Archive by Author

OpenDNS Expands with Deluxe & Enterprise Offerings

by on 21. Oct, 2009 in General

As of today, OpenDNS has added Deluxe & Enterprise plans to it’s free Basic service. I’ve been using OpenDNS’s free service for quite some time now and it does a good job of offering reliable, fast DNS with a few added bonuses such as phishing & botnet protection, typo correction, content filtering (if needed), and stats.

The Deluxe plan starts at $9.95/year, is ad-free, and includes the following features above and beyond Basic:

  • Up to 50 whitelist/blacklist domains (up from 25)
  • A whitelist-only mode
  • Advanced customization options
  • Archived stats & logs for 1 year (up from 2 weeks)
  • Email technical support 9-5 (Pacific) on weekdays (in addition to opendns.com/support)

According to the press release, “Notable features included in OpenDNS Enterprise include”:

Malware Site Protection to secure networks from online threats, Delegated Administration to allow multiple administrators across multiple locations to administer accounts, Block-Page Bypass functionality, which makes OpenDNS cloud-based Web content filtering more flexible and allows administrators and trusted individuals to bypass filtering when necessary, and more comprehensive reporting and statistics offerings, including a daily PDF report of network activity delivered via email.

Obviously, that’s in addition to the Basic & Deluxe features. You’ll have to call for Enterprise pricing.

[Via OpenDNS]

Read full story • Comments { 0 }

Mac mini with Snow Leopard Server

by on 20. Oct, 2009 in General

Along with other new products and a refresh of the Mac mini line, Apple has now come to their senses and is offering a Mac mini with Snow Leopard Server! For $999 you get a Mac mini w/2.53GHz Intel Core 2 Duo processor, 4GB RAM, and—get this—the optical drive has been ditched to make room for a second hard drive, so two 500GB 2.5″ 5400-RPM SATA hard drives. Oh, and Snow Leopard Server, of course.

It seems like this is going to be a great deal, especially assuming that the $599 Mac mini is spec’d with 2.26GHz processor, 2GB RAM, and $160GB hard drive, and SuperDrive. I’ve been using a Mac mini as a server for years and would love to add one of these to my network.

Update: They note that you can use the MacBook Air SuperDrive (USB) if you need an optical drive. I’ve always found a MacBook in FireWire Target Disk mode to be more than adequate, in a pinch.

Read full story • Comments { 1 }

spamtrainer 1.9.5 Released

by on 28. Sep, 2009 in General


Topicdesk has updated their spamtrainer utility to version 1.9.5 adding Snow Leopard Server compatibility. spamtrainer automates the process of training SpamAssassin’s bayes database by allowing users to redirect spam & ham messages to designated mailboxes which are used as training material.

[Via Topicdesk Newsletters]

Read full story • Comments { 0 }

Mac OS X Server 10.6.1 & Security Update 2009-005 Released

by on 11. Sep, 2009 in Software Update

Apple released the following updates to Mac OS X Server last night:

Mac OS X Server 10.6.1

Improvements include:

Further information can be found in Knowledge Base article HT3811 and the Updater is available for download.

Security Update 2009-005

Security Update for Mac OS X Server 10.4.x and 10.5.8 improves security in the following areas:

  • Alias Manager
  • CarbonCore
  • ClamAV
  • ColorSync
  • CoreGraphics
  • CUPS
  • Flash Player Plug-in
  • ImageIO
  • Launch Services
  • MySQL
  • PHP
  • SMB
  • Wiki Server

Further details can be found in Knowledge Base article HT3865 and the Tiger Server & Leopard Server updaters are available for download.

As always, let us know if either of these updates fix issues or break something.

Read full story • Comments { 0 }

On Twitter Too

by on 10. Sep, 2009 in General

For those of you who have a Twitter addiction (or even those who manage to only take healthy doses) and haven’t discovered this fact already, you can follow @macintoshadmn for the latest updates around here. We’re too busy for a ton of chatter so you’ll mostly see the automated posting of new articles, but if there’s something important we’ll let you know.

No worries if you’re not into Twitter, there’s also our RSS feed. Get in touch if you have any questions, suggestions, or submissions.

