• Mac OS X Server,  Mass Deployment,  Ubuntu

    NFS + Ubuntu + Mac OS X Clients = A Quickie

    NFS is an old standby in the *nix world. It seems that it’s about as old as the hills and while it can be cranky at times, it’s pretty easy to setup, manage and use. Once it’s configured, you use it in a similar fashion as you do in Mac OS X Server. The client configuration is identical. To get started, let’s install the nfs-kernel-server, nfs-common and portmap packages on our Ubuntu 10.04 box: apt-get install nfs-kernel-server nfs-common portmap Then let’s create a directory to share (aka export): mkdir /Homes Then we need to define the permissions for /Homes (ends up similar in functionality to the export to option in…

  • Mac OS X,  Ubuntu,  Unix,  VMware

    Installing Ubuntu 10 in Fusion

    I’ve done a number of articles on using Ubuntu 10 as a server recently, but haven’t actually looked at doing the base installation of an Ubuntu 10 host. In this example, I’ll look at using Ubuntu 10.04 Desktop. In many of the previous examples I’ve been looking at Ubuntu 10.10 Server; the reason I’m using 10.04 Desktop here is because I believe there is a smaller learning curve and that inherently Mac OS X Systems Administrators who might be following this thread actually like a GUI. There are a number of aspects of this type of setup that are simply not GUI oriented; however, the base OS can easily be,…

  • Ubuntu,  Unix

    Ubuntu Server 10 & Active Directory

    There are a number of different ways to join Linux systems into an Active Directory domain. One is to use winbind, a popular part of Samba often used for this purpose. However, having had success with the Likewise Open directory services plug-in for Mac I decided to give their Linux solution a shot as well. After all, it is free (as in beer). And I am glad I did (well, I wasn’t when I was using Ubuntu Server 10.10, but backing back down to 10.04 (which is LTS after all) made it all better. To get started, let’s run apt-get to grab and install the likewise-open package: apt-get -y install…

  • Mac OS X Server,  Ubuntu,  Unix

    Hosting afp on Linux

    One of the main reasons people get a server is to share files. Mac OS X Server is one of the more common devices used to share files to Mac OS X clients, using afp, the default file sharing protocol for Mac OS X. But you don’t have to use Mac OS X Server. You can use Linux as well. We’re going to look at using an open source project called netatalk to do so. If you find that after reading this that you’d like to find out more about netatalk then check out the open source project page at http://netatalk.sourceforge.net. The netatalk installer can be installed through most of…

  • Ubuntu,  Unix

    bdb and netatalk

    I’ve been finding recently that practically every netatalk implementation is using bdb instead of cdb (the default), due to the fact that cdb seems to be more susceptable to corruption. To make this change, you open the netatalk configuration file at /etc/default/netatalk. Here you will see the following options: ATALKD_RUN=no PAPD_RUN=no CNID_METAD_RUN=no AFPD_RUN=yes TIMELORD_RUN=no A2BOOT_RUN=no To switch from cdb to the dbd scheme change CNID_METAD_RUN = no to CNID_METAD_RUN = yes.  Save the netatalk file and then restart using the ‘netatalk restart’ command (with sudo or as root): /etc/init.d/netatalk restart No further changes need to be made in AppleVolumes.default or afpd.conf, but do be sure to check that the users…

  • Ubuntu

    Ubuntu 8.04

    Originally posted at http://www.318.com/TechJournal Ubuntu 8.04 is now available – the first major release since 7.10. Code named Hardy heron, 8.04 will look familiar to long-time Ubuntu users. But under the hood, 8.04 sports a new kernel (2.6.24-12.13), a new rev of Gnome (2.22), improved graphical elements (such as Xorg 7.3), a spiffy new installer (Wubi), the latest and greatest in software, enhanced security and of course more intelligent default settings. The build is free to download the desktop version from ubuntu.com. The new Ubuntu installer comes with a new utility called Wubi. Wubi can run as a Windows application, which means that Windows users will be able to more…

  • Mac OS X,  Mac OS X Server,  Ubuntu,  Unix

    hostname

    OK, so this one is pretty easy.  You can use the hostname command to return back the name of your computer.  There’s also a nifty little s flag to remove any domain naming from the return string.

  • Mac OS X,  Unix

    Writing Shell Scripts

    There’s usually a few different steps in the learning process for writing shell scripts.  The first is to figure out how to just do simple things, like write hello world to the screen.  The second is to start using a series of commands.  The third seems to be using variables.  The fourth is to start using libraries to reuse your scripts.  The next is to take variables to the next level, variabalizing everything.  Where are you at with this?