Comments on: Mac OS X - the perfect sysadmin workstation http://aspiringsysadmin.com/blog/2007/11/08/mac-os-x-the-perfect-sysadmin-workstation/ How to build an infrastructure based on UNIX Wed, 20 Aug 2008 06:53:56 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.3 By: my bookmarks | common abnormality http://aspiringsysadmin.com/blog/2007/11/08/mac-os-x-the-perfect-sysadmin-workstation/#comment-275 my bookmarks | common abnormality Sat, 05 Jan 2008 15:43:33 +0000 http://aspiringsysadmin.com/blog/2007/11/08/mac-os-x-the-perfect-sysadmin-workstation/#comment-275 [...] mac os x - the perfect sysadmin workstation [...] […] mac os x - the perfect sysadmin workstation […]

]]> By: vdanen http://aspiringsysadmin.com/blog/2007/11/08/mac-os-x-the-perfect-sysadmin-workstation/#comment-254 vdanen Wed, 12 Dec 2007 00:49:03 +0000 http://aspiringsysadmin.com/blog/2007/11/08/mac-os-x-the-perfect-sysadmin-workstation/#comment-254 This totally smacks of Apple fan-boyism, but that's ok. Just to play the devil's advocate... you can install cygwin on Windows and get all the *NIX CLI goodness (well, maybe not all, but plenty). If I'm stuck with a Windows system or dual-boot Windows and Linux, I always throw cygwin on the Windows box. And browser/email combos on Windows would be thunderbird and firefox. Having said that, yeah, Linux is a bit more of a nuisance on the desktop than it rightly should be. I *still* have to fart around with wireless stuff, although to be fair, when I threw Mandriva 2008 on my HP tablet laptop, everything worked flawlessly. Yeah, I had to tinker a bit, but it was better than with 2007.1, better than Ubuntu (which wouldn't even boot on this system), and was only a matter of a few hours. Now I have a fullbore tablet running Mandriva. Extremely cool stuff. However, I do use OS X for my main desktop. Spaces is... ok. Mail.app is... utter crap as far as I'm concerned. What self-respecting sysadmin would use that bloated heap? Give me mutt any day. As for browsers... well, I do some web work so I keep Camino, Firefox, and Safari all handy. Throw that all on a mac pro with 7GB RAM, vmware fusion, copious amounts of drive space (somewhere in the neighbourhood of 3TB I think, in total), and four monitors and yeah... this is a sysadmin's dream. Terminals galore. Tabbed terminals? Finally they got something right in Leopard. This totally smacks of Apple fan-boyism, but that’s ok. Just to play the devil’s advocate… you can install cygwin on Windows and get all the *NIX CLI goodness (well, maybe not all, but plenty). If I’m stuck with a Windows system or dual-boot Windows and Linux, I always throw cygwin on the Windows box. And browser/email combos on Windows would be thunderbird and firefox.

Having said that, yeah, Linux is a bit more of a nuisance on the desktop than it rightly should be. I *still* have to fart around with wireless stuff, although to be fair, when I threw Mandriva 2008 on my HP tablet laptop, everything worked flawlessly. Yeah, I had to tinker a bit, but it was better than with 2007.1, better than Ubuntu (which wouldn’t even boot on this system), and was only a matter of a few hours. Now I have a fullbore tablet running Mandriva. Extremely cool stuff.

However, I do use OS X for my main desktop. Spaces is… ok. Mail.app is… utter crap as far as I’m concerned. What self-respecting sysadmin would use that bloated heap? Give me mutt any day. As for browsers… well, I do some web work so I keep Camino, Firefox, and Safari all handy.

Throw that all on a mac pro with 7GB RAM, vmware fusion, copious amounts of drive space (somewhere in the neighbourhood of 3TB I think, in total), and four monitors and yeah… this is a sysadmin’s dream. Terminals galore. Tabbed terminals? Finally they got something right in Leopard.

