pedz
Registered
I bought a used Quad G5. When I tried to boot from my 10.4 Server disks, the machine crashed. I have been told by the guys at the Apple Store that I need 10.4.4 disks but they do not exist yet. Hence, this article.
Requirements:
1) An old server. In my case, I have a G4. It is able to install 10.4
2) A new server. In my case, I have a Quad G5. It is NOT able to install 10.4 -- thus the gymnastics that follow.
3) A spare drive on the old server.
4) A copy of 10.4 client as well as a copy of 10.4 server.
TERMS:
Old Boot Drive: the drive that the old server boots from right now.
Temp Server Boot Partition: One of the partitions of the spare drive. I called this partition "Server"
Client Boot Partition: The other partition of the spare drive. I called this partition "Client"
New Boot Drive: The hard disk of the new server that it will boot from.
0) A pre-gymnastic item you can do is download the Mac OS X 10.4.4 Combo Update and put it on the old server somewhere that will be easy to find. This will save having to set up the network settings.
1) Partition the spare drive into two partitions. I did two equal sized partitions. This is not absolutely necessary but it provides an easy point to fall back to if things get hosed up along the way.
2) Insert the Mac OS X Server DVD into the old server. Click the install. It will restart the machine. Load the 10.4 code onto the Temp Server Boot. I picked all of the install packages since you will not get a chance to add them later. Hey... its just disk space, right?
3) After the install, the machine will reboot from the Temp Server Boot Partition. Go through the set up process. One key point is to pick "Standalone" for the Directory Usage question. Try and use whatever settings the final set up will have (except for the Directory Usage). And I do not enable any Services at this time. At the end of the setup, the machine will reboot. (Note, in step 5 b iii below, I use the name lroot as the short name of the admin user that you set up in this step. Substitute the name that you used for lroot below.
4) Log in. If you downloaded the update in step 0, then find the update on the hard drive, mount the dmg, and double click the mpkg to install the update. If you did not download the update, then use the Software Update to update your software. I update just Mac OS X at this point. When this is done, the machine will reboot again.
5) We now need to boot back to the Old Boot Drive.
5 a)The simple approach is to log in, pick Startup Disk from System Preferences, pick the Old Boot Drive, and hit restart.
or
5 b) According to the web, it is possible to boot into single user mode, delete some items, leaving the Temp Server Boot Partition as if it was a fresh install. However I tried this and here is what I found: some settings are not gone. e.g. if you set up your network with manual settings, they will still be there. The hostname will be set to kNotSet.local. And, ultimately, what turned me off is when I tried to start Software Update Service, I got an error that I could not fix. But, if you want to do it, here is what you do:
5 b i) Reboot -- at the chime, hold down command-s. This will boot into single user mode.
5 b ii) /sbin/mount -uw /
5 b iii) rm -rf /Users/lroot (see step 3 above)
5 b iv) rm -rf /var/db/netinfo/local.nidb /var/db/.AppleSetupDone
5 b v) Now you will type "reboot" but when you do, you want to hold down the Option key after the chime. This will bring up a list of possible boot devices. Pick the Old Boot Drive.
5 b vi) Log in... before you forget, go to System Preferences -> Startup Disk, and pick the Old Boot Drive so that it will be the default boot drive. No need to hit restart; just pick it and quick System Preferences.
More details on the 5b approach can be found here: http://www.macintouch.com/tiger32.html
6) So... you are booted back to the Old Boot Drive. If you have not already set up netboot, you need to initialize it here. Start Server Admin (after logging in as an Admin user). Pick NetBoot on the left, Settings on the buttom, and General on the top. Check one or more boxes for which network port to use. Check one or more volumes to put Images and Client Data. I just use the Old Boot Disk as the place to put the images and client data. Hit Save. The service will not start because there are no images.
7) Start System Image Utility. It may be in the dock, otherwise it is in Applications->Server. Click New Install. Enter the infor:
In General: Put the Image Name and Image Index. Available via I set to NFS. Path to Image I set to Local.
In Contents, select Image Source to the Temp Boot Partition.
In Install Options, I pick Enable automated installation. That highlights "Options". Under those Options, I pick Target Volume: User Selects. I check "Erase the target volume before installing" and "Restart the client computer after installing". I also check the "Verify destination after installing". I left "Change ByHost preferences to match client after install" unchecked cause I have no idea what that does.
