Some time ago I was given a task to replace really old linux server with a new mac mini server running a pre installed Lion server operating system. I had installed a couple of other mac servers in the past so it wasn’t all new experience for me. The previous mac servers I had installed included: Xserve and mac mini servers with snow leopard operating systems.

I have been relatively happy and loyal apple customer ever since 2007 but this experience with the new mac mini didn’t go too well. Problems started as I booted the new mac into recovery mode intending to set up a software RAID as the machine has two identical disks and I have had good experiences with mac software RAID setups in the past.

This is the most important lesson learned with Lion. Don’t try to reinstall it! Or if you do then let time machine take a copy of your system first so you don’t have to download all the 4 GB amount of data from internet using internet recovery. I tried the internet recovery like 10 times and never got it through. Either it got a connection error in the middle of the download or it crashed with a kernel panic after starting the installer. Obviously some data got corrupted during the download. Because of this I was forced to take the mac mini to service which cost 140 € only to get operating system running. A step which would have been so easy with older snow leopard and physical disks.

I finally got the new server up and running without the software RAID. I noticed that it missed Server Admin Tools which snow leopard had had per default. Luckily after some investigation I found out that the tools were available on apple’s website at address: http://support.apple.com/kb/DL1419.

I continued setting up the new server and everything seemed to be almost like with snow leopard server after installing the Server Admin Tools. Web applications like webmail are finally improved to keep up with this decade. However some web applications act badly. Problems with web applications include but are not limited to:

1. -Web password change only work if user is created to open directory instead of local user which is the default
   

2. -After user changes the password on intranet it doesn’t give any feedback if the change was successful or not
   

3. -Only safari and chrome seemed to be always working on intranet password site in our organization. Some versions of firefox worked too. Internet explorer versions we tested didn’t work
   

One of the biggest improvement in the new Lion server is the new Apple in house built samba protocol SMBX which seems to work much more robust compared to the ancient samba version they were shipping with snow leopard. Just remember to use the username in form SERVER\username and it should work without any register hacks in all versions of windows and at least new Ubuntus with Gnome desktop. The in house built samba is also a weakness if problems arise as the operating system isn’t really logging what’s going on. I found a way to debug it after using google for some time. Below is the description how you can debug Apple SMBX task.

There’s one more thing I had to fight with this new mac. We had several virtual hosts running in our old linux server and of course migrated them to the new mac. The problem is just that the built in intranet stops working if adding a single new virtual host using apple provided tool to make it. The solution was to install Vmware Fusion and continue running linux server to host apache virtual servers.

Verdict: I was really disappointed of the quality Apple is releasing. I understand the technology must go on and physical install medias might be history but why the recovery program can’t do progressive download and why it doesn’t checksum the data it receives? Also the all so simple bugs in the server operating system and tools make me wonder if they have anyone awake in their server testing department? Mac server is still a good product for some use cases.

1. -The directory service is working nicely and it’s a pleasure to manage access to files and directories using the power of ACLs.
   

2. -Name server is easy to administer and it works
   

3. -DHCP server is easy to administer and it works
   

4. -Native Apple AFP file sharing support