FireHaus Network

I have been running a default setup of Apple’s Mac OS X Server as a mail and mailing list server since early March and it has been working well except for some non-critical glitches. The firm I support runs only Mac OS X Server on both Apple Xserve’s as well as on other non-server hardware (Mac Pros and minis).

I found that the Mailman system which is modified by Apple seemed to not be generating any log files. Upon closer inspection I found that the Mailman system was creating logs they were just not where Apple’s server OS was expecting them.

At this point in time I don’t know if this is due to a glitch during the original installation of if this is just the way Apple set it up. Since I have found a few other people with this or a very similar issue I suspect it’s a glitch in Apple’s set up.

I found that the Apple default configs are expecting the logs to be written to

/var/logs/mailman/

but the Mailman* system is configured to write them to

/var/mailman/logs/

I was concerned that a future update/upgrade from Apple might break the logging if I went and changed the Mailman config so instead I set up a symlink for /var/logs/mailman pointing to /var/mailman/logs and this seems to work both from the GUI or the CL. This almost seems like a typo on Apple’s part.

Just thought this might be useful to anyone supporting Apple servers.

* This is not the default Mailman location but Apple’s modified Mailman location

Read this article on ZUG Electronic Road Signs and Me and then you will understand the utter beauty of the comment below.

The only road signs that are more annoying than signs warning of construction that is long finished, are those ones that tell you how fast you are going, before you go around a sharp turn. I used to think they were kind of neat, until I noticed that my car actually comes equipped with a tool that tells me how fast I’m going, at any given time, so now I just use that one instead. – LlunchLladyLloyd

Starting on Nov. 4 you may have had trouble launching IE for Mac. If the default home page is msn.com the browser will not be able to load the page. I don’t know if this is Microsoft’s way of saying “screw you” to all the Mac users who are still foolish enough to use their free browser or if its because the MSN team just isn’t aware that there are still Mac users out there.

If you have encountered this issue you probably found that there doesn’t appear to be anyway to undo the default home page chosen by IE and you have lost valuable hours of your life deleting preferences, cache files, and such. It turns out you simply need to disconnect your Mac from the internet (unplug the ethernet cable or turn off your AirPort) and then launch IE, change the default home page to ANYTHING that is non-Microsoft, and you should then be good to go. Reconnect to the internet, launch IE, and browse the internet as before.

If I really loved you I would advise you to NEVER use IE for Mac again, it hasn’t been updated in 2-years and all the OTHER browsers are updated frequently, both with bug fixes and new features. I strongly recommend you use the latest version of Safari or Firefox. Opera, Netscape, Mozilla and Camino are all Mozilla-based browsers like Firefox but they have focused on either loading pages with blazing speed (Opera and Camino) or by being a full suite of internet applications (Netscape and Mozilla). The full suite applications take care of your web browsing, email, newsgroups, and web page creation all in one integrated package. All of these are free.

Microsoft has indicated that IE for Mac is not likely to ever be updated to version 7 but who cares (a new version 7 for Windows is due out very soon)? There are so many good browsers out their for Macs that support security, RSS, fast page loading, java and javascript, that you simply don’t need IE any more.

I guess the genius clan at MSN and Microsoft don’t want Mac users to be able to use a Microsoft browser on a Microsoft owned web site. Seems like shooting yourself in the foot doesn’t to me?

The issue:

I’ve got a friend who’s a network admin with an insurance company, and her folks are having trouble getting Entourage to get inbound (IMAP) mail from the local Exchange server — outbound mail and calendar sync work fine, its just the inbound that’s not working. They get an “error -3260″, about which Microsoft’s tech library says:

“To work around this problem, verify that the Exchange account settings are correct, that the network configuration is correct, and that the Exchange server is operating correctly with all the required services running.”

Super helpful. Anyhow, she’s interested in having someone who knows what they’re doing pay a house call (I gave her my best troubleshooting tips but to no avail) and get this poor sad Mac user fully on the email grid. FireHaus, is this one of your powers?

I had a few initial problems getting Macs using OS X and MS Entourage vX working properly with an Exchange 2000 Enterprise system but eventually I got it to work. A couple of things to double-check because they are obvious but not too obvious if you work mostly with Windows systems for a living:

Use fully qualified domain names for the Exchange server – when setting up Outlook in Windows you can call your server “mail”, but in Entourage spell it out as “mail.mydomain.com”. You also need to make sure the info is complete in the account settings (w/ Windows Outlook most of the info is retrieved automatically but w/ Mac Entourage you have to fill in the blanks yourself).

The LDAP server must be specified – this is under Tools -> Accounts -> (select your Exhange account) – > Edit Account -> Directory, again use a fully qualified domain name (for example “dc01.mydomain.com”).

Additionally, once it is working, don’t expect it to work like Outlook. It displays your Free/Busy info differently than in Outlook (as items rather than a true calendar). This is annoying but that’s the way it is in Mac Office vX. I haven’t spent very much time with Mac Office v2004 so I don’t know if they have improved this.

Here are some URLs for Entourage setups:

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/272325

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/268322

http://www.macosxhints.com/article.php?story=2003122322202329&query=entourage