OS X Server

[martinbly]

Hi ...

I am looking at running OS X server 10.1 on my beige G3 233mhz, it has 396mb of memory and a 27gb drive ... at home i have 2 macs and 4 pcs ...

firstly... is it fesiable to run OS X Server on that system ( i am currently running OS X on it and that runs extremely well)??

Secondly ... both of my other macs (G4's) are running OS X and i have PC's running 98se and windows XP ... what use will the windows PC's have of the server?? will they be able 2 back up to it?? will they beable 2 use a broadband connection shared from the server?? how about printers???I am assuming on the G4 macs all of these features are useable??
Many Thanks for any help!!:)

[Dogcow]

From the little bit of work I've done with OS X Server (3 hours last night) it appears to have no greater system requirements than X client. I was just running 10 because I've yet to track down the update, so it was noticeably slower than 10.1.2 client.

Your wintel pc's can benefit from the samba filesharing, the dhcp internet routing, and any of the websharing that you do on your server. X Server also has printer sharing, though I haven't tested that to see what it supports. I assume it simply shares any printer that you can use on your server...

Hope this helps...
-Dogcow "moof!"

[martinbly]

many thanks for that ... im assuming since the wintel machines can make use of the samba filesharing it means that it would be a good means of backing up any system??

martin

[martinbly]

could i also ask ... having OS X server does this mean that my Home folder is located on the server instead of on my local drive?? does this make it slower to open apps etc??

[Dogcow]

Originally posted by martinbly
could i also ask ... having OS X server does this mean that my Home folder is located on the server instead of on my local drive?? does this make it slower to open apps etc??

OS X server is simply OS X with some serving software slapped onto it. When you're using that machine, your home folder and applications are in the same place they would be in OS X client. The only way it would be different is if you chose to set up a network user that you would store on your server and run from a client machine. This would cause some slow down since you'd be running everything across the network rather than your fast internal bus.

Hope this helps,
-Dogcow "moof!"

[martinbly]

Is there an advantage apart from that you can access ure home info from any of the macs, of being a netowrk user??

Does OS X server have any scheduled backup features or any backup features built into it?? eg my home folder backed up once a week etc??

[cybergoober]

Originally posted by martinbly
Does OS X server have any scheduled backup features or any backup features built into it?? eg my home folder backed up once a week etc??

Unfortunately, no. At least not that I'm aware of.

I've played around a bit with the server as a Parent NetInfo Domain loggin in as a network user. I didn't really notice that much of a slow-down. But then I only had the Users folder setup for that. All the apps were launched locally on the client system. I suppose if you were hosting the entire drive (apps and all) there might be a bit of a slow down. I'll have to play around that some ;).

[martinbly]

if there isnt a back up feature in the server software... is there a way of writing an apple script to do this??

[Craig R. Arko]

Originally posted by martinbly
if there isnt a back up feature in the server software... is there a way of writing an apple script to do this??

Mike Bombich has made condiderable progress in just this area. You should check out his site (http://www.bombich.com/software/index.html).

Added: also look at RailHead Design (http://www.railheaddesign.com/) for BackupScript, another solution for this.

These are both pretty high-class acts, well worth giving a look, IMHO.

[Barty]

My Server network serices used to go down everyday.
I stopped Windows sharing and now, my Server stays up.

Better use ftp :D