OS X Mountain Lion Server for dummies pot

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OS X
®

Mountain Lion Server
FOR

DUMmIES
‰
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by John Rizzo
OS X
®

Mountain Lion Server
FOR

DUMmIES
‰
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OS X
®
Mountain Lion Server For Dummies
®
Published by
John Wiley & Sons, Inc.
111 River Street
Hoboken, NJ 07030-5774
www.wiley.com

Copyright © 2012 by John Wiley & Sons, Inc., Hoboken, New Jersey
Published by John Wiley & Sons, Inc., Hoboken, New Jersey
Published simultaneously in Canada
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About the Author
John Rizzo has been writing about computers for 25 years. His work has
appeared in Macworld, Infoworld, CNET, PC Magazine, eWeek, the San
Francisco Chronicle, and other publications.
John is the author of over a dozen books, including Lion Server For Dummies,
Snow Leopard Server For Dummies, Mac Mini Hacks & Mods For Dummies
(all by John Wiley & Sons), Moving to Windows Vista (PeachPit), and Mac
Annoyances (O’Reilly). He’s also written several books on Mac-and-Windows
cross-platform networking and other topics on Mac and Windows hardware
and software.
John publishes the website MacWindows.com, which, since 1997, has been
the web’s largest news and information resource devoted to helping Mac
users get along in a Windows world.
John is also a member of the Board of Trustees at the San Francisco

Community College District, where he promotes the use of technology to
improve student learning.
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Author’s Acknowledgments
The ink was barely dry on my copy of Lion Server For Dummies when Apple
announced Mountain Lion. In Lion Server For Dummies, I said that I would
never write another book. People took me seriously. A reviewer at Amazon
said that my pledge was the best part of Lion Server. I suspect that this is not
the case, but I’m not completely unbiased on this subject.
In the past, the time between Apple revisions of its operating system was
just long enough to make me forget how much work it is to write one of
these books. But Lion Server For Dummies wasn’t even six months old when
Apple announced Mountain Lion. Naturally, I was hesitant to take on the new
project. I pointed out the Amazon review to my publisher. The publisher then
offered to pay me, so I put aside the humiliation of deceiving my readers and
relented.
So I’d like to thank Kyle Looper, who kept my phone number despite all the
trouble I caused him during the last book, and Susan Pink, a great editor
who knows her stuff. Kyle made some great suggestions for this book, which
I used in almost every chapter. Susan read every word of this book and
suggested some better ones in a different order that usually made more
sense. To her credit, she repeatedly asked me what the meaning of “it”
is, which I learned is not the same as Bill Clinton asking in 1998 what the
meaning of “is” is.
Now, I’m through with pledges. With Mountain Lion Server For Dummies
under my belt, I’ve written a proposal for my 15th book, Writing a Dummies
Book For Dummies. The publisher hasn’t yet responded, but I’m hopeful.
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Publisher’s Acknowledgments

We’re proud of this book; please send us your comments at .
For other comments, please contact our Customer Care Department within the U.S. at 877-762-2974,
outside the U.S. at 317-572-3993, or fax 317-572-4002.
Some of the people who helped bring this book to market include the following:
Acquisitions and Editorial
Project Editor: Susan Pink
Senior Acquisitions Editor: Kyle Looper
Copy Editor: Susan Pink
Technical Editor: Dennis Cohen
Editorial Manager: Jodi Jensen
Editorial Assistant: Leslie Saxman
Sr. Editorial Assistant: Cherie Case
Cover Photo: background: © iStockphoto.com/
teekid; screen insets: © iStockphoto.com/
Matt Kaminski
Cartoons: Rich Tennant (www.the5thwave.com)
Composition Services
Project Coordinator: Katherine Crocker
Layout and Graphics: Joyce Haughey,
Christin Swinford
Proofreaders: Melissa Cossell, Jessica Kramer,
Lauren Mandelbaum, Bonnie Mikkelson
Indexer: Estalita Slivoskey
Publishing and Editorial for Technology Dummies
Richard Swadley, Vice President and Executive Group Publisher
Andy Cummings, Vice President and Publisher
Mary Bednarek, Executive Acquisitions Director
Mary C. Corder, Editorial Director
Publishing for Consumer Dummies
Kathleen Nebenhaus, Vice President and Executive Publisher