]]> By: Macpro.se - Mac OS X ultimat f http://aspiringsysadmin.com/blog/2007/11/08/mac-os-x-the-perfect-sysadmin-workstation/#comment-242 Macpro.se - Mac OS X ultimat f Wed, 28 Nov 2007 18:30:19 +0000 http://aspiringsysadmin.com/blog/2007/11/08/mac-os-x-the-perfect-sysadmin-workstation/#comment-242 [...] Bloggaren Nickus skriver om varf […] Bloggaren Nickus skriver om varf

]]> By: Nickus http://aspiringsysadmin.com/blog/2007/11/08/mac-os-x-the-perfect-sysadmin-workstation/#comment-223 Nickus Sun, 11 Nov 2007 14:01:38 +0000 http://aspiringsysadmin.com/blog/2007/11/08/mac-os-x-the-perfect-sysadmin-workstation/#comment-223 Karl, your comments has some excellent points. I personally use CoRD for my remote desktop use. It is very lean and efficient. In a previous job I worked a bit with OSX Server (Panther & Tiger) and it was not a very good product back then. It will be very interesting to see what Leopard has to offer there. I still believe that Solaris is the preferred server OS but nothing in this world is static. Karl, your comments has some excellent points.

I personally use CoRD for my remote desktop use. It is very lean and efficient.

In a previous job I worked a bit with OSX Server (Panther & Tiger) and it was not a very good product back then. It will be very interesting to see what Leopard has to offer there. I still believe that Solaris is the preferred server OS but nothing in this world is static.

]]> By: Karl Gretton http://aspiringsysadmin.com/blog/2007/11/08/mac-os-x-the-perfect-sysadmin-workstation/#comment-222 Karl Gretton Sun, 11 Nov 2007 13:50:51 +0000 http://aspiringsysadmin.com/blog/2007/11/08/mac-os-x-the-perfect-sysadmin-workstation/#comment-222 I've been a Solaris user and admin for some years and I think that Sun makes an excellent server OS and continues to innovate. However, using a Sun workstation was a frustrating experience and I switched to using Mac OS X right back in the 10.1 days and never looked back. In addition to the great points that you make, there is more: - Some of us have to deal with Windows servers and having an official, fast, Remote Desktop Connection client from Microsoft helps - Access to virtually any application - true Word/Excel rather than just Open Office - Virtual PC and, since early 2006, Virtualization via VMWare or Parallels that allow you to run a fast image of *NIX or Windows xxx to do your configuration testing Once you are comfortable living in Mac OS X, particularly today with a certified UNIX OS, Mac OS X Server becomes a very interesting and rapidly maturing alternative to Solaris for some applications. I’ve been a Solaris user and admin for some years and I think that Sun makes an excellent server OS and continues to innovate. However, using a Sun workstation was a frustrating experience and I switched to using Mac OS X right back in the 10.1 days and never looked back.

In addition to the great points that you make, there is more:

- Some of us have to deal with Windows servers and having an official, fast, Remote Desktop Connection client from Microsoft helps
- Access to virtually any application - true Word/Excel rather than just Open Office
- Virtual PC and, since early 2006, Virtualization via VMWare or Parallels that allow you to run a fast image of *NIX or Windows xxx to do your configuration testing

Once you are comfortable living in Mac OS X, particularly today with a certified UNIX OS, Mac OS X Server becomes a very interesting and rapidly maturing alternative to Solaris for some applications.

]]> By: James Legg http://aspiringsysadmin.com/blog/2007/11/08/mac-os-x-the-perfect-sysadmin-workstation/#comment-220 James Legg Sat, 10 Nov 2007 19:43:26 +0000 http://aspiringsysadmin.com/blog/2007/11/08/mac-os-x-the-perfect-sysadmin-workstation/#comment-220 Personally I find the feature I miss most in using OS X for admining Unix/Linux is the X11 middle click function - Command + C/V seems like a lot of hard work when your moving commands around between windows all the time (yes I know its in terminal.app, but it is not quite as good as X11 because you cant move from aqua apps to terminal/xterms seamlessly) - that said tabbed terminal windows is nice. Personally I find the feature I miss most in using OS X for admining Unix/Linux is the X11 middle click function - Command + C/V seems like a lot of hard work when your moving commands around between windows all the time (yes I know its in terminal.app, but it is not quite as good as X11 because you cant move from aqua apps to terminal/xterms seamlessly) - that said tabbed terminal windows is nice.

