• Mac OS X,  Mac OS X Server,  Xsan

    Using the xsanadmin Command

    There are some commands where you just have to wonder why. Sure, I see what this command does, but why bother? Well, I’m not going to say that xsanadmin is one of those commands, but I’m not going to say that it isn’t. At first glance, you might think that the list, stop, start and other verbs look promising. Like maybe you can actually administer a volume from a much simpler to use command line interface. However, if you want a quick and dirty of what xsanadmin does, look no further than just running the command without any verbs or operators: xsanadmin The result is help information from the serveradmin…

  • Mac OS X Server,  Mac Security,  Mass Deployment

    Logs, Scripts and OS X Mountain Lion Server

    OS X Mountain Lion has a lot of scripts used for enabling services, setting states, changing hostnames and the like. Once upon a time there was a script for OS X Server called server setup. It was a beautiful but too simplistic kind of script. Today, much of that logic has been moved out into more granular scripts, kept in /Applications/Server.app/Contents/ServerRoot/System/Library/ServerSetup, used by the server to perform all kinds of tasks. These scripts are, like a lot of other things in Mountain Lion Server. Some of these include the configuration of amavisd, docecot and alerts. These scripts can also be used for migrating services and data, such as /Applications/Server.app/Contents/ServerRoot/System/Library/ServerSetup/MigrationExtras/30-ipfwmigrator. Sometimes the scripts…

  • Mac OS X Server,  Mac Security,  Mass Deployment

    Enabling ARD, SSH & SNMP On Mountain Lion Server Using serveradmin

    The traditional way to enable Apple Remote Desktop is using the kickstart command. But there’s a simpler way in OS X Mountain Lion Server. To do so, use the serveradmin command. To enable ARD using the serveradmin command, use the settings option, with info:enableARD to set the payload to yes: sudo serveradmin settings info:enableARD = yes Once run, open System Preferences and click on Sharing. The Remote Management box is then checked and the local administrative user has access to ARD into the host. The Server app will also have the “Enable screen sharing and remote management” option checked. There are also a few other commands that can be used…

  • Mac OS X,  Mac OS X Server

    Configuring Mountain Lion Server's Contacts Server

    Mountain Lion has an application called Contacts. Mountain Lion Server has a service called Contacts. While the names might imply differently, surprisingly the two are designed to work with one another. The Contacts service was called Address Book in Lion and below and is based on CardDAV, a protocol for storing contact information on the web, retrievable and digestible by client computers. The Contacts service is also a conduit with which to read information from LDAP and display that information in the Contacts client, which is in a way similar to how the Global Address List (GAL) works in Microsoft Exchange. I know I’ve said this about other services in…

  • Mac OS X Server

    Removing 'serveradmin settings' Entries in OS X Server

    I frequently write about adding entries in OS X Servers configuration database using serveradmin. But there are a lot of causes for various symptoms in OS X and trying some post of mine might end up biting you later, if it doesn’t fix your problem and you end up leaving the keys in place in OS X Server. Therefore, let’s look at something I might tell you to do, such as set a mail relay host from serveradmin: serveradmin settings mail:postfix:smtp_auth_relay_dict:smtp_auth_relay_host = mdm.krypted.com Once the setting has been configured, you might want to get rid of it outright. Now, this one happens to be exposed in the GUI, so you…

  • Mac OS X Server,  Mass Deployment

    Add Services to Server Admin From the Command Line

    In the Server Admin application, you need to enable any services before you can actually start them. In order to do so to a lot of servers at once, you want to automate that. Such automation can be done using the serveradmin command line options. The settings would be sent to info. To see all of the settings available there: serveradmin settings info Note that there’s a whole section for info:serviceConfig: info:serviceConfig:roles:com.apple.SimpleServerSetup.ODPlugin:configured = yes info:serviceConfig:services:com.apple.ServerAdmin.DirectoryServices:configured = yes info:serviceConfig:services:com.apple.ServerAdmin.NetBoot:configured = no info:serviceConfig:services:com.apple.ServerAdmin.AddressBook:configured = yes info:serviceConfig:services:com.apple.ServerAdmin.SWUpdate:configured = yes info:serviceConfig:services:com.apple.ServerAdmin.NAT:configured = no info:serviceConfig:services:com.apple.ServerAdmin.Mail:configured = no info:serviceConfig:services:com.apple.ServerAdmin.Notification:configured = yes info:serviceConfig:services:com.apple.ServerAdmin.VPN:configured = yes info:serviceConfig:services:com.apple.ServerAdmin.DHCP:configured = no info:serviceConfig:services:com.apple.ServerAdmin.Calendar:configured = yes info:serviceConfig:services:com.apple.ServerAdmin.AppleFile:configured = yes info:serviceConfig:services:com.apple.ServerAdmin.Jabber:configured = yes…

  • Mac OS X Server,  Mac Security

    Only Use Kerberos with Podcast Producer

    By default the /Library/Preferences/com.apple.pcastserverd.plist allows basic, digest and Kerberos authentication. Attempts to authenticate will be made in the reverse order, respectively. This is pulled from the http_auth_type array, which you can see using the following command: serveradmin settings pcast You can then remove an entry and edit existing entries to change the supported mechanisms using serveradmin if you cannot stop the Podcast Producer service. If you can stop the service then the easiest way to edit the authentication mechanisms is to edit /Library/Preferences/com.apple.pcastserverd.plist directly. To do so, locate the http_auth_type key as you see it here: <key>http_auth_type</key> <array> <string>basic</string> <string>digest</string> <string>kerberos</string> </array> Here, remove each string that you no longer…