Macintosh-Admin

Last week one of our database servers notified me that the main OS drive had less then 5% storage space. I loaded up one of my favorite tools, Grand Perspective to see what was taking up so much space. Sure enough, I had about 5-6GBs of space left, and there were about 20-25 files each 1-2GBs in-size. Each file was a log file for MySQL. These were each binary log files.

Following the same article on the MySQL website, I found out that it was possible to delete the log files without screwing anything up. Running the PURGE BINARY LOGS did so. Now it is possible to set log sizes, but since I really have no use for them I just stopped the logging all together.

You can do this by editing the following file:

/etc/my.cnf

Locate the following lines and then comment it out.

# Replication Master Server (default)
# binary logging is required for replication
#log-bin=mysql-bin

Glenn Fleishmann over at Ars Technica has a great article explaining the new WPA crack. Here’s the quick & dirty explanation:

[I]t’s a method of decrypting and arbitrarily and successfully re-encrypting and re-injecting short packets on networks that have devices using TKIP. That’s a very critical distinction; this is a serious attack, and the first real flaw in TKIP that’s been found and exploited. But it’s still a subset of a true key crack.

Tews pointed out that “if you used security features just for preventing other people from using your bandwidth, you are perfectly safe,” which is the case for most home users. Someone can’t use this attack to break into a home or corporate network, nor decipher all the data that passes.

Fortunately, WPA2’s AES encryption is not susceptible to this crack, so making sure your AirPort & WiFi networks are switched over to WPA2 is best done sooner rather than later. If you still have some 802.11b/g clients that only support WPA, you’ll want to assess how much of a risk this is for your environment.

[Via Daring Fireball]

The next edition of Mac OS X Server, dubbed “Mac OS X Snow Leopard”, will include a few major enhancements and additions. I for one am hoping the Address Book server & the iCal server will become more group-ware based. The iCal server right now is, and I lightly say, TERRIBLE. It’s definitely a step in the right direction but I think it’s implemented poorly. How about you, what new feature in Mac OS X Snow Leopard Server are you most looking forward too?

iCal Server 2
iCal Server, a calendaring and scheduling service based on open standards, was the first commercial CalDAV calendar server. Snow Leopard Server follows up with the next major release of iCal Server, which includes group and shared calendars, push notifications, the ability to send email invitations to non-iCal Server users, and a browser-based application that lets users access their calendars on the web when they’re away from their Mac.

Collaboration
Leopard Server provided businesses with the power of online group collaboration through the use of wikis, blogs, mailing lists, and RSS feeds. Snow Leopard Server furthers collaboration with wiki and blog templates optimized for viewing on iPhone; content searching across multiple wikis; and attachment viewing in Quick Look. It also introduces My Page, which gives users one convenient place to access their web applications, receive notifications, and view activity streams.

Remote Access
Secure remote access to your business network has never been more critical than in today’s increasingly mobile world. Snow Leopard Server delivers push notifications to mobile users outside your firewall, and a proxy service gives them secure remote access to email, address book contacts, calendars, and select internal websites.

Multicore
More cores, not faster clock speeds, drive performance increases in today’s processors. Snow Leopard Server brings unrivaled support for multicore processors with “Grand Central,” a new set of built-in technologies that makes all of Mac OS X Server multicore aware and optimizes it for allocating tasks across multiple cores and processors. Grand Central also makes it much easier for developers to create programs that squeeze every last drop of power from multicore systems.

ZFS
For business-critical server deployments, Snow Leopard Server adds read and write support for the high-performance, 128-bit ZFS file system, which includes advanced features such as storage pooling, data redundancy, automatic error correction, dynamic volume expansion, and snapshots.

Podcast Producer 2
Podcast Producer 2, an end-to-end solution for encoding, publishing, and distributing high-quality podcasts, features an intuitive new workflow editor that leads you through all the key steps involved in creating a successful podcast. This includes everything from selecting videos, transitions, titles, and effects to adding watermarks and overlays to specifying encoding formats and target destinations — wiki, blog, iTunes U, Podcast Library — for your finished podcast. Support for dual-video source capture lets users record both a presenter and a presentation screen, allowing a picture-in-picture style ideal for podcasting lectures. Podcast Producer now includes Podcast Library, which lets you host locally stored podcasts and make them available for subscription by category via automatically generated Atom web feeds.

Mail Server
Mac OS X Server’s open standards-based mail service is the ideal server for small businesses or companies looking to bring email in-house. Snow Leopard Server dramatically increases its performance and scalability with an overhauled engine designed to handle thousands of simultaneous connections. Mail services have been enhanced to include server-side email rules and vacation messages.

Address Book Server
Introducing the first open standards-based Address Book Server, Snow Leopard Server makes it easier than ever to share contacts across multiple computers. Based on the emerging CardDAV specification, which uses WebDAV to exchange vCards, Address Book Server lets users share personal and group contacts across multiple computers and remotely access contact information without the schema limitations and security issues associated with LDAP.

