Have you done it? Frankly, I'm terrified. I've had so much trouble getting the darn thing to work that i don't want to mess it up! I rely on that thing for ichat, radius auth, dns, and a couple other things.
though, i never did get ical server working. i hope this update fixes that!
This is a fairly standard "production server upgrade" discussion...
No need for terror. You're not running transactions worth a billion dollars through your server every day; now that's terror. What's the worst that can happen here, after all? You're down. How do you recover? Work your way through the sequence to back out any problems, and follow it.
If the system is sufficiently critical, some funding for either an additional box or funding for sufficient temporary and archival storage, or both, will be required.
Acquire a spare server for "practice" and testing (and for redundancy), and practice and test your deployment over there. That's the best way. Both because production stays up, and because you have a replicated server should there be problems with a production box. Full redundancy gets into some expense around storage, too, as Apple tends to use SAN storage for shared data. This is typical of a production environment.
If redundancy is not feasible (for any of various reasons, including insufficient finances), acquire enough storage to make a disk image, and take the box off-line and image it, then load 10.5.3 and test it. This trades off the cost of the spare you don't have with the down-time you will have.
This also gets into having some tests for your environment, too. Stuff that you know you need to have operational. Which often gets into a cookbook of previous bugs and problems. Site-local testing and qualification.
And not intending to add to your terror, just because I and dozens of others might have 10.5.3 working does not imply 10.5.3 will work for you. You may well have some package or tool or setting or hardware that I (and others) don't have. You might have a lurking bad block on your disk; these disk-level errors are surprisingly common based on some Google and CMU data, and RAID-1 or RAID-10 or such is accordingly becoming increasingly central to correct storage operations, too.
Barring replicated deployments, computer systems are all somewhat unique.
And in any case, make and verify a backup before you upgrade.
well i know all of that, but i would hardly call leopard server a "production" quality product. looking through these forums for 5 minutes would tell even the greenest sysadmin that. its hard to release a product that tailors to every individual environment. with that said, i still expect the level of operation that was advertised and i have not gotten that out of leopard server at all. the main reason i
bought the darn thing was for ical server. and that has never worked! ever! granted, its probably because i have a mixed server environment and my master OD isn't leopard, but i'm not gonna upgrade something like that to a product i know is broken.
i admit that it was stupid of me to upgrade a server that houses business critical services with a product that is brand spankin' new. its like buying the first of anything and expecting it to be perfect. nothing is perfect and i realize that, i was simply looking for a run down to see if people had issues while updating.
i guess i should have phrased my question differently.
and apologies for the rant. its just frustrating to be so beholden to a product, only to have it consistently and constantly be stabbing you in the back.
Yes. It went well. Our main problem has been the AFP/OD-bug which has affected a lot of people in different ways. Since we don't get that every day, it's too soon to tell if it has been sorted out.
I'm having some problems with Server Monitor now, which crashes constantly, but I don't know if it's related to the Server upgrade.
Otherwise, the upgrade went well as far as I can tell. We're running AFP, Web, MySQL, squid, VPN, OD, DHCP and DNS on the server.
I've been running production servers for a very long time (over 25 years), and I'm currently running Leopard in production.
What you read here in the forums skews heavily toward bugs, and there's a contingent of folks here that (for better or worse) are unfamiliar with server technologies, running servers, or running production environments. I've seen a few daft configurations posted here. (Heck, I've a few daft configurations of my own making.)
There are some real long-standing and nasty bugs around, too.
Yes, there are frustrations with Leopard.
There are frustrations with every operating system I've ever worked with, worked on, or wrote code for.
If a bug bugs you, log a bug report. Most any vendor I've dealt with or worked for looks at the arriving bugs and bug rates as a central part of its scheduling. Most anyone dealing at the scale of the code-base and the numbers of users involved here lives by bug statistics and sales metrics.
What you read here in the forums skews heavily toward bugs,
Tue enough.
There are some real long-standing and nasty bugs around, too.
Too many, too big, and too long for a credible software company. Certainly, not acceptable in the fourth kick at the cat.
