HodgeHi

First of all you need to find out what version of OS X you have deployed. If it is 10.6.2 have you tried updating to 10.6.3? It may resolve this issue. If this is indeed the version installed then try this. When one fails to find the AD, log in as the local admin. OPen the console and check the logs for any problems around that time. There may be some info in there that could point you in the right direction. If it's a time issue in think it says something like time skew to great. If it's a kerberos issue for the machine account i think it says something like computer failed Pre-auth. If this doesn't lead to anything, then check the dir util. It may bring up further information. I.E it may say not responding. Or in my case, One of the binds may be missing. I have an issue where the OD bind is removed on each reboot of the machine. I don't have a Server 2008 set up so can't help much further than this. But IIRC you can put the Dir Util in to debug mode. Can't remember how though. Check AFP548 or Bombich site for some clues or even Apple's site. Hope this helps in some way.

But since we are talking about cost. We have no real need to upgrade Windows XP to 7. For this point there is no real advantage to spending the cost. Yes it looks different but overall the usability is more or less the same. Granted more stable, and efficient but from an end-user's POV the same. If you can use XP then you should be able to find your way around Vista/Win7. I have been thinking about the possibility of upgrading XP to 7. Still am. I do see that the younger pupils need to start using the OS that will be theirs in the future. The teacher preference is quite a funny thing at our School. You see, the teacher who taught our Year 5's didn't know anything about OS X until she started working here. She got familiar with them at the same time as the kids through topics based on learning OS X. That year 5 is now Year 6. They are taught by a teacher that still moans about her blackboard being taken away, at every opportunity each day. But yet the pupils still prefer to use OS X over the windows side. But it is their choice. The teacher would prefer not to use either I can honestly say i have never tried to use these pieces of software or seen them. I have heard of them however. How to they integrate? Because I think that's what gives OS X a slight advantage over Windows. The integration is tighter. It may sound like I'm just iterating the Mac Ads but it is true. You see creating the albums in iPhoto them allows you to just drag them right onto your iWeb site. They come right from iPhoto. There's no need to mess around with imports/exports. Just an example. We looked at them and looked at the costs involved. We also looked at what benefits they would bring. We had the money at the time. We also didn't have the room for any more ICT suites (so buying 2 PC's for one mac just wasn't going to work for us ). We also purchased a 5 year warranty with each mac. So we know for sure that they are going to last at least 5 years without needing to spend any money for repairs. We are happy with our setup and are happy with how our ICT has developed. We can teach our kids email, we now run our own mail server for staff also. We have full control over our Website. We have a VLE which should be more economical in the long term to run. We have a lot of things that we would have needed additional licenses for if we went with the MS alternatives. Yes you can do it with open source but then you would need the skills/time to configure and build them. Sorry if this sounds like a rant or a defensive attack. It's not supposed to.

I disagree. We are a primary school. We give the pupils the choice of which OS to use. At the moment, we have Year's 5 and 6 all preferring to use OS X instead of their XP counterpart. Also we have someone who visits every Thursday to teach pupils the fundamentals of Music through the use of garageband. The teachers are also now starting to come onboard. We have a Reception teacher who uses a lot of photographs of the pupils doing different activities as evidence of them developing. She now uses the face-recognition in iPhoto to sort her images and then creates an album from them. She then uses iWeb to upload the albums to our server. You could say you can do all of this with Windows. But we did it in around 10 minutes from start to finish and learning on the way. Primary Schools don't have a lot of time to complete tasks. In fact lessons seem to be getting shorter and shorter with the amount of additional crap they have to keep doing. Unless that's just us Also if you buy Windows boxes, you still have to buy the licenses. You buy a mac you get OS X thrown in and iLife (for the cost). Still buying Windows is not really much of a problem IMO.

Not anymore you won't! Also is ther anyone on here that has kicked my ass on Killzone 2 so far (probably everyone that owns the game and has come across me). I think kevbaz has.

I just found this link. Windows 2003 DHCP/DNS server and non-Windows clients I wil be trying this out when i get back to work. You never know. It might just work

I just found this: Windows 2003 DHCP/DNS server and non-Windows clients May be useful for the DNS issue. Maybe not so much for the problem of not being able to log in. Usually i find this to be due to pre-auth failure. I may look into the passinterval=0 thing myself.

Of note, not sure if this is the reason for your machines not finding domain afterwards. You can't have the OS X side client named the same as it's Windows counterpart. When you bind on the OS X side it removes the account from the AD. Then windows cannot join. IIRC that is. I tried this myself only to find it messes up. In the end i decided to use OSX- and XP- prefixes for the names. Also what machines are these? are they the new education alu iMac machines? If so these have the nvidia nforce network chipsets. GPO will not deploy software until you update the nforce chipset drivers. When i get back to work on Monday i will post a link if you like. I say this since this also may be the reason domain is unavailable as they tend to be flippin slow connecting to the domain sometimes. I thought it may have something to do with my network config but the old white Intel ones are as quick as they have always been. Interesting to see what you have tried though to get Macs working as they should. But all of this may just be blah and not related in any way. If this is the case. Sorry

Hello Tony, Interesting you say this. So you wouldn't recommend going through the process of teaming ports on the X-Serve then? It was something that i was going to look into myself in the six weeks. I think i read somewhere on AFP548 that link aggregation is now better supported in 10.6, but i may be completely wrong and thinking about something else. You know, I'm beginning to wonder how i get through the days when i can't remember a bloody thing about what I've done. :S Anyway. I hope you are well.

