Tangier Clarke1
Level 2 (279 points)
Desktops

Q: Goodbye OS X Server- I tried, we tried.

Frustrated, not angry...

 

Well folks. I think this is goodbye to OS X Server - the server that I thought was much easier to use.  I've followed instructions on this (https://discussions.apple.com/thread/5751873) forum and several others over the past 7 months.  It's cost me so much time and headache.

 

  1. Migrating wikis from Mountain Lion Server to Mavericks server has yet to work
  2. Upgrading our Mountain Lion Server to Mavericks leaves us without wiki, calendar, and other services
  3. Apple support docs don't do the trick
  4. Phone calls with Apple support techs haven't provided any solutions and they really do try.
  5. Our current Mountain Lion Server suddenly lost all filesharing authentication capability and Apple enterprise solutions haven't been able to figure this one out.
  6. I'm stuck with a server with broken mountain lion server I have never been able to upgrade and/or migrate and ultimately would be left to copy/paste wikis to a fresh Mavericks server, export/import calendars from each client station, and contacts - I don't even know how that's going to work.

 

I believe in keeping IT folks employed, but...

 

The support from Apple seems so marginal (just for the server) and the plethora of problems with upgrading to Mavericks server and/or the manual fight to only potentially get it done seems very un-Apple like and just downright counter to what Apple represents.

 

So I'll think different...

 

Our server will be relegated to a client machine with simple file sharing.  Perhaps We'll buy Daylite to assume some of the responsibilites.  Truth is, even when things were working, it was always flaky in some way.

 

I really wanted to employ OS X Server in an efficient way, but it's been more trouble than I can accomodate.

 

Fortunately I am not an average client user nor a novice, so working in terminal is comfortable.

 

Perhaps in a few years or so, I'll reconsider, but my experience with OS X server on Mountain Lion and Mavericks has affected my trust.

 

Thanks for all of the help to those who provided instructions, workarounds, directions toward solutions, etc.

 

For those of you who had a successful migration - consider yourself lucky.

 

...by the way...after finishing the incredible instructions on this (https://discussions.apple.com/thread/5751873) page (and i sincerely mean that despite them not working for me) the result was a wiki page that looked like this

 

Caught exception "[<CSEntityPlaceholder 0x7fb2d15d5910> valueForUndefinedKey:]: this class is not key value coding-compliant for the key externalID." [NSUnknownKeyException] executing route /app-context/wiki/:

(

0 CoreFoundation 0x00007fff8a0fe25c __exceptionPreprocess + 172

1 libobjc.A.dylib 0x00007fff8da20e75 objc_exception_throw + 43

2 CSService 0x0000000104bc7957 -[CSLocalServiceProxy forwardInvocation:] + 1229

3 CoreFoundation 0x00007fff8a05c1c4 ___forwarding___ + 452

4 CoreFoundation 0x00007fff8a05bf78 _CF_forwarding_prep_0 + 120

5 CSService 0x0000000104bf9573 __27-[CSAppContextService init]_block_invoke240 + 180

6 CSService 0x0000000104bdf81a __53-[CSRoutingHTTPConnection httpResponseForMethod:URI:]_block_invoke + 95

7 CSService 0x0000000104be2d6c -[CSHTTPBackgroundResponse bounce:] + 286

8 Foundation 0x00007fff9073976b __NSThread__main__ + 1318

9 libsystem_pthread.dylib 0x00007fff8bc58899 _pthread_body + 138

10 libsystem_pthread.dylib 0x00007fff8bc5872a _pthread_struct_init + 0

11 libsystem_pthread.dylib 0x00007fff8bc5cfc9 thread_start + 13

)

Mac mini, OS X Server

Posted on May 9, 2014 8:07 PM

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Tangier Clarke1

Q: Goodbye OS X Server- I tried, we tried.

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  • Helpful answers

  • by basilmir,

    basilmir basilmir May 15, 2014 1:55 PM in response to Tangier Clarke1
    Level 1 (76 points)
    May 15, 2014 1:55 PM in response to Tangier Clarke1

    Well, here is some advice from Captain Should've Could've Would've (or Hindsight, as Southpark knows him)

     

    You should've had everyhing backup to a tested Time Machine. That way if anything goes wrong, you could've restored without a hitch and just waited for the next minor version and to give it another try. Fast forward a couple of tries and you would've had a working server without knowing how it actually got that way.