Composition Services
Debbie Stailey, Director of Composition Services
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Contents at a Glance
Introduction 1
Part I: Getting Mountain Lion Server Up and Running 7
Chapter 1: Mountain Lion Server: An Overview 9
Chapter 2: Choosing Server Hardware 23
Chapter 3: The Quick and Easy Installation and Setup 47
Chapter 4: Advanced Installation and Setup 61
Part II: Creating and Maintaining User Accounts
and Directories 85
Chapter 5: Controlling Access with Directories and Open Directory 87
Chapter 6: Integrating Open Directory with Active Directory 107
Part III: Serving Up Files and Printers 121
Chapter 7: Setting Up File Sharing 123
Chapter 8: Controlling Access to Files and Folders 139
Chapter 9: Sharing Printers over a Network 153
Part IV: Facilitating User Collaboration 179
Chapter 10: Sharing Contacts with Contacts Server 181
Chapter 11: Serving Up Calendars 191
Chapter 12: Hosting Websites and Wikis 205
Chapter 13: Running an E-Mail Server 225
Chapter 14: More Collaboration with Messages 239
Part V: Managing Clients 249
Chapter 15: Mass Deployment of OS X 251
Chapter 16: Managing iOS and Mac Accounts 261
Chapter 17: Creating Mobile Accounts for Notebooks 301
Chapter 18: Keeping Your Server Healthy and Secure 319
Part VI: The Part of Tens 343

Chapter 19: Ten Things You Can Add to Mountain Lion Server 345
Chapter 20: Ten Cool Things That Didn’t Make It into the Rest of the Book 353
Index 359
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Table of Contents
Introduction 1
About This Book 1
Conventions Used in This Book 2
What You’re Not to Read 2
Foolish Assumptions 3
How This Book Is Organized 3
Part I: Getting Mountain Lion Server Up and Running 3
Part II: Creating and Maintaining User Accounts and Directories 4
Part III: Serving Up Files and Printers 4
Part IV: Facilitating User Collaboration 4
Part V: Managing Clients 4
Part VI: The Part of Tens 5
Icons Used in This Book 5
Where to Go from Here 6
Part I: Getting Mountain Lion Server Up and Running 7
Chapter 1: Mountain Lion Server: An Overview 9
Why You Need Mountain Lion Server 10
Why you need Mountain Lion Server at home 10
Why you need Mountain Lion Server in business and education 11
The Servers in Mountain Lion Server 12
File server 13
Directory services 13
Contacts Server 13
Calendar Server 14

Messages Server 14
Network services for Internet connections 14
Mail Server 15
Web hosting 15
Wiki Server 16
Prole Manager for iOS and OS X 17
Software Update Server 17
NetInstall 17
NetBoot 18
Spotlight searching 18
Time Machine backup 18
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Management Tools in Mountain Lion Server 18
Introducing the Server App 19
Conguring services and accounts with the Server app 19
Monitoring your server and making general settings changes 21
Workgroup Manager 21
Command-Line Administration 22
Chapter 2: Choosing Server Hardware 23
Criteria for Selecting Server Hardware 23
Number of users 24
Type of use 24
Hardware Requirements for Running Mountain Lion Server 26
Selecting Processors for Your Mac Servers 27
Putting Enough RAM in Your Server 28
Selecting Hard Drive Storage 30
Rotational speed 30
Drive form factor 31