In Model Filter, Sharing Prefs, and Directory Services, I just leave the defaults.
8) Hit Create. A couple of confirms go by and you are put into a save dialog box. I set the Save As name to something I understand but I do not put any spaces or weird characters in there. (I've had bad experiences with netboot on other hosts in the past.) So, in this case, I put MacOSXServer10.4.4. Notice the drop down menu towards the bottom of the dialog box. Pick one of the volumes that you set up in Netboot. The rest of the path defaults to something that works when you do this. Hit Save. This will grind away for about 30 minutes or more. Perhaps its time for lunch.
9) When System Image Utility completes, go back to Server Admin, click NetBoot on the left, settings on the bottom, and Images along the top. You will see the image that you just created. Check the Enable flag. Hit Save. You may need to hit Start Service as well. Me being the freaky person I am, I reboot the old server at this point. I had all sorts of weird problems when I was doing this and go to the point that I didn't quite trust anything. If you do reboot, start Server Admin back up and make sure that Netboot is still running.
10) Boot the new server and get into Startup Disk. If you boot from CD, the Startup Disk utility is under the Utilities menu. If you boot from a hard drive, then System Preferences -> Startup Disk will get you there. Once there, you should see the new image that the old server is serving up. Click that image and hit restart.
11) At this point, you need to shut down the old server (assuming that you have only one server license). What I did is I first just unhooked the ethernet wire. I had a hell of a time getting the new server to boot, install, and reboot to a valid image. I am not sure what was going on. One thing I finally did was rename my hard disk on the new server back to Macintosh HD -- I also reformatted it at that point. In any case, after you are sure that you got a clean install, you can insert the client Mac OS X install DVD into the old server. Click the install icon, and install the client version on the Client Boot Partition. This gives you a few advantages. A) if you need to go back to the old server for some reason, it is still there. B) if you need to remake the network install image again, you still have the source on the Server Boot Partition. You can even go back and muck with it a bit and remake the install image.
Problems: For whatever reason, this process does *not* produce a clean install. When the G5 started up and I stated to walk through the set up process I hit problems. The following steps describe the problems I hit and the steps I took to resolve them.
12) The sequence of getting OD as a master appears to be like tip toeing through the tulips. You need to get DNS working. I started DNS. I *believe* that this makes it a caching DNS which is what I want/need. You need to get DHCP working -- why I don't know but that is what I read on some board somewhere. So, I did. I started AFP And because I had problems with it before, I started Software Update.
It appears as if the very first time you just click on Software Update in the left panel, processes start up to synchronize with Apple. This can take hours. I just went to bed at this point and got up the next day. I muddled around and started Software Update. It appears also that if it gets confused, it will just stop until the next reboot (or you just happen to notice that it is stopped and start it back up by hand).
13) When I finally went to the OD selection, it said "Connected to a Directory System". So, somehow it decided to change itself from Standalone. In any case, I put it back to Standalone. I think I probably rebooted at this point. Then I switched it to Master. (Again, this is just from reading suggestions on the net.) The OD set up went smooth for me.
14) I started Mail -- basically just walking through the set up. But at some point, whenever I clicked the check boxes to start IMAP and POP and then hit Save, the IMAP and POP check boxes would uncheck themselves. It turns out imap was messed up horribly. /var/spool/imap was empty as well as /var/imap. I first noticed this from log messages in Mail=>Logs=>Mail Access (from Server Admin). I can't find the error message now but something about parameter in line 4 of the config file was empty. The config file is /etc/imap.conf. It had partition-default and configdirectory not set. So I filled those in (using vi) and it was at that point that I noticed /var/imap and /var/spool/imap were empty.
I also discovered that /etc/cyrus.conf was gone. I copied /etc/cyruns.conf.default to /etc/cyrus.conf, filled in /etc/imap.conf, then ran /usr/bin/cyrus/mkimap which is suppose to populate /var/imap. It appears to have worked. I may have rebooted after that just to make sure things started properly. (I tend to reboot during these processes frequently.)
15) At this point, everything but one thing seems to be working. That one thing is that from a client using Mail, I can not save a draft copy of the message and my Sent messages are not being saved. When I try to save the draft copy (or when the Client tries to do it automatically), it gets back an error but the error doesn't really help much. I plan to explore what to do about that today.
