Archive by Author

iCal Server: Broken Web Interface

by on 31. May, 2011 in Articles, Tips & Tricks

I’ve been using the built-in calendar server OS X Snow Leopard Server offers since day one. Paired with the address book service it saved me from spending another $99/yr on the MobileMe service. However, for the past month or so, the web interface hasn’t been working and will continually sit at the ‘Getting Events’ screen. Today I finally got around to checking through some error logs, specifically /var/log/caldavd/error.log. The following was the error I was getting:

2010-02-01 22:26:59-0600 [-] [caldav-8010] vobject.base.ValidateError: 'VEVENT components cannot contain both DTEND and DURATION components'

After searching around I came across this post on the Apple Discussion Forums. Something interesting to take note of is, the event was added/modified from the web interface (the product id):

PRODID:-//Apple Inc.//Web Calendar Client//

So that seems to lead me to believe there’s actually a bug within the web interface that isn’t setting the right parameters in the events. The fix is to remove the DURATION and replace it with DTEND (if it doesn’t already exist). What I did to find any events with DURATION was a simple grep:

sh-3.2# grep -ir DURATION /Library/CalendarServer/Documents/calendars/__uids__/

Then you can use your favorite editor to remove the DURATION line. Before making edits, I recommend stopping the calendar service, edit, then start it back up.

This resolved my issue, so hopefully it can assist anyone else with a broken web iCal interface.

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Save The Xserve

by on 09. Nov, 2010 in General

This afternoon I received an email in my inbox from a group of people who had put together a website in a last ditch effort to save the Xserve. While I doubt it’ll have any effect on Apple’s decision to continue their Apple Xserve product line, it’s certainly worth a shot. I know I for one am a fan of the Xserve and would love to see it live on.

My name is Jesse and I’m the IT Manager for a small business with offices in Vancouver and Toronto. Over the years, I’ve managed to get Mac OS X Server machines used as the backbone of our IT infrastructure.

With the announcement by Apple that the XServe is being discontinued, I fear that any serious adoption of OS X Server as an enterprise OS will stall, if not recede entirely. I am personally and professionally frustrated, because while Linux and BSD are close to OS X, but I don’t particularly want to work with other OSes, because I think OS X is just great.

Some of us are starting a grassroots campaign to let Apple know how much they’ve let us down. I doubt it will change their minds, but we aim to try.

http://www.savethexserve.com/

Cheers,

- Jesse S

Let’s see if Apple hears the cries of those who enjoy their Xserve. I sure don’t want to try rack mounting the Mac Pro :)

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Fixing the Delete Key In Terminal/SSH Sessions

by on 30. Jul, 2010 in Tips & Tricks

I administrate a variety of servers and while most of them don’t have issues when I connect from my Mac, one of our Debian servers has an issue with the ‘delete’ keyboard. Instead of deleting to the left it will do a forward delete and delete the character to the right of the cursor. This is behavior expected of the ‘delete’ key near the ‘home’ and ‘end’ buttons. Fortunately there’s a quick fix for this. Just open Terminal’s preferences. Locate the Advanced tab for the Terminal ‘profile’ you use and check off the ‘Delete sends Ctrl-H’ checkbox. Doing this will restore normal functionality.

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Creating a Subversion Repository on OS X Server

by on 08. Jun, 2010 in Tips & Tricks, Tutorials/Guides

I often find myself creating subversion repositories on my OS X Server. I’ve actually designated my OS X Server to be my Subversion server since Apple has been kind of enough to include the necessary software right out of the box. This applies to both OS X Leopard and Snow Leopard Server. I also find that each time I find myself going back to this one website which includes instructions on how to get it all working. Rather then write our own guide I figured it would be just as easy to link you all to the site I use instead:

Subversion on OS X Leopard Server

It’s pretty simple to follow, basically you just use the svnadmin command to create the actual repository, then you need to activate a couple modules for Apache via Server Admin, then create a realm, and voila! One thing I do different from the guide, is that I create all my repositories in /usr/local/svn/ instead of /usr/local/. This is really just a personal preference thing, however my main reason is for neatness. I like to keep things organized. You of course can create the repositories where ever you’d like, even in your home folders if that’s your thing!

