There are three basic methods in use today for hosting home accounts on networks in such a way that users have a single home account that follows them from computer to computer, giving them the same environment no matter where they log in. None of these three strategies works in a way that reflects how [...]
I have no time to write right now, but I just had to acknowledge a couple of the new Apple products quietly released yesterday. First off, for the server nerds in the house, Apple now officially sanctions using Minis as workgroup servers. We’ve all been doing this for a while now, of course, so it’s [...]
That title should give you a hint just how much my responsibilities have changed since I took my new job. Yes, I still run a Mac OS X Server, but I no longer get bi-yearly hardware updates. So my server is running a PPC, as is my workstation. So no Snow Leopard Server for me, [...]
Wikis are just one more thing I’ve always wanted to play around with. And my job has, once again, afforded me the opportunity to do just that. We’re currently using an engine called DokuWiki, so I decided to kick its tires and see what it — and wikis in general — are all about. DokuWiki’s [...]
Hey, here’s a weird one: I finally got my home account back to working order after my experiment with PHDs only to find that iCal couldn’t open any of my online calendars. It kept saying the password was missing from Keychain, then refusing to let me add one, saying that the “Keychain could not be [...]
Last week I began testing the Apple Portable Home Directories feature. I’d heard a lot of good buzz, but my experience was pretty terrible. Of course I was doing things my own way, and not the Apple way, which is always a bit dicey. Almost Proper Wanting to get PHDs working, I decided to try [...]
Now that I’ve tried it myself, I’ve very much enjoyed the advantages that having a network home account has offered. I’ve also rather disliked some of the disadvantages. Ultimately, the biggest drawback has been that when our production crew is doing a lot of rendering, my home account slows to a crawl and I can’t [...]
I can’t believe I never wrote this up, but I’ve been using the Software Update Server included with Mac OS X Leopard Server since I upgraded the servers at my old job. If your network — or Apple’s servers — are ever slow to get updates, having your own centralized SU Server can make a world [...]
As I mentioned a while back, I recently switched to a new web hosting provider, Media Temple. I wanted to provide a bit more detail as to why. About a month-and-a-half ago I was uploading some new content to my personal site, which hosts a fair amount of video and audio for download, on my [...]
Just this past week, Google made their CalDAV support — and, specifically, their support for iCal and other desktop calendar clients — official. A while back I reported on the beta version of this feature, and I was pleasantly surprised to find that the beta had actually ended. Along with offical support, Google is now [...]