File Services are perhaps the most important aspect of any server because file servers are often the first server an organization purchases. There are a number of protocols built into OS X Mountain Lion Server dedicated to serving files, including AFP, SMB and WebDAV. These services, combined comprise the File Sharing service in OS X Mountain Lion Server. File servers have shares. In OS X Mountain Lion Server we refer to these as Share Points. By default: File Sharing has some built-in Share Points that not all environments will require. Each of these shares is also served by AFP and SMB, something else you might not want (many purely Mac…
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Using Wikis & WebDAV in OS X Mountain Lion
A wiki is a repository of dynamically created and managed content, or content created or edited by multiple users collaboratively. This article is about using the wiki service in Mountain Lion. I reference file services with WebDAV because it is a very nice integration piece that I think a lot of people will find pretty beneficial. To get started with the Wiki service, first turn it on. This one isn’t heavily dependent on host names (other than being able to access the server from a browser) or directory services (other than being able to authenticate users, but local accounts are perfectly functional) and it doesn’t require the Websites service to…
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MacTech Conference Sessions Posted
Not sure if I mentioned awhile back that I’ll be doing a talk at MacTech Conference in Los Angeles. This session is on Regression Testing. The official description is: We have images, packages, scripts, file drops, managed preferences, profiles and countless other means to create change on client systems. This means a practically infinite number of combinations of change on client systems. In order to qualify whether an “image”, which is in reality a combination of all of these things, passes our test of whether or not we can roll it out to users, we must first test it. Otherwise, we end up flooding our help desk, touching systems by…
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Managing DNS Using Mac OS X Mountain Lion Server
The most impactful aspect of the changes in OS X Mountain Lion Server at first appears to be the fact that DNS looks totally different in the Server app than it did in Server Admin. For starters, most of the options are gone from the graphical interface and it looks a lot less complicated, meaning that there are indeed fewer options. However, all of the options previously available are still there. And, the service behaves exactly as it did before, down to the automatically created host name when a server is configured and doesn’t have correctly configured forward and reverse DNS records that match the host name of the computer.…
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Setting Up The Messages Service In Mountain Lion Server
iChat Server was sooooo easy to configure. iChat Server is now Messages Server. Both use the open source jabber project as their back-end code base. Lucky us, all Apple did in the latest iteration is change the name of the service in the Server app, leaving the command line effectively untouched. The paths to things serverish have changed. The jabberd binary is now at /Applications/Server.app/Contents/ServerRoot/private/var/jabberd and the autobuddy binary is at /Applications/Server.app/Contents/ServerRoot/usr/bin/jabber_autobuddy. Given the importance of having multiple binaries that do the same thing, another jabberd binary is also stored at /Applications/Server.app/Contents/ServerRoot/usr/libexec/jabberd. Note that the man page says it’s in /etc. But I digress. Setting up the Messages service is simple. Open the…
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Apple Certified Associate For OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion
Apple has posted the first of the Mountain Lion certifications. Information about the Apple Certified Associate – Mac Integration 10.8 is available at http://training.apple.com/certification/macosx. This certification requires only one exam, 9L0-408, which can be taken online. There’s no word yet on the ACSP or ACTC for 10.8, although I am certain work on them is in progress. The current table of certifications is as follows: The test is relatively simple. I took it this morning and it focused completely on the client in a heterogenous environment. There were questions about AD binding, sharing files between Windows and OS X Mountain Lion clients, securing the OS (Gatekeeper, FileVault 2), Time Machine, Messages…
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Installing the Mountain Lion Server VPN Server
OS X Server has long had a VPN service that can be run. The server is capable of running the two most commonly used VPN protocols: PPTP and L2TP. The L2TP protocol is always in use, but the server can run both concurrently. You should use L2TP when at all possible. Sure, “All the great themes have been used up and turned into theme parks.” But security is a theme that it never hurts to keep in the forefront of your mind. If you were thinking of exposing the other services in Mountain Lion Server to the Internet without having users connect to a VPN service then you should think…
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Changes in Mountain Lion Server
Mountain Lion Server is now available on the OS X App Store and as with the last few updates there are some things missing that you might be expecting and depending on. First up, three major services are gone: Podcast Producer, RADIUS and dhcp. You can still do dhcp as you always did with OS X client as those features work on OS X Server, but the more granular controls available in OS X Server are now gone. The biggest impact of dhcp is probably in testing NetBoot services when there are network issues and you need to prove to network admins that it’s the network and not your server……
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Copy Files Status in Mountain Lion
Of the new features in Mountain Lion, one I have already started to love is the fact that when you’re copying folders, you see a status in the Finder screen that lists the folders. This allows me to do a bunch of Finder level copies and rather than tile out the screens that I’m using to copy, I can just watch them from the parent folder. Sometimes it’s the little things…
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A Better Way To Paste Addresses from Mail
One of my little irritations about OS X just got easier. When I’m using Mail and I copy and email address and paste it somewhere, it has the name of the contact bracing the email address wrapped with a . This is a royal pain. I am pretty sure that every single flippin’ time I’ve removed the cruft around the email address. While digging around in com.apple.mail I noticed a key for AddressesIncludeNameOnPasteboard that was set to True. Holy crap. Change to False and this minor irritation is gone. Viola, OS X is now even better: defaults write com.apple.mail AddressesIncludeNameOnPasteboard -bool FALSE To set it back: defaults write com.apple.mail AddressesIncludeNameOnPasteboard…