Moving from server to non-server

[Whitehill]

Does anyone have any words of wisdom about "migrating" from server to normal MacOS? I have decided to get out of the server environment - it is much more than I need in my little home office network. I have used the "Migration Assistant" successfully for non-server to non-server.

 

[Giaguara]

Just delete the Server services (from the folder) if you need the space back
Or keep using the Mac for the applications you need. The only major differences are that 1) you'll have the Server apps installed in the beginning 2) your system takes much less space as you have only 4 localizations installed and that's about it.

 

[ElDiabloConCaca]

In addition, just turn off any "server" services you may have running, like the Apache webserver, FTP server, AFP server, etc.

There's really no significant "under the hood" difference between Mac OS X Server and regular Mac OS X, with the exception of the GUI tools for managing those services under Mac OS X Server.

 

[Whitehill]

Well, it's done, but it wasn't easy. First let me back up and note that I moved from a G5 running "server" to an Intel running plain old Leopard.

The Migration Assistant failed using a firewire connection (1) pulling stuff from the old system to the new, and then (2) pushing to the new from the old. It never gave me a coherent explanation about the problem.

What finally worked was to take a full Time Machine backup of the old system to a firewire disk - then run Migration Assistant on the new box using the external disk as the source. This got just about everything. I had to reinstall a few things, like iLife and iWork, but mostly it was a breeze. Safari even retained its cache of recently visited sites - including macosx.com.