Mavericks Server comes with a few new alerting options previously unavailable in versions of OS X. The alerts are sent to administrators via servermgrd and configured in the Server app (Server 3). To configure alerts in Mavericks Server, open the Server app and then click on Alerts in the Server app sidebar. Next, click on the Delivery tab. At the Delivery screen, click on the Edit button for Email Addresses and enter every email address that should receive alerts sent from the server. Then click on the Edit button for Push Notifications. Here, check the box for each administrator of the server. The email address on file for the user…
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10 Features I Miss From Mountain Lion & Mountain Lion Server
Apple’s not going to slow down innovation just to make me happy. I get that. But what have I noticed most about the differences between Mountain Lion and Mountain Lion Server and their predecessors, and maybe what to do to get some of them back? Podcast Producer: I am going to just put it out there. I liked Podcast Producer. I hope it shows back up in the future, even though I’m controlling my expectations. As someone who deals with a lot of video, there are a number of features that were really helpful to me, with or without Xgrid. I’ve replaced the command line aspects with tools such as…
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MacTech InDepth In New York
I have been added as a speaker at MacTech InDepth in New York. If you haven’t signed up yet, and you work with Mac OS X Server then you should really check out the sessions that have been planned: The Elephant in the Room: The New Lion OS X is out, now what? There are a lot of differences to contend with between Lion and Snow Leopard. Now with the new Mountain Lion update, what changes can we expect to see? We discuss the differences in advanced services, GUI simplicity, and Apache management GUI’s. We help you understand the updates in the new OS and make the transition easier. We…
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Working with Postgres from the Command Line in Lion Server
Mac OS X Server 10.7, Lion Server, comes with a few substantial back-end changes. One of these is the move from SQLite3 to PostgreSQL for many of the back-end databases, including Wiki and Podcast Producer (collab), Webmail (roundcubemail), iCal Server and Address Book Server (caldav) and as the back-end to the newest service in Lion Server, Profile Manager (device_management). As such, it’s now important to be able to use PostgreSQL the way we once used SQLite3, when trying to augment the data that these databases contains, as there currently aren’t a lot of options for editing this data (aside from manually of course). Postgres has a number of commands that…
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Spots Available in Collaboration Services MacWorld Session
There are still some openings in the session I’ll be doing on February 10th at MacWorld on Collaboration Services. It’s going to be about shared wikis, blogs, calendars, address books and a little Podcast Producer in the end. If you are thinking of deploying this type of solution or have deployed them but would like to know more then check it out: http://www.macworldexpo.com/sessions?s=QEXPOA0000C7
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Address Book File Locations
Address Book.app stores its preferences in the following property list files in ~/Library/Preferences: com.apple.AddressBook.abd.plist com.apple.AddressBook.plist The Address Book data itself is stored in ~/Library/Application Support/AddressBook, Here you will find: The SQL Lite database (*.abcddb). Any images associated with addresses are located in the Images folder in that directory Any contacts synchronized (ie – from Address Book services of Mac OS X Server to the local computer are synchronized into the Sources directory (into the .abcddb file located there) Any metadata associated with the contacts in the Metadata directory The MailRecents-v4 file, which contains a cache of the most recently used email addresses A Configuration.plist property list that has the settings for…
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Snow Leopard & Directory.app
If you grew accustomed to using Directory.app in Leopard and you’re thinking about an upgrade to Snow Leopard then you might want to pause, if only for a moment. You see, there is no Directory.app in Snow Leopard. If you were using Directory.app to allow users to create Blogs and Wikis, then check out the new web interface and see if the specific functionality you seek is there; otherwise look into SACLs and consider pushing out Workgroup Manager. If you were using it to hook into LDAP and allow for looking up contact information then check out Address Book Server, included in 10.6 Server…
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sqlite3 and Address Book.app from the Command Line
The Mac OS X program, Address Book uses sqlite3 to store information. The actual database is located in each users Library/Application Support/AddressBook directory and called AddressBook-v22.abcddb. In order to interfaces with Address Book.app you can use the sqlite3 command followed by the path to the database itself. For example, the following command will simply dump you into a sqlite interactive command line environment: sqlite3 ~/Library/Application Support/AddressBook/AddressBook-v22.abcddb Once in the environment you can view databases, manually work with the data, etc. The basic information about a contact is stored in the ZABCDRECORD table. You can view the contents of this table using the following command: select * from ZABCDRECORD If you…
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Address Book.app and Exchange Contacts
Over the years Apple has slowly been adding Exchange functionality to a number of their products, quietly. While Snow Leopard is reported to add even more functionality there are still a number of things you can do with Exchange from the Mac OS X client. For example, Address Book can pull information from your Exchange contacts. This isn’t to say that every single field will work, but the basics do work – and pretty well. To connect to your Exchange server from Address Book, open the program and then open the Preferences menu. From the General tab check the box for Synchronize with Exchange as seen here: Now click…
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Mac OS X Server 10.5: LDAP ACLs
I originally posted this at http://www.318.com/TechJournal In Leopard, Workgroup Manager supports rudimentary ACLs for the LDAP database. We’re all familiar with Access Control Lists by now. Especially in the Mac OS X Server community. However, we might not all be familiar with ACLs as they’re implemented in LDAP. But we should be, because LDAP is being used more and more as an address book, and with the new Directory application being shipped in Leopard it is conceivable that environments aren’t just going to use ACLs to secure LDAP but they’re also going to use them to allow users to self update their information in the directory. So in the interest…