Read full story • Comments { 0 }

SirAdmin

by on 10. Sep, 2009 in Tools of the Trade

SirAdmin is a GUI tool for administering Cyrus IMAP mailboxes, including creating, renaming, deleting, reconstructing, ACLs, and metadata without having to use cyradm from the command line.

Note: Active development on SirAdmin has ceased, but it is open source.

Download and further information

Read full story • Comments { 0 }

Leopard Server 10.5.8 Duplicate Serial Number Errors

by on 01. Sep, 2009 in Software Update

There were reports of Server Admin complaining of invalid serial numbers after upgrading to Mac OS X 10.5.8 Server, most of which were from servers with multiple different physical ethernet ports with IP addresses on the same subnet. A few people were reporting that this was happening to them with ports on different subnets and even when using Link Aggregation, but it sounded like heeding Apple’s note that multiple physical network interfaces on the same subnet may cause routing issues solved the issue for most.

Well, Apple has since released Mac OS X Leopard Server 10.5.8 v1.1 and Network Registration Update 1.0 (for Mac OS X Snow Leopard Server 10.6) which resolve the issue, so there was definitely a bug there. I’ll put together a separate post regarding multiple physical network interfaces on the same subnet.

[Via AFP548]

Read full story • Comments { 0 }

SuperDuper! 2.6 Released

by on 28. Aug, 2009 in Software Update

Shirt Pocket has released version 2.6 of SuperDuper!, probably the most robust and simplest Mac application for creating bootable backups, bringing full Snow Leopard support to the table. Additional new features include:

  • Backup on connect
  • Eject after copy
  • Sparse bundle support

I’ve personally been waiting for “backup on connect” & “eject after copy” for a while. If you’re going to try Snow Leopard Server anytime soon, I highly suggest using SuperDuper! to create a fully bootable backup of your Leopard Server installation before doing so.

[Via Dan Benjamin]

Read full story • Comments { 0 }

mailbfr 1.0.6 Released

by on 26. Aug, 2009 in Software Update

I’m surprised that Mac OS X 10.3 Panther support lasted this long in Topicdesk.com‘s mailbfr (Mail Backup/Fix/Restore) utility, but version 1.0.6 is now out and will be the last to support it. Changes include:

  • Minor bug fix and clean up
  • This is the last release supporting Mac OS X Server 10.3 Panther

Also of interest: version 1.1 will be the first to support Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard, so keep your eyes open for that.

[Via Topicdesk Newsletters]

Read full story • Comments { 0 }

Apple Remote Desktop 3.3 & 3.3.1 Client Released

by on 24. Aug, 2009 in Software Update

I missed that Apple Remote Desktop had been updated to admin version 3.3 and client version 3.3.1 last Thursday, August 20th. Changes for this version include:

  • Improves support for accessing client computers and task servers behind NAT (Network Address Translation) routers.
  • Includes Task Server and Directory Server scanners, for finding client computers known by your task server and clients in computer groups on a directory server.
  • New “Reporting” tab in client computer Info window, to set a single reporting policy for the client computer, shared by all Remote Desktop administrator computers.
  • New “Administrators” tab in client computer Info window, to display and control which admin computers and task servers are associated with each client computer.
  • Client settings configurable by Managed Preferences in Workgroup Manager.
  • Support for finding and adding client computers via wide-area Bonjour.
  • Resolves an issue using Lock Screen or Curtain mode on a client computer that’s at the login window.
  • Improves stability when running Remote Desktop Admin on a Task Server.
  • Resolves an issue that could cause build_hd_index files to become very large.
  • Improves compatibility with the Application Firewall.
  • Change Client Settings task now works when the Remote Desktop administrator has an Active Directory account.
  • Improves client stability when Sharing Screen.
  • Scheduled UNIX Commands stay scheduled.
  • When controlling a remote client, function keys and key combinations for actions such as Force Quit, Log Out, and the Application Switcher are now all sent to the remote computer.
  • Improves screen sharing performance with RealVNC.
  • Improves performance of encrypted file copies.
  • Improves performance of encrypted screen sharing connections

I’ll be rolling the update out shortly and am looking forward to the compatibility improvements with regard to the firewall as I’m constantly plagued by issues in that area. Let us know how the update has worked out for you.

Read full story • Comments { 0 }
« Newer Entries
Older Entries »