5 Improvements to OS X Server I’d like to see in Leopard (10.5).
My new job exposes me to the inner workings of Apple OS X Server on a very intamit basis. Alot of the times I’m doing work that isn’t well documentated or isn’t as quite straight forward as is says in the book. This means I generally have to hand edit configurations in OS X Server. From these experiences I’d like to see the following addressed.
- Remove bootpd as the DHCP server and replace it with ISC DHCP. I could talk quite litterley talk for days on this issue along. Tftpbooting other OS’s would be easier, (secure) dynamic DNS would make any admin’s life easier.
- Allow custom configurations of services. Imagine your trying to secure bind in OS X and decide on using views or even just allow replication of 1 or 2 zones. As soon as you goto serveradmin to restart the services it decides to rewrite the configuration. Also add ipv6 localhost zone to the default setup.
- Create an API for serveradmin. I think the Server Monitor and serveradmin are great utilities for OS X Server but it could be better if the community could add to it with other plugins for other services ( think Mysql, PostgreSQL,oracle,asterisk,etc….).
- Include sasl tools.. Actually inlcude all tools to any technology that’s used, particularly those that are GPL.. There should be a law against not including debug tools.
- Remove dashboard,iTunes and quicktime (unless the server is configured for streaming server)for the server installs. This is just extra crap that isn’t needed in a server install and takes up RAM and cpu cycles.
All in all it’s not a big ask. Please Apple. Think about sysadmins