On setting up iCal Server
So at work we had been waiting the release of Leopard Server so we could roll out a solution to a large customer of ours. The customer needs the ability to coordinate calendars, addresses, and other information.
So this week we have been doing a roll-out of Leopard Server, including iCal Server, LDAP, Open Directory, mail, DNS, and everything else.
Last week we migrated our internal server over to Leopard Server as well. We have been slowly turning on services, as well as using it as a test bed for the rollout.
A couple of things learned:
1) Mail can be a complete pain. For some reason the server was rejecting all incoming mail traffic for no real reason.
2) DNS, all in all, was not too terribly difficult to set up.
3) An Airport Extreme Base station cannot do NAT without also doing DHCP.
4) Finding a PCI ethernet card that is Leopard compatible could be almost impossible these days.
5) iCal Server works. For the most part. One thing you quickly learn is that iCal the application and the group calendaring are two entirely different things. We eventually learned that you can subscribe to a group calendar from within iCal. In the "Accounts" pane of iCal's preferences, instead of relying on Auto for the Account URL, enter http://server.example.com:8008/principals/groups/groupname/. This will allow you to view and even edit the group calendar from within iCal. You end up with two calendars - your private calendar stored on the server, and your group calendar. Makes sense in the end, but confusing at first. We have not played around with the wiki server just yet.
6) LDAP works. The addition of the Directory Utility and the Directory.app application make this much nicer. One bug we have run into so far: phone number and email addresses, at least, will not show up in OS X's Address Book application (in the Directory group) if the contact was created on the server with the Directory application. Most other information, though, does get transferred over. A workaround is to create the contact in Address Book and drag it into Directory.app. I assume this is a bug in the contact creation portion of Directory.app. I did not have enough time to research what was going on.
7) SSL breaks mail. We have the web service working with SSL, but as soon as we turned it on on our test server, it immediately boots every IMAP connection off (expected) and then never lets them reconnect (unexpected). On the customer's machine, turning on SSL caused all incoming mail to cease.
More to come, but that is my experience with Leopard Server so far. So far a little easier to work with than Tiger Server, but definitely has its share of bugs.
So this week we have been doing a roll-out of Leopard Server, including iCal Server, LDAP, Open Directory, mail, DNS, and everything else.
Last week we migrated our internal server over to Leopard Server as well. We have been slowly turning on services, as well as using it as a test bed for the rollout.
A couple of things learned:
1) Mail can be a complete pain. For some reason the server was rejecting all incoming mail traffic for no real reason.
2) DNS, all in all, was not too terribly difficult to set up.
3) An Airport Extreme Base station cannot do NAT without also doing DHCP.
4) Finding a PCI ethernet card that is Leopard compatible could be almost impossible these days.
5) iCal Server works. For the most part. One thing you quickly learn is that iCal the application and the group calendaring are two entirely different things. We eventually learned that you can subscribe to a group calendar from within iCal. In the "Accounts" pane of iCal's preferences, instead of relying on Auto for the Account URL, enter http://server.example.com:8008/principals/groups/groupname/. This will allow you to view and even edit the group calendar from within iCal. You end up with two calendars - your private calendar stored on the server, and your group calendar. Makes sense in the end, but confusing at first. We have not played around with the wiki server just yet.
6) LDAP works. The addition of the Directory Utility and the Directory.app application make this much nicer. One bug we have run into so far: phone number and email addresses, at least, will not show up in OS X's Address Book application (in the Directory group) if the contact was created on the server with the Directory application. Most other information, though, does get transferred over. A workaround is to create the contact in Address Book and drag it into Directory.app. I assume this is a bug in the contact creation portion of Directory.app. I did not have enough time to research what was going on.
7) SSL breaks mail. We have the web service working with SSL, but as soon as we turned it on on our test server, it immediately boots every IMAP connection off (expected) and then never lets them reconnect (unexpected). On the customer's machine, turning on SSL caused all incoming mail to cease.
More to come, but that is my experience with Leopard Server so far. So far a little easier to work with than Tiger Server, but definitely has its share of bugs.