist using the defaults command: defaults write /Library/Preferences/com.apple.ProfileManager debugOutput 3 Once set, restart the daemon using killall: killall -u _devicemgr To disable, just write the key with a blank value: defaults delete /Library/Preferences/com.apple.ProfileManager debugOutput Then restart the daemon again: killall -u _devicemgr
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Take Control Of OS X Server (Yosemite) Now Available
I’ve been light on posting here, mostly because I’ve been swamped with work, selling my old house, buying a new house, doing some crazy taxes, wrapping production on a new book and updating the Take Control of OS X Server book to Yosemite Server. Well, earlier this week I sold my house, got the next version of Bushel ready to rock and filed my taxes. Aaaaannnnnndddddd, the Yosemite version of Take Control Of OS X Server is now available at http://tid.bl.it/1xuCJUC. Boom. Will get back to my normally scheduled postings shortly!
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Configure the Software Update Service on Mavericks Server
The software patching configuration built into most operating systems is configured so all that a user has to do is open a box at home, join the network and start using the computer right away. As environments grow from homes to small offices and then small offices grow into enterprises, at some point software updates and patches need to be managed centrally. Mavericks Server (OS X Server 3), as with its OS X Server predecessors has a Software Update service. The service in the Server app is known as Software Update and from the command line is known as swupdate. The Software Update service, by default, stores each update in the /var/db/swupd directory.…
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Server Admin Web Modules, curl & You
Since the early days, OS X Server has supported performing the serveradmin commands through a web interface. This interface was accessible at the address of the server followed by a colon and then 311 in a web browser. This feature was disabled by default in Mountain Lion. But fear causes hesitation, and hesitation will cause your worst fears to come true, so we’re going to turn it back on. To enable, use the following command: sudo defaults write /Library/Preferences/com.apple.servermgrd requireUserAgent -bool false Once done, open https://127.0.0.1:311 in a web browser, or replace 127.0.0.1 with the address of the server if accessing from another location. This is stimulating, but we’re out of…