Subject: [netatalk-admins] Substitute Linux by MacOS???

From: Oliver Wrede <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 08 Feb 1998 22:53:44 +0100

Hi everybody.

We want to substitute a Linux box by an MacOS-Server! These here are
our main services and our plans to substitute Mac software. I don't
have any experiences with this services on Mac and I wnat to know if
anybody can comment on it (bad/good, do's/dont's, etc)

LINUX:               -->                 APPLE:

WWW (Apache)                             WWW (Apache / WebTen)
Mail (Sendmail)                          Stalker Internet Mail Server
FTP                                      FTP (NetPresence/WebTen)
Majordomo                                MacJordomo
PHP                                      (???)
MySQL                                    FileMaker Pro + Lasso/Tango
Telnet                                   (???)
PPP (analog + digital)                   VICOM Internet Gateway
FTP-Spiegelung                           FTP-Client + AppleScript
WWW based Newsgroup                      (???)
Netatalk (TCP/IP)                        not needed

The MacOS Server is supposed to deal with 400-600 Users in a network of
aprox. 30 Macs and 5-10 PCs. We need IMAP support to accomplish this.

I am currently unsure if a MacOS machine is a reliable application for
this task. If anybody here think I should not use MacOS, I would
appreciate some advice/experience reports...

Oliver

. Oliver Wrede . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . [email-masked] .
. tel. +49 2203 913 200 .  office +49 221 9522 601 . fax +49 221 9522 605  .
. School of Design, University of Applied Science, Cologne . . . . . . . . .
. http://www.ds.fh-koeln.de/~owrede/ . . . . . . . . ICQ# 6580315  . . . . .

---

From: dannyman <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 8 Feb 1998 16:07:35 -0600

> appreciate some advice/experience reports...

*scratches head*

Well, MacOS sucks, doesn't multitask too well, is crash-prone, and the source
code for whatever you're running is not open to security audit or manual
tweaking/bug-fixing.

That and remote maintenance is probably a sick joke.

But other than that, I'm sure the Mac would make a great platform for
Internet server applications. Why bother with that tricky unix stuff?
Especially linux with it's silly graphical configuration screens and stuff.

hth,
dan

-- 
  //Dan   -=-     This message brought to you by [email-masked]    -=-
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aiokomete -=-   Our Honored Symbol deserves an Honorable Retirement

---

From: Marc Matteo <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 8 Feb 1998 14:24:24 -0800 (PST)

On Sun, 8 Feb 1998, Oliver Wrede wrote:

> We want to substitute a Linux box by an MacOS-Server!

Good God, man, why?!?!?

I mean I'm a Mac fan and all but the MacOS just is not worth a damn as a
server OS.  Yeah, you can do all the things you mentioned but you can do
them all cheaper, faster and more stable on a UNIX/Linux box.

Marc

Marc Matteo
Web Engineer, The Sacramento Bee
http://www.sacbee.com

---

From: Oliver Wrede <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 08 Feb 1998 23:45:22 +0100

>them all cheaper, faster and more stable on a UNIX/Linux box.

I know that. I am supporting the usage of Linux even in Mac-enviroments
for server tasks. Problem is, that I need definitive "Don't do that!"
from experienced admins to convince people from my department to stay
on Linux and spent more time in learning to administer it.

Currently the discussion is, saying "MacOS does all we need!", but I
think they're wrong in that point -- especially, because we're going
to have >400 Users working on e-Mail every day.

We have a very small PC (P90,32MB RAM,1.5GB drive) doing this job
perfectly for more than two years now. My personal experience is that
Linux performed extermly well -- but for most people from the Mac
area the interface is a problem. They simply do not want to get
into it.

I think the reliability counts more than the interface for a server,
but my friends here fear to lose control over the services if no
UNIX guy is around to fix it if something is broken.

On the other hand I have the feeling, that doing all we need on
MacOS (see my last mail) we will have more things broken, than we
can fix. But I need confirmation on that - because I do not have
any practical experience with MacOS as server for our dimension (see
my last mail as well).

Oliver

---

From: Jesse Swensen <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 8 Feb 1998 17:48:04 -0500

>appreciate some advice/experience reports...

First, let me say that I am a Mac Bigot.  I have been a Mac
consultant/programmer/evangelist since the Mac Plus days and am currently
active with Macs.  I love Macs and think they have the best user interface.
But, that's just it, a user interface.  If you don't need one don't use it.

