Setting up OS X Server has never been easier. Neither has upgrading OS X Server. In this article, we’ll look at upgrading a Mac from OS X 10.8 running Server 2 to OS X 10.9 (Mavericks) running Server 3. The first thing you should do is clone your system. The second thing you should do is make sure you have a good backup. The third thing you should do is make sure you can swap back to the clone should you need to do so and that your data will remain functional on the backup. Once you’re sure that you have a fallback plan, let’s get started by downloading OS…
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Promote A Replica To A Master In Mavericks Server
You’ve got Open Directory running and humming beautifully in Mavericks Server (Server 10.9). You show up to work and the hard drive has died on that perfectly configured Open Directory Master. Luckily, you have a replica and you have an archive of your Master. You can restore or you can promote your Replica to a Master. What to do? Well, I can’t tell you what you should do, but I can tell you that Apple has planned for this. Here, we’re going to look at promoting that Replica to a Master. Because after all, hard drives fail. Let’s look at what all this looks like. Create An Open Directory Archive…
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Managing DNS Services From the Command Line in Mavericks Server
DNS is DNS. And named is named. Except in OS X Server. The configuration files for the DNS services in OS X Server are stored in /Library/Server/named. This represents a faux root of named configuration data, similar to how that configuration data is stored in /var/named on most other platforms. Having the data in /Library/Server/ makes it more portable across systems. Traditionally, you would edit this configuration data by simply editing the configuration files, and that’s absolutely still an option. In Mavericks Server (Server 3), a new command is available at /Applications/Server.app/Contents/ServerRoot/System/Library/PrivateFrameworks/DNSManager.framework called dnsconfig. The dnsconfig command appears simple at first. However, the options available are actually far more complicated…
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“Address already in use” When Trying To Bind Open Directory Master
From time to time you’ll see an error that “daemon: bind(8) failed errno=48 (Address already in use)” when trying to promote a Mac OS X Server to be an Open Directory Master. The address in question is usually fine and the DNS usually checks clean with changeip: changeip -checkhostname However the error recurs no matter what you do, even if you try and change the name of the Open Directory Master or the address you still usually end up seeing the same error. If it isn’t the address or the name then could it be the port? If you run lsof to see about that whole ldap port: lsof -i…
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Resolve “rootDSE not found” Error in Open Directory
Occasionally, when we go to install an Open Directory Replica for a new Open Directory environment, where the Master is running 10.8.4 we run into an error that: NSMutableDictionary *_getRootDSE(const char *): rootDSE not found At the GUI this just looks like: This could mean that you need to check the SSL box in the Directory Utility for the replica. You’ll know that’s the case if the Replica appears in the Server app but is still throwing errors when trying to work. This could also be an issue where the Master can’t get a version or the DSE from the Master. Assuming you already checked IP/DNS, let’s see if the…
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Exclusively Use a Given Interface for the Caching Service in Mountain Lion Server
The caching service in Mountain Lion Server (OS X Server 10.8) by default can use any interface installed on the system. I’ve now seen a couple instances where we have a Small Tree card and when a big update comes up, we loose file services speed due to caching data. To combat this, we can tell the Caching service to use the built-in Ethernet interface exclusively instead. To do so, first use ifconfig to determine which interface is which. Then tell the caching service which to use, using the serveradmin command, followed by settings and then the name of the setting, caching:Interface, setting the value to the en of the…
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Use Postgres On Mountain Lion Server
Mountain Lion Server (OS X 10.8 Server) comes with Postgres baked in. Many of the server services are tied into the Postgres installation and in the future more will be as well. The GUI provides no options for Postgres, but there are plenty of settings that can be accessed using the serveradmin command line. Simply run serveradmin followed by settings and then postgres to see what these are, as follows: serveradmin settings postgres Which outputs the following: postgres:log_connections = "on" postgres:unix_socket_directory = "/var/pgsql_socket" postgres:listen_addresses = "" postgres:unix_socket_group = "_postgres" postgres:log_statement = "ddl" postgres:log_line_prefix = "%t " postgres:unix_socket_permissions = "0770" postgres:log_lock_waits = "on" postgres:logging_collector = "on" postgres:log_filename = "PostgreSQL.log" postgres:dataDir =…
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Resolving Corrupt journal.db Files in Kerio
Sometimes it seems like sqlite just isn’t equipped for some tasks. Sometimes it seems like some developers aren’t. Sometimes it ends up being a mystery as to what is really going on behind the scenes. Like watching CNN on a television right next to Fox News at the gym. Both can’t be reality. But what is real, is that journabl.db files get corrupt in Kerio all the time. And the logs often say something about SQLITE_CORRUPT &/or “database disk image is malformed”. To correct, first stop the Kerio server, then nuke the .journal.db file. Assuming the mail store is /usr/local/kerio/mailserver/store/mail on a Mac (swap /usr/local with /opt if using Linux)…
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Recovering Open Directory Databases
Every now and then I see an Open Directory database that’s gotten corrupt for one reason or another. To be more specific, while I see Kerberos get wonky and password server issues from time to time, every now and then I see the actual LDAP database throw errors like this one, when checked with slapd: /usr/libexec/slapd -Tt Corruption usually looks a little something like this: 51890ba0 ldif_read_file: checksum error on "/var/db/openldap/openldap-data/cn.bdb" 51890ba0 bdb_monitor_db_open: monitoring disabled; configure monitor database to enable config file testing succeeded If the bdb (Berkeley Database) files can’t be read in properly then you can do a sanity check with slaptest to see if there are other…
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Remove the Delay For the Dock To Pop Up
I recently started hiding my Dock. I haven’t done that in over a decade, but I was ready for a change. But I’m not the most patient person in the world and waiting for the Dock to pop back up became a bit of a drag. So I looked around in com.apple.Dock and found an autohide-delay option. Setting that to -float 0 restored some sanity back into an already hectic enough world: defaults write com.apple.Dock autohide-delay -float 0 Then restart the Dock: killall Dock When you kill the Dock, it’s gonna’ reopen all the stuff you might have minimized down there. Well, this was close, but then this turned out…