64-bit
To accommodate the enormous amounts of memory being added to today’s servers, Snow Leopard Server uses 64-bit kernel technology to support breakthrough amounts of RAM — up to a theoretical 16TB, or 500 times what is possible today. More RAM makes server applications run faster and dramatically improves the total number of simultaneous network connections that can be made.

OpenCL
Another powerful Snow Leopard technology, OpenCL (Open Computing Language), makes it possible for developers to efficiently tap the vast gigaflops of computing power currently locked up in the graphics processing unit (GPU). With GPUs approaching processing speeds of a trillion operations a second, they’re capable of considerably more than just drawing pictures. OpenCL takes that power and redirects it for use in high-performance computing applications like genomics, video encoding, signal processing, and simulations of physical and financial models.

Source: Apple

The past couple of days have seen a number of software updates related to Mac OS X Server, including Mac OS X Server 10.5.5 (combo):

- directory service reliability and authenticating new File Sharing connections
- binding and authentication in Active Directory environments
- editing Wiki content in Safari, Firefox and Internet Explorer
- viewing Wikis and Blogs from an iPhone or iPod touch
- searching with Spotlight in the Finder and on the web
- sending ‘Welcome’ email messages to users in Server Preferences
- importing users and working with nested groups in Server Preferences
- randomization of DNS source ports and transaction IDs
- updating DNS information when server IP address changes occur
- hosting DHCP services
- supporting private events in iCal
- synchronizing Portable Home Directories
- enabling Software Update Server
- using SNMPv3 services
- hosting with WebObjects; update to version 5.4.3
- hosting mail services for users with long user names
- preventing mail server database corruption
- ensuring security of LDAP password hashes
- propagating password changes to Open Directory replicas
- creating and editing DNS records in Server Admin
- using System Image Utility to create NetBoot and NetInstall images
- creating augment directory records in Advanced server configuration 
- using Managed Preferences when clients are bound to Active Directory
- providing RADIUS authentication to 802.11n-enabled AirPort Base Stations

And, of course, there’s the 10.5.5 Server Admin Tools to go with it:

Server Admin

- Server Admin can now correctly enable and show the status of RADIUS or Kerberos authentication for the PPTP VPN service.

- RADIUS service now reliably displays the primary IP address for 802.11n-enabled AirPort Base Stations.

- Server Admin can now sort by Value in the Zones tab of the DNS service.

System Image Utility

- Fixes issues with certain options in the Apply System Configuration Settings action, including “Change ByHost settings”, “Apply Computer Name and Local Hostname”, and “Map clients to other directory servers”.

- The Add Packages and Post-Install Scripts action now works correctly when creating a NetInstall image from a volume.

Workgroup Manager

- Improves browsing, adding, and removing computers to or from a computer group.

Last, but not least, Apple Remote Desktop Admin and client have been updated to version 3.2.2:

- Improved reliability with the Copy Items command.
- Upgrade Client Software command now uses unicast packets for improved reliability on some networks.
- Fixes to the Force Quit All Applications and Copy Items to Computer Automator actions.

Let us know any success or horror stories you may have related to these updates.

Snow Leopard’s across-the-board leap to 64-bits, from the kernel to all of its bundled apps, will do more than just make more memory available. It will also have a significant positive impact on performance system wide, even more than the same jump to 64-bits in Windows Vista. Here’s why.

Source: AppleInsider.com

Corsair has updated their Securing Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger white paper to include “the new security features offered by Mac OS X Leopard (10.5)” as of August 18th.

You can grab any of their white papers (including the Tiger & Panther versions of “Securing Mac OS X”) from their Technical White Papers page. Or, you can grab the Securing Mac OS X Leopard (10.5) (PDF) directly.

[Via TUAW]

Yesterday Apple released an update of Leopard Server to version 10.5.4, including the following changes:

- directory service reliability and authenticating new File Sharing connections
- binding and authentication in Active Directory environments
- editing Wiki content in Safari, Firefox and Internet Explorer
- searching with Spotlight in the Finder and on the web
- sending ‘Welcome’ email messages to users in Server Preferences
- importing users and working with nested groups in Server Preferences
- hosting DHCP services
- supporting private events in iCal
- synchronizing Portable Home Directories
- enabling Software Update Server
- using SNMPv3 services
- hosting with WebObjects 5.4.2
- hosting mail services for users with long user names
- preventing mail server database corruption
- ensuring security of LDAP password hashes
- propagating password changes to Open Directory replicas
- creating and editing DNS records in Server Admin
- creating augment directory records in Advanced server configuration 
- using Managed Preferences when clients are bound to Active Directory

Mac OS X Server Combo 10.5.4 is available for download from Apple’s web site as well as via Software Update.

Please let us know your experiences, positive or negative.

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