]]> By: Nickus http://aspiringsysadmin.com/blog/2007/11/08/mac-os-x-the-perfect-sysadmin-workstation/#comment-218 Nickus Sat, 10 Nov 2007 14:01:13 +0000 http://aspiringsysadmin.com/blog/2007/11/08/mac-os-x-the-perfect-sysadmin-workstation/#comment-218 daeltar, OpenSolaris has made much progress as well on the desktop side and one of the main attractions for desktop use is actually ZFS IMHO. ZFS with snapshots is actually really really useful on a normal desktop machines, a bit like time machine but only better (I wish Apple would base their next time machine implementation on ZFS). daeltar, OpenSolaris has made much progress as well on the desktop side and one of the main attractions for desktop use is actually ZFS IMHO. ZFS with snapshots is actually really really useful on a normal desktop machines, a bit like time machine but only better (I wish Apple would base their next time machine implementation on ZFS).

]]> By: daeltar http://aspiringsysadmin.com/blog/2007/11/08/mac-os-x-the-perfect-sysadmin-workstation/#comment-217 daeltar Sat, 10 Nov 2007 10:13:51 +0000 http://aspiringsysadmin.com/blog/2007/11/08/mac-os-x-the-perfect-sysadmin-workstation/#comment-217 Yesterday I tried to install Solaris svn_70b on my notebook and stay impressed how good it performs - I think it may be win-win combination - same systems on both server and desktop(notebook) side. Yesterday I tried to install Solaris svn_70b on my notebook and stay impressed how good it performs - I think it may be win-win combination - same systems on both server and desktop(notebook) side.

]]> By: b3gl http://aspiringsysadmin.com/blog/2007/11/08/mac-os-x-the-perfect-sysadmin-workstation/#comment-216 b3gl Sat, 10 Nov 2007 06:46:59 +0000 http://aspiringsysadmin.com/blog/2007/11/08/mac-os-x-the-perfect-sysadmin-workstation/#comment-216 For those you who want a faster sleep/wake, I suggest you set the hibernate mode to 0. The default setting (3) writes the RAM state to disk. This is a bit safer and uses less juice during sleep, but requires a few seconds to sleep and wake. Setting the mode to 0 will skip the write to disk and use a bit more juice to keep RAM up during sleep. The upside is that it makes sleep and wake almost instantaneous. sudo pmset hibernatemode 0 For those you who want a faster sleep/wake, I suggest you set the hibernate mode to 0. The default setting (3) writes the RAM state to disk. This is a bit safer and uses less juice during sleep, but requires a few seconds to sleep and wake. Setting the mode to 0 will skip the write to disk and use a bit more juice to keep RAM up during sleep. The upside is that it makes sleep and wake almost instantaneous.

sudo pmset hibernatemode 0

]]> By: Nickus http://aspiringsysadmin.com/blog/2007/11/08/mac-os-x-the-perfect-sysadmin-workstation/#comment-215 Nickus Sat, 10 Nov 2007 04:25:18 +0000 http://aspiringsysadmin.com/blog/2007/11/08/mac-os-x-the-perfect-sysadmin-workstation/#comment-215 Mike Rupertus, I think the most appealing aspect for me is that I have really user friendly GUI on top of a real UNIX. A perfect match for me. Sure, Ubuntu has taken the Linux desktop many steps forward on the userfriendlyness scale but my personal opinion is that they still have many steps to go before they reach OS X. Mike Rupertus, I think the most appealing aspect for me is that I have really user friendly GUI on top of a real UNIX. A perfect match for me.

Sure, Ubuntu has taken the Linux desktop many steps forward on the userfriendlyness scale but my personal opinion is that they still have many steps to go before they reach OS X.

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