Anyone set up 10.8 Server yet?

[chris_kemp]

Just took a shipment of new Mac Mini Servers with 10.8 on them. I'm going to be using them as cluster clients for administering remote locations in other cities.

A little background: I'll be running a NetBoot image on each machine, and replicating our package store to the local RAIDs. The database will live in our TGR - probably going to go Linux for that, and set up one or two of the Minis in-house to interface with our local client machines. (After testing, I'm not comfortable relying on the NetBoot Appliance at this point...)

Our main server is on 10.6.8, running Casper 8.52. I'll probably be upgrading to 8.6 prior to deployment since we're sending out new Mac Pros with these (which I assume will be running 10.8 as well, they should arrive any day now).

Anyone found any "gotchas" to be aware of? I know that they've replaced Server Admin.app with Server.app, which is a bit weird but usable I guess?

[nessts]

i do not see a way to run netboot images from 10.8 server, i believe i have seen some posts about getting it working though. which probably requires some command line stuff. I did successfully do a netinstall from the 10.8 server when i was playing with it. The software update server seemed pretty straight forward.

[mm2270]

I really don't like the new Software Update Server in 10.8 Server at all. Past versions it was easy to turn updates on/off with checkboxes next to each one. Now its a drop down menu next to each update where you need to choose an option. This also makes it much harder visually to determine which are and are not active. Before. you could scan for checkboxes, Now you have to read gray text in a small menu. Apple just continues on this march to completely ruin OS X Server and make it irrelevant. Maybe they just want it to die and this is their way of hastening its complete death.

To be clear, I'm all for making things simpler, but I fail to see how having to choose a menu item next to each update is somehow easier than clicking a checkbox. Were server admins somehow confused about what was enabled/disabled before? I think not.

[chris_kemp]

I did find this description of setting up NetBoot on 10.8. Apparently, you host under NetInstall but you set it up to just boot the image. I'll give that a more thorough going-over very soon.

http://krypted.com/mac-os-x/installing-and-managing-netboot-services-in-os-x-mountain-lion-server/

[nessts]

But really at its best OSX server was pretty irrelevant, which is why Apple is marching down the path they are, eliminating the hardware and turning it into a home server and proving they really don't care about the enterprise. And most enterprise people seem to be making good strides with the linux servers hosting software updates, and netboot anyway. If they would quit releasing new OS as fast as they do i would probably consider switching my servers over to Linux as well. but i can barely keep up with the packaging and imaging, and trying to figure out why they took away the ability to change the login screen picture and how to make it anything besides that lovely linen, disabling air drop and all of those things just take way too much time that i never get that far.

[chris_kemp]

No offense, but I'd appreciate it if we could focus on the topic at hand instead of debating the relative merits of Apple's path. :)

[gachowski]

Chris, it is "Apple" easy, it might be even less steps than X.7...

krypted.com is about what I did, ( I didn't do any of the cli stuff.

I do think there is a bug some place I, see

fnation.jamfsoftware.com/discussion.html?id=4426

[thomasC]

Admin Guide for 10.8 Server
http://help.apple.com/advancedserveradmin/mac/10.8/#
-----
Workgroup Manager 10.8
http://support.apple.com/kb/DL1567
-----
CLI for 10.8 Server
sudo /Applications/Server.app/Contents/ServerRoot/usr/sbin/serveradmin

Usage: serveradmin [-dhvx] [list | start | stop | status | fullstatus | settings | command] [<service_key> [ = <value> ]]

-h, --help display this message -v, --version display version info -d, --debug print command -x, --xml print output as XML plist
Examples:
serveradmin list --Lists all services
serveradmin start afp --Starts afp server
serveradmin stop ftp --Stops ftp server
serveradmin status web --Returns current status of the web server
serveradmin fullstatus web --Returns more complete status of the web server
serveradmin settings afp --Returns all afp configuration parameters
serveradmin settings afp:guestAccess --Returns afp guestAccess attribute
serveradmin settings afp:guestAccess = yes --Sets afp guestAccess to true
serveradmin settings --Takes settings commands like above from stdin
serveradmin command afp:command = getConnectedUsers --Used to perform service specific commands
serveradmin command --Takes stdin to define generic command that requires other parameters

---
sudo /Applications/Server.app/Contents/ServerRoot/usr/sbin/serveradmin list

accounts
addressbook
afp
bonjour
calendar
certs
config
devicemgr
dirserv
dns
filebrowser
ftp
info
jabber
mail
netboot
network
nfs
postgres
radius
san
sharing
signaler
smb
swupdate
vpn
web
wiki

[arekdreyer]

Don't be thrown off by the name change.

The word "NetInstall" appears in the Server app sidebar, instead of the name "NetBoot", which appeared in the sidebar of Server Admin in earlier versions of Mac OS X Server.

System Image Utility ships with every copy of OS X Lion, in /System/Library/CoreServices. In 10.7 you needed to download the Server Admin tools installer, and in 10.8 it's just there.

With the System Image Utility, you can still create three types of Network Disk images, and here's the language System Image Utility uses:

NetBoot Image: Allows Macs to boot over the network from a server-based disk image.
NetInstall Image: Installs OS X over the network from a hosted disk image
NetRestore Image: Restores a volume over the network from an Apple Software Restore disk image.

With OS X Server (Mountain Lion), you need to enable an interface for NetInstall, specify where to store images, copy an image to an appropriate location, enable the image, and start the NetInstall service.

[gregp]

Have a 10.8 NetBoot server here and it works fine. As arekdreyer says, different interface & names, but still there.

Several NetBoot servers here, 10.4 through 10.8 and all are hosting a 10.8 image, plus a variety other OS images.