Let’s say you can’t figure out where some enormous application hides its licensing information, what system files are getting altered by a third-party installer, or even just where some non-standard preferences are getting squirreled away. There are lots of ways to distribute settings to multiple machines, but far fewer to determine what those settings are and how they’re stored. What you need is a way to see what files system changes are taking place. The easiest way is with FSEventer from fernLighting.

Last week in part one of this article, we learned how to configure a single OS X Server to provide DNS. This week, we’ll look at providing redundancy with a secondary DNS server and configure our client machines to receive our new DNS settings.

Without DNS, the domain name system that translates computer names to IP numbers, most networks would fall apart completely. As well as directing traffic on the internet, DNS is used for name-based routing in corporate environments, and especially for machines (like laptops) which can span the two. With Apple’s recent focus on URL-based protocols, and despite the popularity of LAN-based systems like Bonjour, the ability to configure internal DNS properly is an essential skill. In this two-part article, we’ll look at how to do just that.

Just two weeks after EMC began shipping Retrospect 8.0, the newest version of their long-neglected and much-maligned backup software for Macintosh, a catastrophic bug was found which can accidentally erase any data stored within a multi-tape library.

If you support an art department as part of your job, chances are the Adobe Creative Suite is all they really care about. The OS could go without updates, Office could go without security patches, and you could go on vacation without them noticing as long as Photoshop, InDesign, and Acrobat all worked properly. Which is why it’s so upsetting when a CS4 installation that’s worked for months suddenly gives this error instead:

Providing a consistent user experience across multiple machines is a common way for system administrators to minimize troubleshooting time and facilitate training. A new user begins work with a standardized environment, designed for their organization and familiar to those around them.

For a much-ballyhooed feature when Leopard premiered, iCal Server has had a checkered history, dangerously unstable for its first few minor updates and providing little more than database corruption, frustration, and an excuse to use the word “ballyhooed”. Now that things have calmed down, many companies are experimenting with the service to see if it’s ready for production.

OS X Server offers an extremely simple system to manage account preferences, at least those user preferences predefined by Apple. Systems administrators, however, typically find themselves needing to control application settings that haven’t been singled out in Workgroup Manager.

If you’re responsible for more than a handful of Macintosh workstations, you can’t get away with running from desk to desk with a firewire drive anymore. IT departments are getting the call to do more with less, and consultants who still charge time-and-materials aren’t getting called at all. For years now, Apple has stressed the .pkg format for mass deployment of their own software. If you’re responsible for deploying third-party applications, on the other hand, the best tool on the market right now might just be JAMF Software’s Composer 7.

Backing up client machines to a specially-provisioned network share is one of the marquee features of Leopard Server. Unfortunately, it’s a feature with far more promise than documentation. When it works, it’s a dream, finally freeing you from an aging Retrospect setup (or worse). When it fails, though, it tends to do so without much insight as to what’s gone wrong. If you can’t get Time Machine backing up to a server, you’ll get plenty of detail as to why. Once a machine stops backing up properly, though, there’s no real indication as to how you might get it working again.