To replace all the above services, you will need several Macs.  But if you
are intent on changing, here is my choices:

>WWW (Apache)                             StarNine WebStar (Best commercial
>Web Server)
>Mail (Sendmail)                          StarNine Mail and MailLink
>Gateways (Use to be owned my MS but they gave it up for NT/Exchange.  I
>think StarNine is better.)
>FTP                                      NetPresence
>Majordomo                                StarNine ListStar
>PHP                                      Take a look at 4th Dimension.  It
>is it's own database and has a great development environment and can be a
>front end or even a Web Server.
>MySQL                                    4th Dimension
>Telnet                                   Telnet (NCSA Telnet)
>PPP (analog + digital)                   I am not familiar with a good
>solution (Not that there isn't one)
>FTP-Spiegelung                           Fetch

Understand that WebStar, Mail and 4th Dimension will each need their own
Machine to get the same kind of performance you get from a Linux box.  If I
had a choice, I would use the Linux box for the services that you don't
need a user interface for like Pop Mail, web server/PHP, etc... and Leave
the Macs to do what they do best, interface with the user.

Jesse

___________________________________________________________________

		CornerStone Computer Services
Jesse Swensen        111 Vashon CT.       (919) 481-3480 (home)
[email-masked]       Cary, NC  27513      (919) 481-3480 (FAX)

       "Intel Inside" The worlds most used warning label.
___________________________________________________________________

---

From: dannyman <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 8 Feb 1998 17:24:18 -0600

> UNIX guy is around to fix it if something is broken.

Well, tell them that because Unix is under attack from NT, there will be
plenty of Unix guys ready to pitch in. ;)

---

From: "Gary E. Bickford" <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 8 Feb 1998 17:20:09 -0600

Good places to find out include http://mrmac.com/macmgrs.

I quote:

>Reply-To: "Rhapsody Discussion List" <[email-masked]>
...
>>	Yep..  86 days of uptime running my Apache server..
>
>I agree that Apache rocks.  I have a IIsi running NetBSD (MacBSD) and
>Apache that has been running since May of last year with the exception of
>changing out an UPS.  On the other hand, I have a quadra 700 running
>WebSTAR that has been up since last September 6th ;-)
...

Actually, the Mac based web servers aren't too bad.  Because MacOS doesn't
have a multiuser attitude, it's pretty much secure from web hacking, unless
set up wrong.  Some of my best friends run all-mac ISP's :)  Performance is
pretty good.  Most web servers are underutiliized anyway - a T1 line is
only 1.5 M bits/second, which is lower than disk access on an SE/30 (an OLD
machine)

If you REALLY want to rock and roll, Get WebObjects from Apple.  not cheap,
but worth every $.  When Apple rolled out their online purchasing web site,
the first day they had 12 million hits and sold $6 million worth of
equipment, all without a glitch.  From my experience, that's remarkable for
a first day.

If you want personal experience with Mac webservers, you can contact me
directly, and I'll give you the email of someone who does this.

I run multiple commercial webservers (Stronghold, Apache-based) based on
Sparc/Solaris, but I connect to them and do my work on a 2-headed Mac.  I
can use BBEdit, a programmer's editor which is worth the price of a Mac by
itself, or Exodus (X11), or ssh, or telnet depending on what I'm doing.  I
keep NetPresenz (a shareware Mac-based web & ftp server) running so I can
ftp from home via a corporate dialup.  Not a greatly used site, but it's
never crashed my Mac.

Oddly enough, I've recently been in a Rhapsody discussion list defending
the use of vi and emacs...:)
GEB

---

From: David Kelly <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 08 Feb 1998 19:29:13 -0600

> plenty of Unix guys ready to pitch in. ;)

And when Rhapsody ships the number of Unix users in the world will swell
faster than Linux and FreeBSD have managed to contribute. Watch for the
media to poo-poo Rhapsody users as not really being Unix users.

Unless there is some compelling reason to ditch the Linux box now, tell 
the boss you want to keep it until Rhapsody comes out. No point 
converting to MacOS and back to Unix in the near future.

--
David Kelly N4HHE, [email-masked]
=====================================================================
The human mind ordinarily operates at only ten percent of its
capacity -- the rest is overhead for the operating system.

---

From: dannyman <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 8 Feb 1998 21:35:57 -0600

> media to poo-poo Rhapsody users as not really being Unix users.

even better, though i suspect it will be us unix dweebs calling rhapsody not
unix and not the mass media ... who don't even know what a unix is. :)

> converting to MacOS and back to Unix in the near future.

wize man. *bow*

---

From: Chris Joyce <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 9 Feb 1998 14:55:39 +1100 (EST)

I run MacOS, Linux and FreeBSD. I can't wait fro Rhapsody.

As for changing over from Linux to MacOS it seems that some things are
better some worse but all things easer to setup !

