Anyone who supports graphic designers learns to hate fonts. As tiny pieces of software loaded directly into the operating system, they’re responsible for more than their fair share of system issues. So it goes with users whose systems freeze up on login, displaying nothing but their desktop background and a lonely spotlight icon in the upper left corner of the screen. The issue is so common, there are a myriad of third-party tools to address it. And like so many common problems, this one comes down to fonts again.

When the Macintosh computers on your network don’t have a Macintosh server to control them, the result can be chaotic. Some users wind up with multiple passwords to keep track of while others give up by keeping their account passwords blank. Passwords to Windows resources can expire without warning because users have no PC to reset them with, and machines can be reconfigured with passwords that aren’t even documented.

Most servers sit behind your company firewall, reachable only through NAT and port forwarding or protected from the outside world entirely. If you’ve got a machine that needs full access to both the internet and your local network, however, getting both interfaces up and running can seem like a crapshoot. New servers will usually work fine, while those configured on a second network later on will often fail. XServes and Mac Pros come with two ethernet ports, so you’d figure setting them up on two separate networks wouldn’t be much of a challenge. And it isn’t, if you know the trick.