RAID storage 31
NAS and SAN 32
Choosing the Right Mac for Your Server 33
Mac mini as a server 33
iMac as a server 38
Mac Pro as a server 39
Xserve as a server 41
Considering Other Network Hardware 42
Power backup for your server 42
Data backup for your server 43
Ethernet switches and cables 43
Wireless equipment 45
Chapter 3: The Quick and Easy Installation and Setup 47
Installing the Software 47
Upgrading the base OS to Mountain Lion 47
The pre-server-install check 49
Downloading and installing server components 49
Conguring Services and Accounts 53
Checking network settings 53
Considering Open Directory 55
Creating users and groups 56
Turning on le sharing 57
Backing up Macs to the server 59
Chapter 4: Advanced Installation and Setup 61
A Road Map to Installation and Setup 61
Collecting Info Before You Install 62
Hardware ID numbers 62
Network ID numbers 63
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Table of Contents
Planning Installation Scenarios: Clean Install, Update,
and Server Migration 65
Erasing, Partitioning, and Creating a RAID by Using Disk Utility 66
Erasing or partitioning a drive 67
Creating a software RAID 69
Performing a Clean Install of the Base OS with a Recovery Disk 70
Creating a recovery disk 70
Performing a clean install of the base OS 71
Downloading and installing the server components 73
Upgrading Older Servers 75
What’s not moved from Snow Leopard Server 75
Migrating or upgrading mail 76
Recovering Podcast Producer data 76
DNS in Mountain Lion Server 77
Understanding DNS concepts: Zones and records 78
Using the Server app to congure DNS zones and records 79
Keeping Control of Mountain Lion Server Updates 80
Researching the update 81
Conguring Software Update properly 81
Downloading and testing updates 82
Changing Ethernet Addressing 83
Part II: Creating and Maintaining User Accounts
and Directories 85
Chapter 5: Controlling Access with Directories and Open Directory 87
Dening Directories 87
Local and shared directories and domains 88
Account types in a directory 89
Authenticating with LDAP and Kerberos 90
LDAP 90

Kerberos and single sign-on 91
Determining Whether You’re Running a Local or Network Directory 93
Planning for an Open Directory Deployment 93
Factors to consider for your plan 94
Master, replica, and relay servers 95
Prerequisites 97
Checking for proper DNS setup 97
Synchronizing time for Kerberos reliability 98
Enabling time server synchronization 98
Conguring Open Directory 99
Creating an Open Directory master or replica with the Server app 99
Importing directory information with the Server app 102
Binding to an existing directory 103
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Binding Clients to the Shared Domain 104
Binding Mac OS X 10.6 and later clients 104
Binding Mac OS X 10.5 and earlier clients 105
Binding Windows clients 106
Chapter 6: Integrating Open Directory with Active Directory 107
The Magic Triangle 108
Binding Your Server to Active Directory 108
Checking DNS conguration 110
Binding the server 110
Deciding Whether to Muck Around with Advanced Conguration 114
Managing User Groups with Workgroup Manager 116
Conguring Single Sign-On for Mac Clients 118
Troubleshooting and Getting Help 119
Part III: Serving Up Files and Printers 121

Chapter 7: Setting Up File Sharing 123
Protocol Soup: AFP, SMB, and Other File-Sharing Methods 123
File-sharing protocols 101 124
Security in le-sharing protocols 125
Conguring File Sharing 126
Logging in and turning on le sharing 126
Creating a share point 128
Assigning le-sharing protocols to a share point 129
Assigning groups to access the share point and setting
permissions 130
Conguring ACL permissions (advanced) 133
Propagating permissions to subfolders 136
Setting Up and Using FTP File Service 137
Chapter 8: Controlling Access to Files and Folders 139
Dening Owner, Group, and Others (and Sometimes Everyone) 140
Owner 140
Group 140
Others, Everyone, and Guests 141
Standard POSIX Permissions versus ACL Permission Schemes 141
Working with Standard POSIX Permissions 142
Standard POSIX permission propagation behavior 144
Inherit permissions from parent 144
Working with Access Control Lists 145
ACL permissions 146
ACL inheritance 148
Removing or editing inherited permissions 150
Using inherited and explicit ACEs together 151
Troubleshooting with Rules of Precedence 151
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Table of Contents
Chapter 9: Sharing Printers over a Network 153
Listing Printer Sharing Features in Mountain Lion Server 153
Printer Sharing Technology and Terminology 154
Communicating with the printer 154
Communicating with the client 155
Mountain Lion’s Print Management Software 156
Looking at System Preferences for printer sharing 156
Accessing the CUPS print engine from a browser 157
Setting Up Shared Printing 158
Setting up your printers 158
Turning on print sharing 159
Checking the workgroup name for Windows clients 160
Sharing printers by using System Preferences 160
Sharing printers by using the CUPS interface 162
Creating a printer pool by using classes 164
Restricting access to shared printers 165
Managing Printers and Print Jobs 170
Using System Preferences to manage printers and jobs 170
Using the CUPS web interface to manage printers and jobs 171
Don’t Forget Your Clients 175
PPD les 175
Helping Mac clients print 176
Helping Windows clients print 176
Helping Linux and Unix clients print 177
Printing from iOS devices 177
Part IV: Facilitating User Collaboration 179
Chapter 10: Sharing Contacts with Contacts Server 181
Clients for Contacts Server 182
Mac, iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch support 182