I hope this helps someone...
Requirements:
1) An old server. In my case, I have a G4. It is able to install 10.4
2) A new server. In my case, I have a Quad G5. It is NOT able to install 10.4 -- thus the gymnastics that follow.
3) A spare drive on the old server.
4) A copy of 10.4 client as well as a copy of 10.4 server.
TERMS:
Old Boot Drive: the drive that the old server boots from right now.
Temp Server Boot Partition: One of the partitions of the spare drive. I called this partition "Server"
Client Boot Partition: The other partition of the spare drive. I called this partition "Client"
New Boot Drive: The hard disk of the new server that it will boot from.
0) A pre-gymnastic item you can do is download the Mac OS X 10.4.4 Combo Update and put it on the old server somewhere that will be easy to find. This will save having to set up the network settings.
1) Partition the spare drive into two partitions. I did two equal sized partitions. This is not absolutely necessary but it provides an easy point to fall back to if things get hosed up along the way.
2) Insert the Mac OS X Server DVD into the old server. Click the install. It will restart the machine. Load the 10.4 code onto the Temp Server Boot. I picked all of the install packages since you will not get a chance to add them later. Hey... its just disk space, right?
3) After the install, the machine will reboot from the Temp Server Boot Partition. Go through the set up process. One key point is to pick "Standalone" for the Directory Usage question. Try and use whatever settings the final set up will have (except for the Directory Usage). And I do not enable any Services at this time. At the end of the setup, the machine will reboot. (Note, in step 5 b iii below, I use the name lroot as the short name of the admin user that you set up in this step. Substitute the name that you used for lroot below.
4) Log in. If you downloaded the update in step 0, then find the update on the hard drive, mount the dmg, and double click the mpkg to install the update. If you did not download the update, then use the Software Update to update your software. I update just Mac OS X at this point. When this is done, the machine will reboot again.
5) We now need to boot back to the Old Boot Drive.
5 a)The simple approach is to log in, pick Startup Disk from System Preferences, pick the Old Boot Drive, and hit restart.
or
5 b) According to the web, it is possible to boot into single user mode, delete some items, leaving the Temp Server Boot Partition as if it was a fresh install. However I tried this and here is what I found: some settings are not gone. e.g. if you set up your network with manual settings, they will still be there. The hostname will be set to kNotSet.local. And, ultimately, what turned me off is when I tried to start Software Update Service, I got an error that I could not fix. But, if you want to do it, here is what you do:
5 b i) Reboot -- at the chime, hold down command-s. This will boot into single user mode.
5 b ii) /sbin/mount -uw /
5 b iii) rm -rf /Users/lroot (see step 3 above)
5 b iv) rm -rf /var/db/netinfo/local.nidb /var/db/.AppleSetupDone
5 b v) Now you will type "reboot" but when you do, you want to hold down the Option key after the chime. This will bring up a list of possible boot devices. Pick the Old Boot Drive.
5 b vi) Log in... before you forget, go to System Preferences -> Startup Disk, and pick the Old Boot Drive so that it will be the default boot drive. No need to hit restart; just pick it and quick System Preferences.
More details on the 5b approach can be found here: http://www.macintouch.com/tiger32.html
6) So... you are booted back to the Old Boot Drive. If you have not already set up netboot, you need to initialize it here. Start Server Admin (after logging in as an Admin user). Pick NetBoot on the left, Settings on the buttom, and General on the top. Check one or more boxes for which network port to use. Check one or more volumes to put Images and Client Data. I just use the Old Boot Disk as the place to put the images and client data. Hit Save. The service will not start because there are no images.
7) Start System Image Utility. It may be in the dock, otherwise it is in Applications->Server. Click New Install. Enter the infor:
In General: Put the Image Name and Image Index. Available via I set to NFS. Path to Image I set to Local.
In Contents, select Image Source to the Temp Boot Partition.
In Install Options, I pick Enable automated installation. That highlights "Options". Under those Options, I pick Target Volume: User Selects. I check "Erase the target volume before installing" and "Restart the client computer after installing". I also check the "Verify destination after installing". I left "Change ByHost preferences to match client after install" unchecked cause I have no idea what that does.