In ARD. When you click on the unix option in the tool bar you get a window that pops up. In this window it gives you the option to either choose current console user on target computer (the user currently logged in) or a User that you specify. You would need to enter Root as the user since this would be the only user allowed to do this change i think. I may have chosen admin. Try either of them if admin doesn't work then try root. The root password is usually the same as the local admin password (well it is on OS X Server) unless you change it. Also to save time typing you can choose from the templates. This choice is found on the same pop up window at the top-right. Take a look at them. There are quite a few templates worth taking notice of. They can save you a lot of time. Hope this helps a little.

Hmm. Seems my post has been over-looked. What i mention in my post is how to go about getting the users' home dirs integrated. I think for everyone this is the best solution. As iSteve says, if you want 2 separate systems then 2 separate AD and OD systems is the way to go. Personally having 2 separate systems is a management headache and also can be problematic for end-users. Confusion sets in if passwords start being changed. It's bad enough with OS X password changes and Keychain logins not being updated, without having to remember what AD password is still set to. Remember, that if you have 2 separate systems you need to manage 2 separate lists of users. I have tried numerous setups with our AD and OD systems. I have tried 2 kerberised systems with the users having to choose which system to use on the Windows side, an AD-OD integrated system with 2 different kerberised realms (in my newbie days. I know now why that can't be done), 2 independent directory systems, and finally rested on the AD-OD integrated system. It seems to be the best of both worlds without the headache from the management point of view. You can have one RAID array where all of your re-directed shares are kept. Start menu for pupils, start menu for staff, shared desktop, home dirs, resource shares etc. The GPO redirects still work from a different server even if the shares are residing on an OS X Server. Windows doesn't care. You just need the permissions set correctly. The only shares i didn't put on my OS X Server were the profile shares. The only thing to mention is that the OS X SMB service doesn't like $ shares. Well, mine didn't anyway. Unless I'm missing something On re-reading your post LukeC i noticed that you want to create home dirs on the OS X Server for AD Users. Now, IIRC WGM won't create the home dirs for AD users using the create home now button. This is the reason I had to create a script to export the users into a txt file and then read them into a variable and create their home dir like that. It's relatively easy. I think i posted the script online here. I just need to tweak it to add the ACLs instead of POSIX.

Take a look at the Sticky AD-OD at the top of the Mac forum. Follow that guide to get AD authentication up and running. But instead of placing the Home Dirs on the Windows Servers, keep them on the OD Server. You will need to create the Home Dirs manually i think for the AD USers. I can't remember now. But this means you have a better chance of locking down the users home dir preferences. You take a temp user and then log on with that user and configure apps and finder. Run each app once and configure the prefs. This will remove any pop up questions/windows that will appear. Once this is done, log off as that user and log back on as an admin user. Then copy this user's home dir and overwrite the default template, or just copy it onto the desktop. I then used the DSCL util (terminal Command) to export the users into a txt file and then list the users as a variable into a script to create their home dirs automatically. The only thing I couldn't do is add the ACLs to the home dirs properly. I used POSIX permissions, but ACLs are much better to use. Sorry. Got a bit off-topic there. Once the home dirs are in place then test to make sure there are no problems logging in. Set the home dir to either AFP or SMB. Your Choice. I prefer AFP. This is done through Directory Utility. If 10.6 on clients this can be found in Users section in System Preferences or /System/Library/Core Services/, otherwise in the Utilities folder in the Applications folder. Now, for your AD users. What i did was have the users home dirs stored on our XRAID and then re-directed the Documents folder to the Home dir on the XRAID. This kept the users documents all in one location. The only downside to this is having 2 pictures, music and movies folders. But this I'm working on this. Anyway hope this helps. PS. Don't forget that to have Windows users accessing the Home Dirs on the X-Serve, you will need to have both AFP and SMB services running, and also have the Home Dirs shared using both AFP and SMB. This is the case for all shares you wish to access from Windows.

I tried to do it once. I'm not sure if it worked correctly or not. The switch that the server was connected to started misbehaving. I wasn't sure it it was down to the teamed ports or just a co-incidence. I thought maybe too much of a co-incidence as the switches had never misbehaved up until then. I have also read that the switches do need to be able to support the teaming of an X-Serve. What the differences are i don't know. I thought that it was standard protocols but then Apple like to put their own twist on standards. A little like MS do. To start you need to go to network in system preferences. Then click the cog with the down-arrow next to it on the right-hand side. Choose managed virtual interfaces. Click the plus icon at the bottom of the window that slides down. Choose new link aggregation. Tick the ethernet ports to add to the link aggregation. Give a name to the new connection. The new connection will then appear in the network connections list on the left. I'm not sure of the next part since i had to re-trace these steps on a mac-mini. I think you then need to give the connection a configuration. Also a different IP address to the other two single Ethernet connections. Hope this goes some way to helping. Sorry it's not complete.

