File Replication Pro is a software package that will replicate data from one host to another, across a few different operating systems. You essentially define a source, a destination, what kind of replication and a schedule. One of the scheduling options is to simply always keep data in synchronization, which appears to be one of the main uses of the software. File Replication Pro isn’t cheap. Reason being that once an initial replication is complete it does not simply copy files – it copies delta changes to files. So if 4k worth of a file changes, then it’s only going to sync that amount of data, once the initial file…
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Nagios in 5 Minutes
When I go to install something I typically look for a virtual appliance to save me the time of having to build it out from scratch. The packages themselves rarely take long to install, but there are always dependencies and then there’s something weird with CPAN or whatever. Next thing I know I am I stuck in the mire of dependency hell. Instead, these days I look for a virtual appliance first, which in many cases is built by the team who develops the package itself (be it commercial or FOSS). Virtual appliances in turn gives me more time to spend on configuration. Furthermore, if everything is on a nice, light virtual machine then…
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iPhone Apps for OS X Server Admins
There is a really nice app for Mac OS X Server admins from Harlekins called Server Admin Remote. You can see more information about it at the Server Admin Remote website, here. Basically, Server Admin Remote is a nice front end for a few serveradmin commands, showing which services are installed and the status of services. It also looks at server host names, CPU, network loads, service logs and some of the more important stats per service (ie – concurrent connections for AFP. Overall it’s a great little app for the Server Admin to quickly be able to restart a service or just look at statuses of services. It runs over…
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Mac OS X Server and WINS
I get a lot of questions about why a Windows computer cannot see a Mac OS X Server on the network when Macs can – or put differently why a Windows computer cannot browse the network for a Mac OS X Server. The first thing I always ask is can you ping it by IP address AND by name. If you can ping the host by IP address then you know the host can communicate with the client. If you cannot then you could be having DNS issues or NetBIOS issues. If you use DNS then that’s easy enough to fix, create or edit the record for the server and…
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Moodle Security
Moodle is a popular Course Management Solution (CMS) that is typically deployed in a less-than-secure manner. This is an issue with any system, but in a number of schools it can cause some pretty serious problems given the penchant that students have to muck with things. In the broader technology certification world it can be an even bigger issue in that, well, we’re geeks… So a few tips on securing Moodle: Tie Moodle into Active Directory (from the Admin console, Users->Authentication->LDAP) or some other Directory Service. From the Admin console, go to Administration->Security and make sure all of these settings match your security plan. Automate security scanning. For example, check…
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Xsan Monitor Widget Released (kinda')
I am releasing the Xsan Monitor that I've mentioned as alpha code. There are still some updates I may do but for now I'm putting it out there for those who feel this is the kind of thing they can take use of. Basically, it's a Dashboard Widget that can run on an Xsan client or metadata controller. When running it will display the CPU and RAM statistics of the Xsan processes. If it's the kind of thing you could use then please feel free to give it a test drive and let me know what you think at cedge@318.com or krypted@mac.com.
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Mac OS X Server 10.5.6 Update
The 10.5.6 update for Mac OS X Server has been out for a little bit now (about a week and a half) and I was thinking it would be worthwhile to cover what the update is really useful for. So here goes: Spotlight: Disable and re-enable spotlight on sharepoints to get the update, but basically it will make for faster searches for remote users. Only works once it’s been disabled and re-enabled PER SHAREPOINT. Improves AFP performance. Resolves issues where NFS mounts may not export when a server is first booted. Password Server replication improved New NetInstall/NetRestore filters for newer hardware. NetInstall clears local KDC information. Introduces MD5 support for…
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How to use iSCSI on Mac OS X
iSCSI is a network storage protocol that allows sending and receiving of SCSI commands over a TCP/IP network. This allows you to leverage Ethernet, a low cost network medium to get SAN performance and network based storage. While you can use pretty much any Ethernet switch, I’d recommend that if you’re going to use iSCSI that you dedicate a switch to it, or use quality switches and build a dedicated VLAN for your iSCSI traffic. Recently, I’ve recently been seeing a lot of traffic about whether or not you can use iSCSI with Mac OS X. The answer, yes. As with Xsan, to get started with iSCSI you’ll need an…
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Mac OS X Server: Installing the OS
I have talked about many of the features of Mac OS X Server for years now and now I have had a third request (from Windows guys funny enough) to walk through the basic installation of the operating system in one week. So, here we go. This is going to be a bit of a long one as there are a number of screens involved in the installation. Additionally, all of the screens are going to show the VMware console as I’m installing a fresh copy of Mac OS X Server while flying home from Advanced Camp. So for starters, we’re going to boot to our nifty Mac OS X…
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Mac OS X Server: GUI Security for MySQL
Prior to Mac OS X 10.5 MySQL was administered in a stand-alone application. In 10.5, MySQL has been moved into Server Admin. Many of the security-centric aspects of MySQL should be managed in the my.cnf file or using MySQL tools. However, you can disable network connections using Server Admin unless the database actually needs to be accessed from hosts other than the server. Additionally, many administrators who lack the time to turn MySQL into a bastille of security choose to implement PHPMyAdmin with Mac OS X Server to easily update settings they might not be so quick to find in the command line.