OK, so both my Apple ecosystem and family are growing so I've decided to install Mavericks server on my 2011 mac mini (primarily for Time machine, caching server, file sharing and device profiles).
I've bought (and read) the "Using OS X Mavericks Server at Home" ebook and although it provides a nice overview of features and configuration it obviously can't cater for every edge case.
My network:
- Mac mini (Mavericks server)
- Macbook air (Mavericks)
- White Macbook (Snow Leopard)
- iPad 3 (iOS 7)
- iPad 1(iOS 6)
- iPhone 5s (iOS 7)
- iPhone 5 (iOS 7)
- AppleTV 2
- AppleTV 3
- Sonos system
The Mac mini is a headless machine primarily used as a file server (9.5TB) with the additional roles of:
- iTunes – always on, serving the primary library to the Apple TVs and syncing iOS devices (except the wife’s iPhone5 - her library is stored on the Macbook)
- Downloading
- Media ripping, encoding and tagging
- Print sharing (although my current printer is AirPrint compatible so I doubt this is needed)
- Log me in installed for remote access while at work
I suppose my questions start prior to where the book kicks off. Previously, I’ve installed the mini’s OS with me as the primary administrator. Now I’ve read that you can’t have local and networked users with the same name (or email?) so am I better off reinstalling using a different user (username of Admin/Somebody/Nobody etc.). Alternatively, can I create a new admin, log in and delete ‘me’?
Regarding iCloud configuration on the server, should I use my personal account, create a new one or ignore? The sync’d bookmarks is the only service I’d miss on the server
Alerts.
The first problem I encountered was the email alerts failing to send. A quick look at the SMTP log revealed “…25 Operation timed out”. Then I remembered my ISP (O2) blocks port 25 unless sent through their servers. My first thought was to relay mail through my mediatemple hosting on port 587. Unfortunately I couldn’t seem to specify a hostname + port within the Mail panel of the server.app (at this point I wasn’t even sure I was looking in the right place as Mail Service was off). As a last resort I specified relay.o2broadband.co.uk within the relay through ISP setting. This worked – I know have email alerts.
The push notifications sent by the Alerts service doesn’t work as I would expect. When I trigger a test alert a notification appears in the mini’s notification centre but none of the other devices sharing the same Apple ID – is this normal? Can you reconfigure this – it would be great to get notifications on my iPhone. Considering the mini is headless I can’t really see the benefit unless I’m missing something?
I also think I need to read more about user accounts and the pros/cons of network (mobile) and local users. I’m not 100% convinced I need network users (I’m concerned over slow syncing speeds over wifi) and the conversion of local users to network users appears to be a bit risky. This is unless network users are a prerequisite of the profile service? At the moment I’ve got local users on the clients and matching local users on the server – I still get asked for credentials when accessing network shares – is this normal?
I think that’s it for now. I’ll try and keep this thread updated as I go.
Thanks
Tom