Windows clients for contacts service 183
Prerequisites 183
Optional DNS 183
Internet access through a router 185
Setting Up the Contacts Server 185
Disabling user access 186
Enabling Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) security 186
Enabling push notication 187
Setting Up Users’ Client Devices 188
Setting up a user’s Contacts or client 189
Setting up an iPad, iPhone, or iPod touch 190
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Chapter 11: Serving Up Calendars 191
Clients for Calendar Server 192
Prerequisites 193
Directory service for Calendar service 193
Optional: Setting up DNS for calendar service 193
Setting Up Calendar Service 194
Starting calendar service and restricting access 195
Enabling e-mail invitations 196
Enabling SSL encryption 197
Adding locations and resources 198
Turning on push notication 199
Enabling web calendars 201
Setting Up Mac and iOS Clients for Calendar Service 201
Adding a Calendar Server account to Mac clients 201
Adding a Calendar Server account to iOS clients 203
Creating a calendar on the server by using the Calendar client 204

Setting a delegate by using the Calendar client 204
Chapter 12: Hosting Websites and Wikis 205
Prerequisites 205
The Automatically Created Collaboration Website 206
Turning on and setting up a wiki-based site 207
Navigating the built-in website 208
Creating a new wiki and setting access 209
Creating blogs 211
Adding content and editing wikis, blogs, and pages 212
Using comments, tags, and notications 213
Enabling calendars and other settings 214
Hosting Your Own Websites 217
Replacing the built-in wiki-based site with your own site 218
Running your own website and the built-in wiki-based
site together 220
Virtual hosting, aliases, and redirects 222
Dynamic generation, CGI scripting, and other advanced settings 223
Troubleshooting website access problems 224
Chapter 13: Running an E-Mail Server 225
Understanding Mail Protocols 225
Mail Service and the Internet: DNS 227
Creating an MX record in OS X Server 228
Relay servers 231
Setting Up E-Mail Service 231
Authenticating and Encrypting Mail 232
Securing mail authentication 233
Securing e-mail messages with SSL 234
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Table of Contents

Blocking Spam and Other Nasty Bits 235
Creating User E-Mail Addresses 237
Setting Up a Mailing List 238
Chapter 14: More Collaboration with Messages 239
Instant Messaging, Conferencing, and More 239
Clients for Messages Server 240
Prerequisites 241
Open Directory conguration 241
Firewall ports 241
Internet routers 241
DNS conguration for some situations 242
Conguring Messages Service 243
Assigning screen names for users 244
Saving and archiving chat messages 245
Enabling server-to-server federation 245
Advanced conguration 247
Part V: Managing Clients 249
Chapter 15: Mass Deployment of OS X 251
NetBoot, NetInstall, NetRestore 251
Creating a System Image 252
Creating a NetBoot set 253
Creating a Custom NetInstall image 254
Setting Up and Starting the NetInstall Service 256
Designating a default image 258
NetBoot’s share points 258
Starting a Client Mac from NetBoot or NetInstall 259
Chapter 16: Managing iOS and Mac Accounts 261
The Server App and Prole Manager versus Workgroup Manager 262
Managing Accounts with the Server App 263
Setting up and managing user accounts with the Server app 263