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Disk Utility Broken in 10.6.3 – Fixing Degraded RAID Sets

by on 26. May, 2010 in Articles, General, Tutorials/Guides

Back in 2008 I wrote an article which discussed how one can recover from a degraded mirror RAID-array. Unfortunately it looks like this issue may have popped backup within Disk Utility and still requires one to use the command line version of Disk Utility to correct the issue. One of our readers Matt S. of Panorama Productions & Digital Services found this out and was kind enough to allow us to re-publish his findings.

—–

Unfortunately, my experience today does not support the conclusion that Apple has fixed the GUI in the Disk Utility included with OS 10.6.3.

I was forced to rely on the command line to add a replacement disk to a degraded RAID-1 because no amount of dragging and dropping in the DU window worked. The drag-and-drop would not place the replacement drive within the existing RAID set and the rebuild button never became active.

But the process was simpler than your prior description.

Wanting to take no chances with the data, I first cloned the data off the degraded RAID from the operating drive with Carbon Copy Cloner. In fact, I cloned it twice, to two different drives. Better safe than sorry.

I installed a new, replacement drive of equal capacity to the operating drive in my MacPro and initialized it as a single partition with a unique and easily identifiable name.

Using the command line in Terminal, I used the command “diskutil list” to get the disk numbers of all the disks installed in my MacPro.

Then, with no other commands necessary, I entered:

diskutil repairMirror disk4 disk0

Disk4 is the disk ID of the degraded RAID-1
Disk0 is the disk ID of the new drive

This command re-initialized the freshly initialized new disk I installed (called disk0), added it to RAID with the new name “RAID Slice disk0s2″, removed the name of the previously missing, failed member of the RAID-1, and automatically began rebuilding the array.

Much more efficient to type one command to do it all but I would rather that the GUI-based disk utility function as it should. It would be much more intuitive – and isn’t that what Apple products are supposed to be about?

—–

Matt also followed up to my email to which I had asked a few questions.

—–

The failed drive was NOT the boot drive.

I was NOT using the OSX 10.6.3 Install DVD as my boot disk. I was booted from my 10.6.3 normal boot hard drive.

And one other thing. I purposely and deliberately screwed up my RAID-1 just to see whether, in fact, Apple did fix the DU GUI. The drive itself did not go bad. I just wanted to experiment and I’m glad that I did. After the RAID rebuilt with the replacement drive perfectly in 4 hours, I deliberately failed the RAID again by removing the replacement drive and reinserting the original drive. I used the same command again and the original drive was reitialized and resynced to the still functioning drive just fine, only that took 7 hours. The only difference? My original drives are Seagate 1-TBs. The replacement test drive that I used was a borrowed WD RE3 1TB model. I think I’ll get four of those puppies! I guess there’s nothing like having two processing chips in a hard drive to almost halve the write times.

By all means, feel free to publish my comments. I wrote to you specifically to share my experience with you and your readers. The more all of us share our knowledge, the easier it becomes for other folks.

Best wishes,

Matt S.

That said, I’d like to myself try replicating the issue just to verify that once again the Disk Utility in 10.3.6 is broken. It’s too bad because it’s a lot easier to just drag and drop and new disk into Disk Utility rather then having to run through the command line.

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Flush Your Firewall

by on 17. Nov, 2009 in Tips & Tricks

The other day I was having some issues with my VPN and Mail server working correctly. After narrowing down the issue to it being my firewall blocking the issue, I went out on a hunt to locate the possibility to be able to flush out the current rules from the firewall. OS X Leopard Server uses ipfw as it’s firewall implementation. Even OS X Leopard client uses ipfw! Fortunately it’s pretty similar to iptables which we also use on our Linux servers so there was a way to flush out the current rules. Simply using the following command will remove all the rules that haven’t been saved (which can be done either via the command line or through that nice Server Admin GUI tool):