I think your .Net package is excellent. But it has now been split into 4 or 5 smaller packages. i understand your reasoning, but is it possible to also have a single package for us techs on a 'speedier' connection? Still, thanks for the efforts. You make deploying this stuff much easier.

Hello Everyone. Hope all is well. Just before we broke up for the Easter break, I decided to move the FTP access from the OD Server over to the Windows 2003 Server. Reasons for this are plenty but ultimately come down the Apple's FTP implementation being rather poor. What I have set up is basically a folder on the Windows Server that stores the sites created in iWeb for each user within a given year. For example, year 6 have a folder which the users' in this group can write to but cannot overwrite other users' sites. Also through the use of virtual sites in IIS 6, you can also browse these sites. Since i have used this site extensively throughout the last 5-6 years or so, I decided i wanted to give something back that maybe of some use. So I was thinking of creating a How-to guide to show how i did this. If anyone is interested that is

I've been having this problem since we moved schools on some new edu intel alu imacs. it seems to be a select few machines which have the issue recur now and again. Each time i check the logs it's a pre-auth failure causing the issue. A quick unbind of the ad and rebind sorts the issue. I'm not entirely sure whats causes this and would be willing to try anything. What is really funny though is i have a couple of standard macs with intel, networking and ATI cards and the old edu white intel imacs. I have 25 of these types and these have never had the problem. Still don't. These too have the intel networking chipsets. I still think the nvidia networking chipsets are to blame for some things. Just can't prove it I doubt Apple will change their manufacturing because of me though. Do you ?

Set up software update on the server if you have one. Wait a few days for it to mirror the updates. Then configure the admin account to bypass the proxy server for your apple server's address (you may not need to do this bit). Then using ARD, click on the unix terminal icon. Then use the attachment to find the path to the required command. You can just use 'list updates' using the admin for the user instead of root if you wish. But of course you may already know all of this.

I would look to buy a mac mini. At the end of the day if you find you love using the OS then great. If not bootcamp it and install the OS you do like. You only end up with a decent machine either way. Mac minis are one of Apple's good machines. I can't rate then highly enough. If you are sick of the loud noise coming from the fans on your PC then a mini is something to 'not hear'.

You are correct jlucas. You can open the DMG on your local machine and drag and drop the .pkg file into the Install window of ARD. This will then deploy the package to the clients. Also if you have iWork 09 or any other app that has a shortcut link to the .pkg file, if you right-click this and then choose show original, you can then drag this onto the install window and deploy that too. Also of note. If you have a few packages that require restarts, i.e. Quicktime update, iTunes updates, Java etc, you can drag all of these onto the same Install window. The client will only restart once after all packages have been installed. The attachment is an example of this install window for those that don't know what i mean. You click the install icon at the top to get to this. You drag the packages into the top-half of this window. You can then drag the groups of computers that you want to deploy to into the bottom-half.

Will do from now on. Edugeek First! The way I tend to use ARD is to create lists depending on rooms. Eg. ICT Suite, Admins, Servers, Staffroom, Classrooms etc. Then its just a case of clicking on the install button, and then dragging the list name of the machines you want to deploy to into the bottom of the window (for example ICT Suite from the left-hand bar) Then mount the DMG that you want to deploy and drag and drop the .pkg file into the top half of the ARD window that has the list in the bottom. I would do you a screenshot but for some unknown reason screengrab util isn't installed Anyhow, hope that makes sense.

Sorry my mistake. I'm doing too many things at once here Microsoft Releases Software Updates for Office 2008 and 2004 - Mac Rumors

What version of Office are you using? You could check these links on this page (if not blocked). This lists the updates for all MS Offices.

Make sure that you are using the newset version of DeployStudio as it now supports 10.6. There may be a few changes on the way it changes the byHost prefs and the LKDC and a few other items. Also make sure that you have 10.6.2 installed as 10.6 did have an issue with binding IIRC. But i too am struggling with binds disappearing, but on 10.5.8

Yeah, if i recall correctly i had the same problem. I downloaded manually.If you have ARD, I *think* you may be able to update your local copy of Office and then deploy the Office folder from your apps folder to the rest of the machines. But i would check it first, unless of course MDS now use .pkg files in which case just deploy straight through ARD.

It doesn't actually say that he is bound to the AD, unless i missed it. If he is then OS X Server will be required/ad Schema extended. If not and he only has a few machines, he could just use the built-in parental controls found under users in system prefs. This will only let them run and do what you let them do. If you are looking to invest in more though, you may be better off with the OS X Server.

Microsoft have just released an update for Office for mac. Try an update to see it resolves anything. Also a little tip for you: When using terminal if you don't want to type in a mega long cd command just type CD followed by a space and then drag and drop the folder you want to get to on to the terminal window and it will complete the path for you. Then press return. Much quicker