Setting up and managing group accounts 271
Conguring Clients with Prole Manager 273
What you can do with conguration proles 274
Conguring Prole Manager on the server 275
Conguring proles on clients 279
Managing Accounts with Workgroup Manager 282
Connecting to the server and authenticating to the directory 282
Creating user accounts with Workgroup Manager 284
Changing default account settings 284
Disabling and deleting user accounts with Workgroup Manager 288
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Creating group accounts with Workgroup Manager 288
Editing and deleting group accounts with Workgroup Manager 291
Importing and exporting accounts 291
Conguring OS X Clients with Managed Preferences 292
Creating computer and computer group accounts 293
Conguring managed preferences 294
Inheriting, combining, and overriding preferences 297
Enforcing managed preferences 298
Using Software Update Server to Control Updates from the Server 299
Chapter 17: Creating Mobile Accounts for Notebooks 301
Connecting Workgroup Manager to a Shared Domain 302
The Nightmare of Networked Notebooks 303
Planning and Deploying Mobile Accounts 305
Simplifying mobile management with computer and
group accounts 305
Conguring mobility settings 306
Creating Server-Based Home Folders and Deploying Mobile

Home Folders 310
Creating server-based home folders 311
Conguring the mobile home folder 312
Putting sync to work on the client 316
Chapter 18: Keeping Your Server Healthy and Secure 319
Conguring a Firewall 320
Setting up a rewall in Mountain Lion Server 320
Port numbers used by Mountain Lion Server services 323
Firewalls, network routers, and NAT 325
Using an AirPort Extreme or Time Capsule rewall 325
Working with Secure SSL Certicates 327
Using SSL certicates 327
Becoming a certicate authority 331
Using Virtual Private Networks 332
VPN protocols: L2TP/IPSec and PPTP 333
The shared secret 333
Client addresses: IP address range 334
Network considerations for VPN 334
Conguring VPN clients 335
Attention: The Alerts Pane 336
Responding to alerts 336
Getting alerts delivered to you 338
Seeing the Long View with the Stats Pane 340
Troubleshooting by Using the Logs Pane 340
Monitoring Activity 342
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Table of Contents
Part VI: The Part of Tens 343
Chapter 19: Ten Things You Can Add to Mountain Lion Server 345

Antivirus for Your Server 345
Kerio Connect 346
Network Backup of Clients 347
Media Asset Management and Workow 347
Database Servers for Home or Ofce 348
Apple Remote Desktop to Manage Macs 348
InterMapper, a Network Monitor 349
TechTool Pro 350
iOS Apps to Manage Servers 350
Nagios for Network Monitoring 351
Chapter 20: Ten Cool Things That Didn’t Make It into the Rest
of the Book 353
Big, Fast External Storage 353
Xsan 354
Running Mountain Lion from the Command Line 354
Speeding Up Networks with VLANS 354
Researching Ruby on Rails 355
Setting the Server to Autorestart 356
Finding Help at Apple.com 356
Server in a Virtual Machine 357
PostgreSQL Database 357
Ethernet Link Aggregation 358
Index 359
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Introduction
Y

ou’re about to become a magician. Soon you’ll be providing your users
with the illusion that they have direct access to the world of communi-
cation and information. The reality is that servers — ubiquitous, impercep-
tible, and indefatigable — provide every connection, communication, and bit
of information that the computer user sees.
But only if you make it so. You’re going to set up Apple’s Mountain Lion
Server for your users, configure the wonderful services it offers, and keep it
running. This book will help you do it.
About This Book
OS X Mountain Lion Server For Dummies takes you through the steps required
to get your users doing amazing and productive things. I provide step-by-step
procedures to accomplish specific tasks, such as configuring an e-mail server
and setting up user accounts. In some instances, I also describe how to set
up your users’ Macs or Windows PCs to work with the server.
This book introduces you to the tools that Apple provides with the server
and the best ways to use them. I take you through many of the options and
network configurations available in Mountain Lion Server and describe the
best practices you should adopt.
I also describe the new features in Mountain Lion Server that you’ll want to
know about (trust me on this). And I’ve peppered the chapters with plenty of
tips and tricks that will help you become proficient.
I’m a fan of the English language, so I favor it over the technobabble found in
much of computing. Where the acronyms are unavoidable, I provide explana-
tions. You will not, however, find the word empower in this book. A writer
can be pushed only so far.
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OS X Mountain Lion Server For Dummies
Conventions Used in This Book
Flip through this book, and you’ll find different uses of type to point out dif-