sudo /sbin/ipfw -f flush

Once that’s run, you have have a peek back inside the Server Admin tool and you’ll notice under the Active Rules there should be none or only a couple. You can also show the list from the command line (which you’ll probably want to do under client since it doesn’t work with the Server Admin tool. Use this command to do so:

bash-3.2$ sudo /sbin/ipfw list
65535 allow ip from any to any

As you can see, I allow everything on my client machine, but on the server:

palomino:etc jimmybrancaccio$ sudo /sbin/ipfw list
00001 allow udp from any 626 to any dst-port 626
00010 divert 8668 ip from any to any via en0
03885 deny ip from 58.251.59.9 to any
03890 deny ip from 89.96.140.154 to any
03895 deny ip from 211.143.101.226 to any
03900 deny ip from 212.222.147.130 to any
03905 deny ip from 58.185.182.212 to any
03910 deny ip from 76.17.182.127 to any
03915 deny ip from 202.102.245.109 to any
65535 allow ip from any to any

There’s currently some blocks in place. Anyways, just a couple useful ipfw commands!

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Colors In Terminal!

by on 03. Nov, 2009 in Tips & Tricks

dircolors-osx

Looking for a way to jazz up your Terminal.app? Here’s a quick and easy way to do so! Open up Terminal first, then type in nano -w ~/.bash_profile This will open a command line-based text editor. The file you’re editing is one that gets loaded every time you open a new Terminal window (or tab). Paste or type in the following at the end of the document:

export CLICOLOR=1

Then hit Ctrl+O and Ctrl+X. These key commands save the file and exit the editor. Now, open a new Terminal window and type in ls. This will list the contents of the folder you’re in (which should be your home folder) and the titles of the folders should be colored as shown in the above screenshot!

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Server Admin Tools 10.6

by on 09. Sep, 2009 in Software Update

serveradmintools106_20090828152418 When I installed Snow Leopard on my MacBook the first thing I noticed was that my Server Admin Tools were missing (I keep them as a Stack in my Dock). I quickly searched the Apple site for a download to the new 10.6 Tools but was unable to find the proper download. I keep getting links to the 10.5 Tools which don’t work on Snow Leopard or with Snow Leopard Server.

Fortunately today Morgan was able to dig up the correct link. With Server Admin Tools 10.6 you can administer both OS X Leopard Server 10.5 and OS X Snow Leopard Server 10.6!

Server Preferences and Server Status widget
The Server Preferences application and Server Status widget are for remote administration and monitoring of your server and key services including file sharing, address books, calendaring, instant messaging, mail, web, and virtual private networking.

Server Admin
The Server Admin application is for remote administration of one or more servers. It can be used to install and setup Mac OS X Server on a remote computer, manage file share points, configure service settings, monitor server activity, and provide detailed logging information for each of the running services.

Server Monitor
Server Monitor is for the remote monitoring and management of one or more Xserve systems.

Workgroup Manager
Use Workgroup Manager to remotely manage users, groups, and computer accounts in advanced server deployments. Workgroup Manager is also used to set and manage preferences for Mac OS X users.

Podcast Composer
Podcast Composer provides a visual step-by-step approach to easily build powerful workflows for Podcast Producer.

System Image Utility
The System Image Utility application is for the creation and customization of NetBoot, NetInstall, and NetRestore images.

Xgrid Admin
The Xgrid Admin application allows administrators to remotely manage clusters and monitor the activity of controllers, agents, and the status of jobs on the grid.

QuickTime Broadcaster
Use QuickTime Broadcaster along with QuickTime Streaming Server to produce professional-quality live events. The QuickTime Broadcaster application can be used to capture live audio and video streams and transmit them to QuickTime Streaming Server for redistribution.

Download Server Admin Tools 10.6.

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mailbfr

by on 06. Sep, 2009 in Tools of the Trade

mailbfr assists Mac OS X Server mail service administrators in creating a backup of their active mail settings and stores.

mailbfr will create a backup of all Postfix and Cyrus settings, together with the Postfix Queue, the Cyrus Mailstores and Sieve scripts. The type of backup (full, incremental, rotation) can be selected.