---

From: [email-masked]
Date: Mon, 9 Feb 1998 08:00:10 +0200 (SAT)

i moved onto netatalk because i found even serving file data was too much
like hard work for the macos. i have an 8550'200, and it *was* running
AS4.2 for a few months. i just got sick of rebooting every day. also,
before my 8550 (with 7.5.3) i had a 6150 with AS4.1, which was more stable
(running 7.5.0). trouble is it would often crash overnight serving ftp and
web and mail, (esp running macjordomo), so i decomissioned it. both my
servers (appleshare and internet) are unix-based. i've got uptimes of
several months instead of several days. this is why i'm so looking forward
to rhapsody: a stable unix with true MT and mem.protection, but with the
mac OS interface. make no mistake, i love the mac, i've been using it
almost 12 years. but it's no good on a server. see 

http://macaroni.cs.wits.ac.za/unix/unix_options.html

for various pages i've written commenting on exactly this issue.

For me, there are two big wins going with unix, and two big losses.

wins: internet speed is about 5x higher. 200k/sec on T1 is now 1mb/sec;
also, stability (crashes are much less frequent, despite mklinux being
"development release" stuff).

losses: appleshare speed significantly lower, because of having to split
the data forks and resource forks on the fly, i presume. Also, the unix
GUI sucks (it wishes it was a gui).

unfortunately, having to server internet FAST and not crash is more
important to me than how long it takes to copy a file to a user account on
the server.

____________________________________________________________
John Ostrowick
[email-masked], +27 11 716-3783
Computer Science Department, University of the Witwatersrand   
Web site, ftp site and listserv all available at: 
http://macaroni.cs.wits.ac.za/

---

From: [email-masked]
Date: Mon, 09 Feb 1998 09:56:13 -0800 (PST)

> WWW (Apache)                             WWW (Apache / WebTen)
the mack is as slow as they come, the package we are running on the mac
webserver at "www.sehs.lane.edu" and forget cgis.
> Mail (Sendmail)                          Stalker Internet Mail Server
no expirence
> FTP                                      FTP (NetPresence/WebTen)
NetPresence (ftpd its predisesor) I have had good luck with, however I
have always run it on a
box buy its self
> Majordomo                                MacJordomo
no expirence
> PHP                                      (???)
no expirence
> MySQL                                    FileMaker Pro + Lasso/Tango
functional, expect to spend a fortune on clients and a server package
> Telnet                                   (???)
Look into NCSA's telent I seem to remember that or a bbs package caled
"PA"
> PPP (analog + digital)                   VICOM Internet Gateway
no expirence Look into ARA is was packaged with the old apple share
servers, and mignt sttll be
> FTP-Spiegelung                           FTP-Client + AppleScript
no expirence
> WWW based Newsgroup                      (???)
There is a server out there now it is fairley new, i cant remember the
name thoe
> Netatalk (TCP/IP)                        not needed
IP share is what apple share 5 is... That is not 100% true
> aprox. 30 Macs and 5-10 PCs. We need IMAP support to accomplish this.
this is going to we slow, and form past expirence unstable.
> appreciate some advice/experience reports...

if you are currentley using a netatak bax stay with it. It is almost 2x as
fast making 5 hops as a 7200/120 is running appleshare 4.1.2 is on the
local hub
> Oliver
sorry to burst you bubble, I wish the mac was a better option, but it is
NOT made for surving, it you are set on using a mac install aux and port
netalk

Shawn Cupples

---

From: "Gary E. Bickford" <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 9 Feb 1998 14:11:16 -0600

According to my compatriots here, folks generally shouldn't use the MacOS
for servers, but should use the Workgroup Server.  Same reason as there's
NT workstation and NT server - the std. OS8 is set up for workstations, and
doesn't have the performance tuning & features you need.

That said, a lot of folks grudgingly admit the NT appleshare server is
faster, for now... (choke, gasp)
GEB

---

From: Mike Mansell <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 9 Feb 1998 14:53:50 -0500 (EST)

> faster, for now... (choke, gasp)

Except for the fact that NT can't export an NFS volume through its
appleshare server, like you can with netatalk, ethershare, k-ashare, etc.
(PLEASE! someone correct me if I'm wrong! I've never been able to get an
NT-Mac-only shop to work well with NFS devices - other than putting NFS
client on the Mac, but no one offers up-to-date s/w for that)

Mike.

--
    /\     Michael G. Mansell, BSc. (SCS)  Office:  (416) 665-0767  x228
   /\ \    Engineering Support Services    clearNET:(416) 984-7839
  /\ \ \   DataVation Inc., Toronto        Fax:     (416) 665-8285
 /  \ \ \  WWW.DataVation.COM              Email:   [email-masked]

---

From: David Kelly <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 09 Feb 1998 20:21:39 -0600

> i moved onto netatalk because i found even serving file data was too much
[...]
> "development release" stuff).

