birds like wires

I’ve just bumped into this little chestnut again, and thought it would be worth documenting quickly, once and for all.

If you run Mac OS X Server, the one thing that is more important than anything else is to make sure the DNS hostname is set correctly. It’s fundamental – everything breaks if it’s not working. Out of the box, Server even configures its own DNS server to make sure the details are correct.

Now, I run my own internal DNS using Mac OS X Server, just so I don’t need to remember IP addresses. However, after adding an address to the DNS yesterday, the hostname of the server magically changed. I didn’t ask it to, it just happened. It was time to break out the repair tools.

Three Commands Will Save You

They are changeip, scutil and dscacheutil. Remember them, because they are your only friends. If the DNS is iffy, Server Admin runs away and needs some coaxing to play again (which, of course, is really helpful).

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Latest Release: 27th October 2011
Ubuntu Server 10.04.3 – (170MB) MD5

In developing the Joggler reflash tool it was obvious I’d need a relatively lightweight Linux which would actually run the script. There are distributions that are a lot more lightweight than Ubuntu Server, but because I’m used to using it and there was no startup cruft to clear out, it’s the one I went for.

This has the happy side effect that those people interested in running a Joggler as some type of server-only device can grab a copy of this and get started quickly.

The Details

I’ve set this version of Ubuntu Server up with Jools Wills’ 2.6.38.4joggler1 kernel, which was the latest version at the time of writing. The filesystem consists of a 128MB FAT16 boot partition with the remainder formatted as ext2, so there’s no journal to worry about on flash devices. The fstab mounts the FAT16 partition to /boot on startup, just like Jools’ GUI releases. There is no swap on this system, so if you plan to use it long-term, that’s something you should probably add.

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Here’s a fun one. You’ve set up Software Update Server on your Mac OS X Server system and all is fine. Then you realise that you’re the proud owner of a directory containing 52GB of software updates and you’ve put it in a silly place.

You shut down Software Update in Server Admin and move the directory to a bigger drive. You reconfigure the path and then re-enable the server. You see from the logs that all is well and you fire up Software Update on your client machine.

Hooray. That’s not quite what we were aiming for.

Foolishly, I have in the past simply resigned myself to ‘fixing’ this by deleting the software update directory, recreating a blank one and erasing all of the configuration files in /etc/swupd. This is a silly thing to do as you’ll end up downloading that 52GB all over again. It turns out the solution is ridiculously simple.

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If you’re running Lion as your desktop OS, you may well have bumped into this little one already. If you try to use commands such as nano or top or many other normal things, you may well be getting this error.

Error opening terminal: xterm-256color.

Brilliant.

It happens because there is no file defining a 256 colour session in Snow Leopard, or Leopard, or Tiger for that matter. You’re even likely come across the error when SSH-ing in non-Mac systems. So how to solve it?

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I don’t like visiting vmware.com. It means that there’s a problem, and I know that the solution will involve an awful lot of searching and staring in bafflement, usually with pretty high stakes. Feeling lost and apprehensive, I delve through many pages of documentation looking for the latest instructions that really should be in bold on an obvious page, or at the very least returned in my searches.

So you can imagine my happiness when I discovered that the incredibly simple, stress-reducing vSphere Host Update Utility has been unceremoniously ditched for ESXi 4.1. Gone. Kaput. Why? Only a cynic would say that it’s to encourage users to give VMware money for their fancier tools. And I’m not cynical. Oh, no.

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