In Model Filter, Sharing Prefs, and Directory Services, I just leave the defaults.
8) Hit Create. A couple of confirms go by and you are put into a save dialog box. I set the Save As name to something I understand but I do not put any spaces or weird characters in there. (I've had bad experiences with netboot on other hosts in the past.) So, in this case, I put MacOSXServer10.4.4. Notice the drop down menu towards the bottom of the dialog box. Pick one of the volumes that you set up in Netboot. The rest of the path defaults to something that works when you do this. Hit Save. This will grind away for about 30 minutes or more. Perhaps its time for lunch.
9) When System Image Utility completes, go back to Server Admin, click NetBoot on the left, settings on the bottom, and Images along the top. You will see the image that you just created. Check the Enable flag. Hit Save. You may need to hit Start Service as well. Me being the freaky person I am, I reboot the old server at this point. I had all sorts of weird problems when I was doing this and go to the point that I didn't quite trust anything. If you do reboot, start Server Admin back up and make sure that Netboot is still running.
10) Boot the new server and get into Startup Disk. If you boot from CD, the Startup Disk utility is under the Utilities menu. If you boot from a hard drive, then System Preferences -> Startup Disk will get you there. Once there, you should see the new image that the old server is serving up. Click that image and hit restart.
11) At this point, you need to shut down the old server (assuming that you have only one server license). What I did is I first just unhooked the ethernet wire. I had a hell of a time getting the new server to boot, install, and reboot to a valid image. I am not sure what was going on. One thing I finally did was rename my hard disk on the new server back to Macintosh HD -- I also reformatted it at that point. In any case, after you are sure that you got a clean install, you can insert the client Mac OS X install DVD into the old server. Click the install icon, and install the client version on the Client Boot Partition. This gives you a few advantages. A) if you need to go back to the old server for some reason, it is still there. B) if you need to remake the network install image again, you still have the source on the Server Boot Partition. You can even go back and muck with it a bit and remake the install image.
Problems: For whatever reason, this process does *not* produce a clean install. When the G5 started up and I stated to walk through the set up process I hit problems. The following steps describe the problems I hit and the steps I took to resolve them.
12) The sequence of getting OD as a master appears to be like tip toeing through the tulips. You need to get DNS working. I started DNS. I *believe* that this makes it a caching DNS which is what I want/need. You need to get DHCP working -- why I don't know but that is what I read on some board somewhere. So, I did. I started AFP And because I had problems with it before, I started Software Update.
It appears as if the very first time you just click on Software Update in the left panel, processes start up to synchronize with Apple. This can take hours. I just went to bed at this point and got up the next day. I muddled around and started Software Update. It appears also that if it gets confused, it will just stop until the next reboot (or you just happen to notice that it is stopped and start it back up by hand).
13) When I finally went to the OD selection, it said "Connected to a Directory System". So, somehow it decided to change itself from Standalone. In any case, I put it back to Standalone. I think I probably rebooted at this point. Then I switched it to Master. (Again, this is just from reading suggestions on the net.) The OD set up went smooth for me.
14) I started Mail -- basically just walking through the set up. But at some point, whenever I clicked the check boxes to start IMAP and POP and then hit Save, the IMAP and POP check boxes would uncheck themselves. It turns out imap was messed up horribly. /var/spool/imap was empty as well as /var/imap. I first noticed this from log messages in Mail=>Logs=>Mail Access (from Server Admin). I can't find the error message now but something about parameter in line 4 of the config file was empty. The config file is /etc/imap.conf. It had partition-default and configdirectory not set. So I filled those in (using vi) and it was at that point that I noticed /var/imap and /var/spool/imap were empty.
I also discovered that /etc/cyrus.conf was gone. I copied /etc/cyruns.conf.default to /etc/cyrus.conf, filled in /etc/imap.conf, then ran /usr/bin/cyrus/mkimap which is suppose to populate /var/imap. It appears to have worked. I may have rebooted after that just to make sure things started properly. (I tend to reboot during these processes frequently.)
15) At this point, everything but one thing seems to be working. That one thing is that from a client using Mail, I can not save a draft copy of the message and my Sent messages are not being saved. When I try to save the draft copy (or when the Client tries to do it automatically), it gets back an error but the error doesn't really help much. I plan to explore what to do about that today.
I hope this helps someone...
