Flashback: I had a dual 800 MHz G4 server running 10.5 Server. This is at my home, the server was acting as a file server plus dhcp server, router, mail server, light web server, netboot, etc. Then I got a Mac mini to replace the G4, so I could cut the power consumption of my setup by more than half, AND add media center to list of server tasks. 10.5 is Universal, so the drives went from my G4 to my 9400m mini without skipping a beat. Well it did skip one beat, eventually I had to spilt the mirrored raid, repartition one drive do GUID (from APM), then restore the remaining slice to the newly reformatted volume. Then erase the second volume and add is as a secondary to the first. That was only because some software updates don't like to run on an APM partition of they're on an Intel Mac.
Fast forward a few months.
I've been using my home server more and more to play video. 10.6 is supposed to use the video card for h264 decoding. So even though playing even HD video barely uses any CPU at all, I figured it would be a good time to upgrade to 10.6 Server. Then it would use even less CPU, plus I'd get a little snappiness.
Now the horror begins:
I'm not going to recount everything. But it was 48 hours of downtime, where every possible little thing that could go wrong, went wrong all at the same time. The short version is that the upgrade failed. So I restored from my Time Machine thinking I'd just try it again some other time. Turns out time machine doesn't backup your mail server. (THANKS FOR TELLING ME, APPLE) So then I figure I have everything ELSE backed up, and I still have all my mail on the clients. So then I reformat and do a clean install of Snow Leopard Server. Fail. Repeat. Fail. Repeat. Fail. <- more on that in a sec, but at this point, I'm deciding to just go back to 10.5 and be done with this "upgrade". But theres a problem, my 10.5.0 OS X Server disk won't boot this new Mac mini. Remember where this mini's drives came from? It was already on 10.5.6 or newer (forget) when they got put into this mini. So then I had to get an external drive, hook it up to my mac pro, install 10.5 on that, then netboot my mini off my macbook, and image the installed server over to the mini. Nightmare. But as of right now, I'm back on 10.5.8 and I've been running fast and stable for many hours now. So I believe the nightmare has ended.
But back to 10.6's problems . . .
The primary problem was this: My mini would connect to the cable modem and to my LAN. It would run fine for a few hours. Then it would drop it's DHCP IP. And it would not get it back. EVER. Reboot modem, reboot computer, delete interface, re-add interface, delete location, delete networking prefs. NOTHING and I mean NOTHING would get it back. It was like the computer freaked out and broke it's ability to connect as a DHCP client. The modem connects to an Apple USB Ethernet adapter, but even plugging directly into my modem, the ethernet port wouldn't grab an IP any more. With my macbook set up as a temporary DHCP server, the mini wouldn't get an ip from IT over ethernet. Other macs on the network did no problem. It was complete, unfixable DHCP failure. So I'd do another clean install, start over. Everything seemed good, but after an hour or so, suddenly the mini would drop it's IP and that was the end of that installation of OS X. Keep in mind the whole time this was happening, I could plug the USB ethernet adapter (thats connected to my modem) into my MacBook and it would get an ip in seconds. I even left the mini connected overnight while I slept, hoping it would straighten itself out by morning. Nope. Also, this happened under 10.6, then 10.6.2, then 10.6.1.
Now, I've been running 10.6 server on my MacBook Pro for a long time. I occasionally use it for DHCP Serving/Netboot Serving. It has always worked like a charm. So my theory at this point is that 10.6.2 Server seems to have some critical incompatibility with Mac minis. Which is a real ball buster considering the new Mac mini Server. I wonder if that new server has a slightly newer build of OS X Server on it.
So thats my story. I still want 10.6 on my home server, but now I'm kind of afraid of 10.6 server.
Heres another fun tidbit. My mini server is in one room, with it's keyboard, mouse, many connections to an external drive tower, modem, switch etc. But it's monitor is my television, thats in a different room. I've always used remote desktop to manage. But when the network itself is having problems. . . It's NOT fun when theres no easy way to move the TV or the Computer close to each other . . .
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