For the last month, I have been playing with OS X Server on my Powermac G5. Original motivation came from only having space to play with one vintage computer, and I couldn't decide between setting up my G5 or one of my early intel iMacs. With Server, I can do both!!! It's really cool to see how late PPC hardware and early Intel hardware can seamlessly integrate together, and unless you knew how to check the system config, you wouldn't even know if you're on a PPC or Intel Mac. I decided to put a few of my thoughts on the Server here, and maybe encourage others to give it a try. I know there is a separate discussion forum on networking and server-related topics, but it seems more oriented to modern server solutions.
I am using 10.5 Leopard Server, as it's the latest version PPC will support, and is also fully compatible with my early Intel iMacs. When you set up Server, you'll be very underwhelmed. You are presented with a very basic install of OS X Leopard. I would recommend leaving Server plain vanilla. You will install all your apps on the clients, not the server.
I used the book "Mac OS X Server Essentials Second Edition", which covers 10.5 Leopard Server. The book is a good introduction, but it also lacks depth and as I explored Server, I found many areas where the book is lacking, and you should refer to the Apple documentation. Unfortunately, it appears Apple is no longer hosting the documentation for this version of server, but I was able to find it on the Wayback Machine (OS X Server Resources), and I posted a .zip archive of the documentation on Macintoshgarden - OS X 10.5 Server
My basic config:
Things I want to try out:
Some lessons learned (so far):
I am using 10.5 Leopard Server, as it's the latest version PPC will support, and is also fully compatible with my early Intel iMacs. When you set up Server, you'll be very underwhelmed. You are presented with a very basic install of OS X Leopard. I would recommend leaving Server plain vanilla. You will install all your apps on the clients, not the server.
I used the book "Mac OS X Server Essentials Second Edition", which covers 10.5 Leopard Server. The book is a good introduction, but it also lacks depth and as I explored Server, I found many areas where the book is lacking, and you should refer to the Apple documentation. Unfortunately, it appears Apple is no longer hosting the documentation for this version of server, but I was able to find it on the Wayback Machine (OS X Server Resources), and I posted a .zip archive of the documentation on Macintoshgarden - OS X 10.5 Server
My basic config:
- DNS Server using the domain: "pretendco.com" Since I'm not using the server online, I could use any domain, but Ideally it should be unique and not conflict with an existing domain. You need DNS running to direct your client computers to the appropriate service.
- Open Directory Master: Network User accounts are hosted on the Open Directory Master. These are the accounts you will use to access services from a client machine.
- AFP: Automount User home directories, and any other directories you want auto mounted when a user logs in, i.e. a group directory for shared files.
- NetBoot: NFS Share of bootable disk images for client computers. With Netboot, it is possible to netboot any compatible client machine. Great for using a client computer on the server if you don't want to erase the HD and install 10.5 Leopard. Netboot can also host OS X Install images, making it easy to do a fresh install on a vintage Mac, especially if the CD-ROM drive is broken.
- My G5 is running headless, and all server configuration occurs via the Server.app running on a client computer.
- Once I got that configuration working, I was able to get Mail, iChat, iCal, Web services all working internally on my home network.
Things I want to try out:
- Get a local network Certificate Auth Server running, so my OS X Server issues valid certificates. Then I would be able to connect to services such as mail with a modern Mac. My modern Mac complains the trusted certificate is not valid, and won't let me add the service.
- Get the Podcast Capture tool to work, and make a podcast with one click.
- Have my Server run a vintage Mac sub-net on the 2nd Ethernet port on my Powermac G5, and bridge the vintage network with my home router network.
- VPN Network - connect to my vintage Mac via VPN from an outside net. Maybe use a modern VPN solution to connect into my server.
- Get a vintage MacBook Pro from about 2008-2009 to have a laptop I can use with the server, and use mobile accounts.
Some lessons learned (so far):
- I was not able to login network accounts from later versions of OS X. I originally tried to log in to my server from a client running 10.6 Snow Leopard. It seems that Server only supports clients at or below its version number... i.e. a 10.4 client should be able to log into a 10.5 Server, although I haven't tried this. It would be interesting to see how low you could go with the client.
- Mobile Accounts allow you to synchronize your home directory with the Server and login to your user account when off the network. I haven't found good rules for synchronizing home directories, and it re-syncs all files every time, not just new files. This was annoying, so I turned off Mobile Directories for now. I think in an enterprise environment, you would only sync configuration files, and work-related files, so that would save a lot of time by not including user data such as music/ photos/ movies/ etc.
- Kerberos Server is running correctly, but not all apps are "Kerberized". Open Directory and AFP work with Kerberos, but other services do not. I need to dig into the Apple documentation to figure this out. Advantage of Kerberos is you would only need to authenticate once on login for all servers.
- Netbooting- clients. When you make changes to the Netboot image from a client, they're not written to the image itself. They're written to a separate "shadow" file. I made configuration changes to my netboot image on one client computer. When I booted the same image from another client, the changes were not there. This leads me to believe you will not run out of space on a Netboot image if you add software, as the changes are written to a "shadow" file, but with the caveat that that software would only be accessible from the client computer on which you installed it... Maybe there's a way to synchronize shadows to the original netboot image, or change the default behavior?
- Netbooting on 10.5 seems to support OS 9 Clients. That would be interesting to try, if I had a computer capable of natively booting OS 9.
- To make a netboot image, you need to first install Leopard (or earlier) on a client computer. Configure it the way you want. Then use Target Disk Mode to mount the HDD and make a Netboot image. I have not found any online pre-made netboot images. But then again, most server installs are unique, so it makes sense to roll your own netboot images.
- Time Machine will not show backups of User data for online accounts or other online mount points. This was surprising. I have both my Server and Client computers backed up to a Time Machine partition. But it appears that when you access Time Machine from a Client computer, you only have access to the files installed locally on the Client. I guess you'd have to ask the Server Admin to recover a user file. If you used Mobile Accounts this wouldn't be a problem.
- Spotlight works across all mounted directories, unlike Time Machine. That is very cool.
- Network settings can be a bit flakey, especially if you move between wired and wireless networking. I made separate Location Settings on my client machines under Network Preferences.
- Alternating between local Hard Disk and Network boot on the same machine can be flakey. I recommend sticking to one or the other on a client computer.
- I wish there were a way to combine mounted directories, like you can do on Plan9. i.e. an /Applications directory on a Client and a shared /Applications directory on the server. But I have not found a way to do this.