There are frustrations with every operating system I've ever worked with, worked on, or wrote code for.
Agreed, but see above.
If a bug bugs you, log a bug report. Most any vendor I've dealt with or worked for looks at the arriving bugs and bug rates as a central part of its scheduling.
In my experience in sw technical support, mission critical failures (i.e. product does not work as advertised and there is no work around) should be fixed immediately and patch released. Those with workarounds can wait until the next formal update. Apple has known about the failures in Mail since version 10.5.0, yet Mail is still broken, more so in 10.5.2 than it was in 10.5.2. 😟
This level of failure is not acceptable in even consumer-level software, let alone enterprise software, since the vendor knows that its clients rely on the product for their businesses to stay afloat.
still have some of my old problems (only default cert working in jabber; hwmond can't get int'fce name; ical; etc, etc)
also having that annoying library mismatch for the platformhardwaremanagement framework for server monitor so it won't run on the powerbook. have upgraded all the new versions... and upgraded to 10.5.3... still not working (!!) what gives with this??? why doesn't this framwork lib update?
I just upgraded earlier today from 10.5.2 to 10.5.3. iCal server is now broken for all users (who also have 10.5.2 or 10.5.3 running on their MacBooks/Pros). There seems to be some problem locating or accessing the directory/file that contains users' ical information. Strangely, all other features seem to be working after the update (iChat, Mail, OD, AFP, etc.). So I'm not sure what to do now - roll back the install to 10.5.2 (where iCal was working) or try to figure out how to get access again to the server's iCal Server UID files. Anyone have this problem too? Is there a straightforward way to reconnect iCal client to iCal Server?
Welcome to Apple Discussions -- sorry that you are having problems with iCal.
I assist you better, it would be helpful to know how you updated your server, via Software Update
control panel, via Server Admin, or by direct downloaded upgrade.
What other steps have you taken to resolve? Repair permissions, etc.?
Also did you save your Server settings regularly, as a safety or recovery measure.
Please hit us back with details, and I'll do my best to assist you.
So I followed the recommendations and did a backup of the server, then ran disk util and repaired all permissions, then downloaded the OS 10.5.3 combo update standalone package and performed the install. There were no errors on the install in the log (that I could tell), and most services are working - it's just iCal, and the Apple Mail accounts that are not working.
Unfortunately, I did not save the server settings (as I did not see where in the manuals that would be) but I would love to learn how to save these settings for going back.
In troubleshooting, I tried creating a new user with Workgroup Manager, using a template that I had been using before the update (i.e., I know it worked for several new user accounts before), then tried logging in to a client computer with that account, unbind/rebind to OD. Login worked fine, and iChat works, but again, I don't see an account for iCal on the server and iCal doesn't connect. I will next try repairing permissions with Disk Util and see if that helps at all.
If this has something to do with permissions, is there a way to test on one user account (e.g., enable all to access that folder & files) and see if I can restore access to that user's iCal files? Any help would be appreciated!
Just an additional possible clue, I also checked the wiki group calendars and they are not working either. They give the following error: Error from server: Error processing calendar data (210)
I will next try to create a new wiki and enable calendaring and see what happens....
I updated to 10.5.3 Server and client and my world is much better but I still have a lot to do. I did finally get DNS working properly. OD works, network accounts work. Home directories automount just fine. AFP sharepoints automount too. Mobile accounts seem to be working but sulking about saying they are up to date. Time machine backs up my data from a raid on the server just fine. Carbon Copy Cloner backs up my System Disk just fine.
But I am only running OD, AFP, DHCP, DNS, FTP, and Web. Theres still a LOT to be configured and Im scared of breaking whats working (hence all the backups).
I want virtual web sites, their user accounts and mail groups and mailman lists and all the other neat stuff to work more or less out of the box and it doesn't for me just yet - it just seems not to be coherent. I wont move my mail and live web sites to Server until Im sure of what Im doing and sure that its robust. Then and only then can I deliver wikis, calendaring, ichat, podcasting et al.
