Upgrading Casper

How big is your environment? Do you have other Mac servers?
When you can schedule some acceptable downtime, I'd backup, wipe the box,
install 10.5, update to 10.5.6, then install Casper and restore your backup.

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Miles A. Leacy IV

? Certified System Administrator 10.4
? Certified Technical Coordinator 10.5
? Certified Trainer
Certified Casper Administrator
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voice: 1-347-277-7321
miles.leacy at themacadmin.com
www.themacadmin.com

I agree with pervious posts. We had better luck when doing a clean install of OS X 10.5 server first. Installing JSS and then restoring from backup. Much better performance than the upgrade in place.

Nathaniel Lindley

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Educational Technology
Saint Paul Public Schools
Saint Paul, Minnesota
nathaniel.lindley at spps.org
phone: 651-248-6861

Hi Cyrus,

I would agree with the path that Miles has suggested. Create a backup of the JSS database and your CasperShare data if it's not on a separate partition, wipe the box, install 10.5, patch it, then install the new Casper and restore your files and database.

I personally felt that Leopard use to run poor on the older Xserves if you don't have Intel based servers.

The JSS documentation has a lot of the information on how to do the JSS portions.

As for a fail over solution. I house our primary Xserve on our main server floor, and I house a second in our backup center. I have the second server setup as a secondary distribution point with nightly sync. Inside of the CasperShare folder I also house the automated database backups so they are also automatically carried over to the second server. That's how I deal with at least making sure the files and database are somewhere else in the most lazy way possible.

However, this doesn't do anything for making sure the JSS has a fail over solution that's automatic. If the main JSS goes and I need something for the clients to talk to I'd have to install the JSS on the second server and make sure the DNS pointer gets updated. As it stands the clients aren't aware of a second server they can turn to if the primary is down.

I'm not saying how I do it here is the right way, and I'd love any suggestions on how to do it better. I know that there are several requests for failover of services into JAMF already, me included.

But who are we kidding...the JSS never goes down. ;)

Craig E

I upgraded this summer this is what I did

Make a back up of version 5

Wipe and reload and upgrade to 10.5 server, loaded server clean, set up
IP and DNS, install JSS clean, import database

No problems really at all