[besson3c]

I was just working with a client whose Postfix LDAP authentication broke after updating to Server 10.5.8. This auth seems to happen at OS X level (perhaps something similar to PAM, although I haven't looked into this), and results in undelivered email. We are still researching a fix. This isn't the only point update that has caused various problems.

Other problems with this same server:

- Workgroup Manager seems to have destroyed aliases in /etc/aliases

- The GUI for the mail config rewrites the Postfix inet_interfaces config option after every change and server restart. The GUI also locks up at times too. My client is reloading Postfix through the CLI

- For some reason this same update removed amavisd from launchctl's list


This XServe also only has 3 drive bays, is probably $1000 more expensive than it should be, from what I can gather requires hoops to be jumped through to use "non-approved" SATA drives (and the approved drives are very overpriced, although in fairness to Apple Apple isn't the only vendor to do this sort of thing)

Unreliable GUIs that do inexplicable things and fail silently, overpriced hardware, no turnkey style backup system made by Apple that is suitable to use in Server, poor QA in point updates, no built-in package management so that you can use something like Postfix without Apple's shims and having to worry about it imploding across OS updates, a crappy filesystem, from what I can gather many people are reluctant to upgrade to Snow Leopard Server... What a bloody mess!

Yes, this is just an unfocused rant, but it's so incredibly sad that users can't expect the same sort of pristine and thoughtful design to Server than they can expect from Client. Client is such a joy to use, it almost seems like somebody would be better off with Windows server than with OS X Server.

I'm also wondering if it wouldn't be better for Apple to kill of Server than continue in this way. Really. I'm sure there are plenty of happy customers out there too, probably several on this board, but seems hard to dispute that the quality in comparison to what one would expect from Apple simply ain't there.

[Rainy Day]

Well, if you truly think a Windoze server would treat you better, then go ahead. Nobody’s stopping you. And if you think a Dell box would be better than an Xserve, well go ahead there too. But bring your checkbook along, because you won’t save much on the Dell hardware, and the Windoze seat licensing fees are major hidden costs which dwarf the cost of the Xserve.

I admin an iMac running Leopard server, and a VPS slice running Linux (CentOS). While i share your grief dealing with Mac OS X Server’s peculiarities, i’ve learned how it works, so can roll with it. Have even been able to go inside and customize/tweak Mailman, Postfix & Apache. All in all, i prefer Mac OS X Server to rolling my own solution with CentOS, even though bolting something onto Mac OS X Server can be more challenging. Yes, there are changes i’d like to see in Mac OS X Server, and plenty of room for improvement, but the same is true for any other server platform out there, IMO. In the end, i find Mac OS X Server less work to maintain. YMMV.

We haven’t upgraded to Snow Leopard Server because there’s not much that it offers us; we just can’t justify the $500 upgrade price. When we’re ready to upgrade our server hardware, we’ll probably opt for the Mac mini Server and get into Snow Leopard Server that way.

[besson3c]

I'm not a Windows user, I'm a Unix/Linux user on the server side, Mac user on the client side. I have no temptation or need to switch to Windows on the server end personally. I'm also not a fan of Dell, but I'm a fan of building your own 1U servers. I just did that for about half the price of an XServe and I built a far better server.

I don't see how anyone who is experienced with CentOS could prefer OS X Server to CentOS/Redhat, especially if you don't have to go outside of the included Redhat software repository, but to each their own I guess.

[King Bob On The Cob]

Originally Posted by besson3c 

I'm not a Windows user, I'm a Unix/Linux user on the server side, Mac user on the client side. I have no temptation or need to switch to Windows on the server end personally. I'm also not a fan of Dell, but I'm a fan of building your own 1U servers. I just did that for about half the price of an XServe and I built a far better server.

I don't see how anyone who is experienced with CentOS could prefer OS X Server to CentOS/Redhat, especially if you don't have to go outside of the included Redhat software repository, but to each their own I guess.

CentOS has interfaces that blow away firewall rules. I've done it a few times when I was turning SELinux off. Remember to treat OS X like a BSD system and you'll be fine (Really, you can modify stuff in System if you're feeling ballsy and you don't like a particular feature)

[besson3c]

What interfaces blow away firewall rules? Do you mean the system-config text GUI tools?

I love FreeBSD, and if I had to use OS X Server I would do just that and run MacPorts, but then again, why not just run FreeBSD if you want a BSD system? FreeBSD ports is far better than MacPorts anyway.

[mduell]

I've been disappointed with the OS X Server we have at the office. A lot of frustration and limitations, no magic. We're down to using it for a wiki (and it's so hard to migrate away from), jabber server, mailing lists, login, and file sharing.