Xserve upgrade to Tiger

B

barrro

Registered
I have been asked to research the gotcha's of upgrading to Tiger server. We are currently running Xserve 10.3.8 with our user volume on XServe RAID. We are only utilizing this server as a simple file server and have a small DHCP scope setup. The biggest reason I see for the upgrade is taking advantage of the new ACL.

I have appx 75 users and 20 groups. I and a rather large directory/security structure I don't want to have to re-create

Is their anything I need to be concerned with or precaution I need to be aware of before proceeding with the upgrage ?
 
barrro said:
I have been asked to research the gotcha's of upgrading to Tiger server. We are currently running Xserve 10.3.8 with our user volume on XServe RAID. We are only utilizing this server as a simple file server and have a small DHCP scope setup. The biggest reason I see for the upgrade is taking advantage of the new ACL.

I have appx 75 users and 20 groups. I and a rather large directory/security structure I don't want to have to re-create

Is their anything I need to be concerned with or precaution I need to be aware of before proceeding with the upgrage ?
Click to expand...

First, you MUST update to OS X 10.3.9 Server before upgrading to OS X 10.4.

There are other advantages beside ACLs (althought that was very important for us).

With OS X Server 10.4.x, you can archive the OD Master, and then restore from the archive.

Portable Home Directories (next step of Mobile Home Directories) off Home Directory synchronization.

You can name computers in computer list, and OS X 10.4 clients will take on that name (still doesn't work with OS X 10.3 clients though).

With OS X 10.4 Server, you can also manage Network Proxy information.

I have updated 14 OS X 10.3.9 servers to OS X 10.4.2 Server. 10 of them were Open Directory Replicas, so I didn't have much to worry about.

I needed to upgrade from 10.3.9 so I could retain Macintosh Manager service. If you re-format and just install 10.4 Server, Macintosh Manager does NOT get installed, and there is no way of getting it installed.
 
It would be a good idea to export your users and groups to an external location before upgrading. We did a practice upgrade install on another machine before actually implementing the upgrade, and the users and groups transferred fine, but when we upgraded the actual server, the users and groups with their preferences didn't go with it. Luckily we still had the users and groups loaded on the practice machine, so it wasn't to big a deal. Also, a lot of files on your boot drive may be set back to owner root, and if they are shared files it may be a pain to change the permissions, so you'll probably need to put those shiny new ACL's to use. Also, you will need to install 10.4 on any of the machines you will be administering from, as Panther's Workgroup Manager and other server apps are not compatible with the new server. Pretty much for us it was a pretty smooth upgrade, hopefully the few bumps in the road we did have won't be an issue for you.
 
I have 8 schools with 25 servers 8 replicas one od master and they are all 10.3.9. 5 have macintosh manager setups. So from what I understand is that the key things to worry about are:

1. Export your users & groups to an external location
2. Make sure all servers in the domain are updated to Tiger first. (replicas)
3. Make sure any administrator machines are 10.4 after the update (panther admin tools aren't compatible with tiger)
4. Practice on a test machine first.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top