ferent things. Here’s what I do:
✓ In the step-by-step directions, the actions you perform are in bold type,
like this. The description of what happens after the action is in normal
type.
✓ To point out a web address, the book uses a monofont that looks like
this: www.apple.com. You see the same font in the rare instances when
I show you something that you need to type in a command line (in the
Mac’s Terminal application), such as fsck –fy, and for text that a com-
mand line returns to you in response. The book uses monofont to indicate
folders. For example, to indicate the Utilities folder, which is inside the
Applications folder, the path is used, /Applications/Utilities.
✓ In rare cases when you need to use a menu at the top of the screen, this
book uses a convention that looks like this: File➪Get Info, which means
you need to choose Get Info from the File menu. I don’t use this conven-
tion for menus that aren’t at the top of the screen, such as pop-up menus.
What You’re Not to Read
If you’re going to read this book, you don’t need to read the entire thing or
to read it in any particular order. The book is organized in a logical manner
from beginning to end, but it’s not a narrative. Rather, it’s modular. You need
to read only the portion that applies to a specific project or technique.
If you already have Mountain Lion Server installed, you can skip Part I. And
you don’t have to read Part VI to accomplish any server project. Consider it
the chocolate center of a Good Humor bar.
A lot of the chapters are arranged from general to specific. For example,
Chapter 7 gets you up and running with file sharing. If you want to get into
the nitty-gritty of advanced tweaking of user permissions, read Chapter 8. If
you’re a Windows administrator with experience with Active Directory, you
can skip Chapter 5 on network directories and go right to Chapter 6, which
deals specifically with Macs and Microsoft networks.
I think you’ll enjoy the text next to the Technical Stuff icons, but you can skip

them if you want I won’t be insulted (well, not much).
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3

Introduction
Foolish Assumptions
Unlike some other computer books, you won’t find a lot of filler here — no
dissertations that have no bearing on the task at hand. I assume that you
bought this book to accomplish specific tasks, using Mountain Lion Server.
You also won’t find lectures on what’s in the Print dialog box or how to search
for a file because I assume that you’re already a computer user. But I don’t
assume that you’re an Apple-Certified System Administrator. I explain the
alphabet soup of acronyms that you find in some of the Server’s technospeak.
Don’t worry if you’re new to the Mac. I explain any Apple-specific knowledge
that you need. Experienced Mac users can skip bits of Mac-specific material.
Similarly, you don’t need any experience with Windows if you want to support
Windows clients with your Mac server. I show you what you need to know.
I don’t make any assumptions about what hardware you’re running. I provide
some guidance as to what Mac is right for you in Chapter 2.
How This Book Is Organized
OS X Mountain Lion Server For Dummies is organized in six parts, each with
several related chapters. The parts are arranged in the order in which you
might go about using the server. But you don’t have to read the book sequen-
tially, as each part can stand alone as a sort of minibook on a topic. You don’t
even have to read all the sections in any particular chapter. You can use the
table of contents and the index to find the information you need and quickly
get your answer.
I do recommend taking a glance, at least, at Part I. You find some information
about installing Mountain Lion Server that you won’t find in Apple’s
documentation.

Part I: Getting Mountain Lion
Server Up and Running
I start Part I with a description of Mountain Lion Server — what it comes
with, what you can do with it, and what you need to get it running. If you
need advice on which Mac model to use as your server and what should be in
it, look in this part. I also describe some hardware needs in the server and on
the network. If you haven’t already installed Mountain Lion Server, read the
step-by-step directions in Part I.
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