It has an array of additional functions. Among them the possibility to selectively restore settings, single mail stores, single mail users or all mail services.

mailbfr can also assist you in fixing a corrupt cyrus database.

This script is written for Mac OS X 10.3.x, 10.4.x and 10.5.x.

Download and more information.

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SSH To Your Server From Your iPhone/iPod touch

by on 02. Sep, 2009 in Articles, Tips & Tricks

IMG_0004

There’s a neat application on the iPhone App Store called TouchTerm which allows you to SSH in to your servers while on the go! I’ve personally found that this application has come in handy multiple times when a client needs a quick edit on one of their websites or if there’s a configuration error that needs a quick fix. I’ve also found it handy when the MySQL service or any of the services for that matter needs to be restarted. For 99 cents you really can’t go wrong!

The normal version of the application allows you to create server profiles so you can just tap them to connect rather then needing to input connection details every time you wish to connect to a server. I find this to be a really great time-saving feature. A new recent and much appreciated feature is the ability to use the application in landscape mode. This allows for the keyboard to be a bit bigger over the portrait mode.

The application support VT100 Terminal Emulation so that means you can run anything from top, to screen — really any console application!

There is a Pro version of this application includes all the same features as the normal version but also includes:

  • Extensive Configurability: Customize almost any aspect of the TT Pro interface, and manage configuration profiles to provide different settings for different servers.
  • Configuration Import/Export (Version 1.1): Import and export configuration settings, saved configurations, and keypads. This makes it easy to install “add-ons”, backup configuration data, share / download TT Pro ideas with the user community, and manually setup complicated or repetitive configurations using a text editor.
  • Command Library: You can “re-program” the interface functionality to suit your needs by referring to actions you do frequently. Nearly every user-accessible action is available in TT Pro as a custom command. This includes sending characters or commands to the remote host, changing font size and color, launching interface elements, and sending e-mails. Over 50 commands in all! These commands (individually, or in sequence) can easily be associated with gestures, custom keypads, and even application events. This provides you with complete control over the TT Pro interface!
  • Gesture Engine: TT Pro currently supports 94 different touch gestures, with more on the way. Each gesture can be customized to perform any of the available interface actions using the command library. Gesture Feedback also gives you instant, graphical feedback when a gesture is recognized, and “Practice Mode” allows you to quickly acclimate to the Gesture Engine. Finally, all aspects of the Gesture Engine are configurable. So you can now tailor settings for things like double-tap speed, swipe straightness, corner size, etc., in the way that is most comfortable for your usage in a particular context.
  • Copy and Paste: Easily place and adjust selection markers by dragging them within the terminal view. Popup zoom windows around the cursor make character-by-character adjustments easy, even when using a tiny font.
  • Auto-Completion: TT Pro includes the ability to index and remember everything you have typed or seen as output, and provide a popup list of available completions. Auto-Completion can be configured to launch whenever completions are available, or only when explicitly requested.
  • Graphical Filesystem Navigation: Never type “cd” on your iPhone again! FS Navigation Mode presents a graphical, table-based interface for quickly navigating directories with a single tap.
  • E-mail Integration: Mail the contents of the clipboard, the current terminal screen, or even the entire buffered contents.
  • Custom Keypads: Create and use any number of custom keypads. These keypads can be overlaid on the terminal view and used in conjunction with, or instead of, the standard iPhone keyboard. You have complete control over all the labels and actions associated with these keypads.
  • Integrated Help: TT Pro is a complex program, with powerful configuration tools and hundreds of ways to customize the interface just for your needs. To assist you along the way, integrated help is available through all stages of the customization process. Our online (iPhone-accessible!) guides and tutorials also help you quickly become familiarized with TT Pro.
  • Advanced Features: TT Pro includes several advanced features and options, such as control over SSH compression and encryption settings, and the ability to import private DSA/RSA authentication keys.

I haven’t got the Pro version myself, but I am thinking about getting it just for the ability to use the private DSA/RSA keys, and the graphical filesystem navigation abilities.

Check out the TouchTerm home page here and check out the normal and Pro versions of the applications on iTunes!

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