Jss on REDHAT enterprise 5.5

[dhowell]

Is anyone able to setup the JSS on a redhat server. When I follow the steps, the 8443 port doesn't work ( does work on 8080?) and it says when doing a recon to it this user doesn't have rights to add computers to inventory. ( this user has all rights though and is the only user) I plan on calling Tech but wanted to give this a shot first.

D. Trey Howell ACMT, ACHDS, CCA
trey.howell at austinisd.org
Desktop Engineering
twitter @aisdmacgeek

[dkucmierz]

I have the tomcat clustered onto 3 servers with Redhat 6. Redhat 5.5 didn't have the right version of tomcat available via yum to work with our load balancer. I think you need to edit the some of the tomcat config files to enable port 8443, I don't think it was enabled by default.

--

David Kucmierz
Mesquite ISD Technical Services
972.882.5506

[#3]

I'm looking into doing this myself. Question though. How are you netbooting
and pushing out authorized apple updates? Wouldnt you still need OS X server
to run on apple hardware to do that ? Am I missing something ?

[dkucmierz]

That all is still coming from OSX Server running on Xserves. I am in the process of getting everything migrated off OSX Server without any decent rackmountable hardware to support it… Sill early in the process, but there are open source alternatives for those services.

--

David Kucmierz
Mesquite ISD Technical Services
972.882.5506

[jarednichols]

The only thing I haven't figured out is the Software Update Server angle.
There's something called Munki that we're looking into, but that's on a
back burner I can't even reach without a stick.
-- Jared F. Nichols
Desktop Engineer, Client Services
Information Services Department
MIT Lincoln Laboratory
244 Wood Street
Lexington, Massachusetts 02420
781.981.5436

[dkucmierz]

Ya I'm in the same situation.

I was looking at this article on afp548 to get netboot running on Linux:
http://www.afp548.com/article.php?story061220102102611
I was looking into munki for SUS: http://code.google.com/p/munki/

Netboot is my bigger priority of the 2, but they are both are backburner
for a long while unless our xserves die.

--

David Kucmierz
Mesquite ISD Technical Services
972.882.5506

[jarednichols]

They'll still be serviceable, just not buyable new. So it's really just if
you're looking to go to brand new hardware.

j
-- Jared F. Nichols
Desktop Engineer, Client Services
Information Services Department
MIT Lincoln Laboratory
244 Wood Street
Lexington, Massachusetts 02420
781.981.5436

[#8]

Ahh ok. We do everything here over SMB. I got AFP running on ubuntu using
Netatalk once upon a time ago but the service died pretty often.
http://www.kremalicious.com/2008/06/ubuntu-as-mac-file-server-and-time-machine-volume/

Right now my plan would be to buy a mac mini server as the head and use
beefy linux servers as distribution points. Im going to try to set up a DP
on a linux vm and let you know my results.

[dkucmierz]

Ya... I'm basically looking for a reason to virtualize it all and save
some rackspace and get rid of all our ppc hardware.

--

David Kucmierz
Mesquite ISD Technical Services
972.882.5506

[#10]

So after some testing I was able to setup a working dp on a red hat virtual
machine. Our JSS is still on an xserve, it only grabs the packages from the
linux box. It was pretty easy (only need ssh and smb running) but there are
alot of little steps. I'm going to try to script it all up and when I'm done
I'll post it.

If anyone else has any other insight let me know. I plan on testing munki
out in the next couple of days. IF anyone has any exp with that, please
chime in. ~Joseph

[jarednichols]

I'm curious as to what you find regarding the server's file system and hosting Mac-friendly files. Do you run into any file name characters you can't use, size limits, etc etc.

Thanks!
--
Jared F. Nichols
Desktop Engineer, Client Services
Information Services Department
MIT Lincoln Laboratory
244 Wood Street
Lexington, Massachusetts 02420
781.981.5436

[dhowell]

Our main Distribution point is a Mac and all the others are Redhat VM's. We use Rsync to get to sync them, I have roughly 55 GB on each and haven't had any issues with names of files. D. Trey Howell ACMT, ACHDS, CCA
trey.howell at austinisd.org
Desktop Engineering
twitter @aisdmacgeek

[daworley]

Related to Munki is also Simian:

http://code.google.com/p/simian/

I have a feeling with the Xserve going away, we'll be seeing a lot of JSS on other platforms with ExtremeX-IP and something like Munki/Simian, and the hacked NetBoot service coming together.

It would be great if there were a product that provided NetBoot and SUS on non-apple platforms. [wink wink] [nudge nudge]