Xserve saturating a 1Gbps link
August 24th, 2010
The Xserve has no problem saturating a 1Gbps link on our Juniper switch. This graph shows the port activity with an Xserve attached. No performance tuning was necessary to achieve the speed.
iTunes shows all songs as ૱ after Migration Assistant
July 10th, 2010
I recently upgraded my laptop from the first unibody MacBook Pro to the new i5 MBP. To import my old laptop, I booted in target disk mode and used Migration Assistant.
Everything worked great with the Migration Assistant, except when I launched iTunes. All the letters in the interface appeared as squares. When getting info on the song the title in the top of the window is correct, but all the data appears as “૱”
This issue was cleared after quitting and relaunching iTunes.
Dedicated Mac mini July special:
July 6th, 2010
Take advantage of our Core 2 Duo dedicated server special: Intel Core 2 Duo, 10.6 OS X Server Software, 80GB disk, 250GB/mo transfer on a 100Mbps port.
$100/mo, month-to-month.
As always, there is no setup fee.
New Mac mini Servers
June 15th, 2010
CloudMac is happy to announce immediate availability for the new Mac mini server: http://www.apple.com/macmini/server/
Apple Online Seminar – Active Directory
June 7th, 2010
Apple has a nice online seminar for Active Directory integration available online. More seminars are also available for no charge.
Xsan 2.2 issues with SMB Reshare
May 27th, 2010
If you are sharing Xsan volumes with OS X Server over SMB / CIFS with Xsan 2.2, you may run into some errors copying files. Files may copy fine from Windows workstations to the Xsan volume. Copying files off the Xsan causes the following error:
Items Not Found:
This is no longer located in X:\. Verify the item's location and try again.
To resolve this, edit the /etc/smb.conf file on the Xsan re-share server and change the following line:
stream support = yes
to this:
stream support = no
More information could be found in Apple KB TS3179
Please note this is not persistent after OS X Server updates.
“Well known” TCP and UDP ports used by Apple
April 29th, 2010
Apple KB TS1629 has a nice KB page documenting common TCP and UDP ports. This is very helpful for limiting the amount of outside access to your Apple server.
Cannot replicate a directory with augment user records
April 28th, 2010
We have our servers set to authenticate against our LDAP infrastructure. This is configured from Server Admin > Services > Open Directory. The role needs to be set to “Connect to another directory.” This allows for authentication with LDAP as well as Active Directory.
If you want to upgrade later to an Open Directory replica, you will need to unbind the server and then select “set up an Open Directory replica.” If the server is still connected to the other directory, you will receive the following error:
“Cannot replicate a directory with augment user records”
Steps to accomplish this are available from the Apple KB article TS3180.
1. From the Apple menu, choose System Preferences.
2. From the View menu, choose Accounts.
3. Click Login Options.
4. Click the Edit button that is next to Network Account Server.
5. Click Open Directory Utility.
6. In Directory Utility, double-click LDAPv3 (you may need to click the lock icon and authenticate first).
7. Select your Open Directory Master from the list and
8. Click Delete.
Viewing more history
April 23rd, 2010
The default shell for OS X Server is Bash. In this video, I show some options for displaying more shell history and how to setup aliases. To emulate our bash environment in this video, copy/paste the following into ~/.bash_profile
alias ll='ls -alh'
HISTFILESIZE=2000000 HISTSIZE=100000 HISTTIMEFORMAT='%F %T ' HISTIGNORE="&:[ ]*" export HISTTIMEFORMAT HISTSIZE HISTFILESIZE HISTIGNORE (more...)
Booting the Xserve from the Boot Panel
April 21st, 2010
It is possible to boot the Xserve from alternate boot volumes without using a keyboard or mouse. Press and hold system identifier light button at start to select from the boot target.
The options we use most often are:
Light 1 (far right): Start up from system disk in CD drive (also, eject any disc in the optical drive).
Light 2: Start up from a network server (NetBoot).
When we receive new orders of Xserve’s, we deploy our default image using Deploy Studio
More information is available within the Apple Knowledge Base article TA26930.
Our video below shows more information on how this works in action.