mhcg.co.uk

Nothing really exciting to report here, add a queue for a network printer (LPR), enabled all the protocols as will need SMB for Windows clients and LPR with Bonjour enabled as I've found from experience it's easier just to let the users install whatever printers they want and Bonjour makes this a breeze.

Only things that stumped me a little was the 'kind' or printer model, by default Server Admin decided my printer was a Generic PostScript printer, which is probably can be but PostScript can be very slow to print, the way to set the real model is after adding the print queue, on the server it's self go into Preferences -> Print & Fax and you'll find your printer in there, set the type in the options and that's it.

Found out the URL wasn't valid for Snow Leopard, so wasn't working.  The correct URL should be ....

http://hostname.yourdomain.private:8088/index-leopard-snowleopard.merged-1.sucatalog

Just quickly enabled backup on the server both for the server it's self and for client computers.  Very simple, usual place for the server side, i.e. System Preferences on the server it's self and select the relevant disk.

User backups not much different, I'd already deleted the default Share Points in the AFP service, one of which is 'Backups'.  Note the Share Point can be called anything really but if you want Server Preferences to work properly, it seems to need to be called Backups.

Whatever name you call it, make sure the 'Enable as Time Machine backup destination' checkbox is checked and that's it, the disk will then appear to any Mac on your network when on the client computer you do Select Disk in the Time Machine preference.

Fairly easy to set this up, basically just turned the service on using Server Admin and set the options to auto copy All New updates and remove expired.  Main config issue was to configure the clients.

Firstly, I created a Computer Group in Workgroup Manager called 'Desktop', click on the icon on the right with the dots on it which seems to browse the network and allowed me to add my clients to the newly created group as below.

Also created a 'Mobile' group for MacBooks as you can see.  I then created the 'Client Computers' group and added the 'Desktop' group and 'Mobile' group to the Client Computers group, this will allow me to set preferences to my desktops and macbooks while excluding the server it's self.

Finally, clicked on the 'Client Computers' group and picked Preferences from the toolbar and set the Software Update as follows.

I know that update 10.6.2 came out on the 9th Nov that my clients don't have yet, so will wait a couple of days and see what happens, hopefully it will just 'work' and I won't have the hair pulling out sessions I've had in the past with Microsoft WSUS and Configuration Manager !

Default install seemed to only create a primary DNS zone for the server hostname only, i.e. hostname.mhcg.private in my case.  As I want to use this server as my main DNS server, I changed the zone to mhcg.private, not forgetting to change the Zone under Nameservers too.

From reading the Getting Started guide, it seems to suggest that had I not had a DNS server already, which I do as I'm currently using a Windows 2003 DC for this, then the Setup Assistant might have done this for me automatically.

Well I said I didn't get the DNS details and I was right, as I used my internet domain name, things weren't all good with the server.  For a start as I don't have that zone in my current DNS server and as Setup Assistant setup Open Directory, it used that as the realm which I really didn't want.  I came to the conclusion that I really wanted to use mhcg.private as my DNS zone, I did try to change this myself in the DNS settings but from various Googling on the point seems the general feeling on chaining the DNS name after running Setup Assistant is a bad idea and I think after the 6 hours of hair pulling I've just been through, I'd agree so rebuild time.

No CD/DVD drive of course in the mac mini server, I was just about to plan a visit to my nearest Apple Store for an external SuperDrive when I remembered how I've installed beta versions of Snow Leopard from the Apple Developer Connection, namely by 'restoring' a disk image to an external USB drive, then booting the mac mini while pressing the option key and selecting the USB drive as the boot device, so I made an image using Disk Utility of the supplied Mac mini server CD and restored to a spare USB drive.

As I'd had to physical move the mac mini into another room with a monitor, keyboard and mouse I ran the installation through until the Setup Assistant appeared, at which point I powered off the box and re-sited it back with my other boxes without monitor etc.  Back to remote config as originally then, you can do a remote install apparently but I couldn't work out how to get that working especially as it was asking for the first 8 characters of my serial number, which I was entering correctly, but Setup Assistant was adamant it was invalid.  Ran Setup Assistant exactly as before but with 'hostname.mhcg.private' for the DNS name this time.  For the record I used Disk Utility within the installation routine (first screen in fact) to erase the 'Server HD' volume before attempting reinstall.