On a 1.54 million bit per second link you get 1 million bytes/sec?

Even on a 10base ethernet 1MB/sec is a stretch only realized on a small
net with little traffic.

---

From: Gregor Retti <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 10 Feb 1998 09:23:38 +0100

At 23:45 Uhr +0100 08.02.1998, Oliver Wrede wrote:
[SNIP]
>on Linux and spent more time in learning to administer it.

I would never try to put all the functionality you need on a Mac-server. I
have been running AppleShare-servers for about 7 years and I always had the
problem to figure out a stable configuration. In fact this had to been done
be pure try and error, since when the servers crash, they never tell you
why. I finally ended up having every function performed by one Mac-Server
only. If linux+netatalk had existed at that time, I would never have gone
through all these troubles.

On the other hand if people at your place do believe, they had control over
Mac-Servers doing all these tasks, they are simply wrong.

regards
gregor

-----------------------------------------------------------------------
 gregor retti ----------- http://germanistik.uibk.ac.at/germ/retti.html
-----------------------------------------------------------------------

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From: Richard Mann <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 10 Feb 1998 11:52:48 -0600 (CST)

> faster, for now... (choke, gasp)

	Says who? When I run NT Server 4.0 on a machine with the
	exact same hardware as our Linux server, the NT's Apple file
	sharing is dramatically slower than the Linux box's. 

	We had to bail out of NT [3.51] after about one year, due
	to the poor performance of NT and DiskShare NFS for NT.
	We've been running InfoMagic Workgroup Server v. 2.1 
	(based on RedHat 4.1) since it came out last year, and 
	all of a sudden network filesharing to the Macs was no
	longer an issue. (Besides a few MacOS shortcomings...)
	This in sharing about 45 GB of data SCSI-3, 80% of that
	to Mac's.

	(Sound of steps leaving soap box...)

     //\     --rich
    //  \    
   // /  \   Richard Mann -- Network Administrator
  // / /  \  P u b l i c a t i o n  S e r v i c e s,  I n c. 
  \\  / / /  Champaign, Illinois, USA 61821 (217) 398-2060 x22
   \\  / /   
    \\  /    
     \\/

---

From: Jonathan Peterson <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 10 Feb 1998 18:05:31 +0000

>	sharing is dramatically slower than the Linux box's. 

When I looked at Services for Macintosh on NT Server 4.0, I was distressed
to find that it did not seem to lock files!

I use samba + netatalk(4.b3) + Linux to get my hetergenous network talking
to each other, and although samba and netatalk don't quite seem to agree,
at least they won't let mac users save a file on top of one that a PC user
still has open! NT, at least in the default set up, did exactly that.

--------
Jon Peterson		
[email-masked]	
+44 (0)171 613 5300	

'Never never never never never'
			-- Shakespeare

---

From: "Christopher C. Petro" <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 16 Feb 1998 15:00:19 -0600

Sorry about being a little late on this one, I normally don't read much of
the list, and was just wandering thru when I noticed this sickness.

>>FTP                                      FTP (NetPresence/WebTen)

	Some of this functionality would be in lasso/Tango. A very little.

>>MySQL                                    FileMaker Pro + Lasso/Tango

	NO. DO NOT EVEN THINK ABOUT IT. FILEMAKER PRO BLOWS BIG CHUNKS OF
PARTICIALLY DIGESTED VEGETABLE MATTER.

	Sorry, I LOVE the mac platform. I love linux. Unix on the servers,
Macs on the desk top.

	Filemaker Pro server is a Horrid Horrid thing. Filemaker pro is a
nasty nasty peice of work in a networked enviroment. Trust me, I am loosing
my hair over clarises BRAIN DAMAGED implementation of many things
(Passwords are assigned on a per-table basis, and to change permissions,
add a user, or do anything with passwords, you MUST take the table (aka
file) down to a single user state...I.e. take it off line. Adding/Modifying
fields the same thing.) No, filemaker is NOT the way to go. If you
absolutely MUST use a mac for your intranet, then take a serious look at
the Butler Database stuff.

	Also, the MacOS just flat out can't handle the kinds of loads that
a similar unix boxen (esp. a Linux box) can. Just won't happen.

	Of course you can wait about 3-6 months and just use Rhapsody. It's
real real nice.

	Remember, you have been warned.

>>Telnet                                   (???)

	Why? MacOS is not even multitasking, much less multiuser.

>>Netatalk (TCP/IP)                        not needed

	Actuallly, you WILL need an Appleshare server.

	Also, all of the Mac products you mentioned are commercial
products. For the prices you would pay for all of that, you could buy a
couple machines to run linux on. You will probably also (depending on
loads) want to get an extra Mac because your