     

    This is what I do.

     

    PS. I do admire Apple's persistence on the issue though. They've gone through 3 major versions and there are still some issues left. It's either harder than they initially thought or the team is falling behind (they do seem to have picked up the pace on version 3 though) I think the problem is OS X development has picked up the pace too, they are up from 10.8 to 10.9 in less than a year and half and Mavericks is advancing faster still. Who knows, Apple might dream up 10.10 until october '14. I mean it's friggin may and they are up to 10.9.3, just released, and it had 10 betas by itself. Continous integration anyone?

     

    PPS. What I can't figure out is why they keep changing stuff that works. They had Wiki Server 2 on python, then Wiki Server 3 on Ruby on Rails with some python left in there and now Wiki Server 4 was rewritten to use Javascript for everything exept some small Ruby and Python code.

    They probably have "certain people" telling them performance degrades with many users using the server and it doesn't scale well. Version 3 is by far the fastest so far. Plus they keep adding features here and there, and the thing is getting more and more complex. I mean... I heard they entirely rewrote SMB support because it sucked, by god, that alone is quite an undertaking.

     

    PPPS. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=esXJN_OTkmU

  • by Tangier Clarke1,

    Tangier Clarke1 Tangier Clarke1 May 15, 2014 3:27 PM in response to basilmir
    Level 2 (279 points)
    Desktops
    May 15, 2014 3:27 PM in response to basilmir

    Actually, I have been running all of these tests on a cloned version of the server which I kept cloning and running tests on so I'd have the latest working copy of our in-operation server.  I have time-machine versions and scheduled carbon copy cloner sparse images.

     

    Nothing was done on the operative server.

     

    HOWEVER!    

     

    Just recently (about a week or so ago) our current server - Mountain Lion Server stopped letting people authenticate via file sharing.  It would allow people in with their credentials for Wiki and Contacts, but File Sharing (SMB and AFP) and Calendar would not work anymore.

     

    Apple worked with me for three days on the matter and since one week ago today, they haven't called me back. Their enterprise team does not know what happened nor what to do.

     

    Upgrading the cloned server to Mavericks has been a total mess and through successive attempts, nothing worked well or usually at all.

     

    So I still have Mountain Lion server running strictly for Wiki.

    I have a clean Mavericks Server running (wiki to be rebuilt using copy/paste, etc.)

    On MAVS the contacts server isn't working.

    On MAVS the servername.local doesn't resolve.

     

    So I maintain, I'll revisit when it's working better.

  • by basilmir,

    basilmir basilmir May 15, 2014 3:50 PM in response to Tangier Clarke1
    Level 1 (76 points)
    May 15, 2014 3:50 PM in response to Tangier Clarke1

    Great to hear you still have it running.

     

    That being said my upgrade to Mavericks didn't go too well either. What I did to finally get it working is install a "beta" version of OS X Server 3 and then the final version over that.

     

    You might be able to get it running by successively trying every version from 3.0 onwards. You can still get them on a certain pirate site. I remember one of them actually being better than the others, 3.0.3.

     

    Also, the other issue of Mavericks itself being an unfinished mess means you could try 10.9.0 and all the os x servers and then 10.9.1 and all the os x servers and finally 10.9.2 and 10.9.3 (just came out) and all the os x servers.

     

    The thing is, once you get over the fence and all is running you're essentially out of the woods. Upgrades from the onwards have gone without a hitch.

  • by basilmir,

    basilmir basilmir May 15, 2014 3:54 PM in response to Tangier Clarke1
    Level 1 (76 points)
    May 15, 2014 3:54 PM in response to Tangier Clarke1

    Also, you can manually migrate all wikis or just some of them with this:

     

    https://discussions.apple.com/message/25726454#25726454

     

    http://support.apple.com/kb/HT5697?viewlocale=en_US&locale=en_US

     

    It saved me when I thought all was lost.