Nope! I’ve had it. For real this time.

Mac OS 10.4 Server worked fine. Mac OS 10.5 Server was a disaster. Mac OS 10.6 Server was only crashing and breaking every 6-9 months. Mac OS 10.7 Server was a complete screwup. Mac OS 10.8 Server is better but any serious networking is a no go!

 The fail!

DNS Server on Mountain Lion does *not* work. I’m not gonna wait for 10.8.1. It’s been rubbish since Lion came out last year. But it just got worse. It’s slow, unresponsive and sends things to the wrong IP’s. Generally DNS is now more of a hinderance than useful tool. Combining that with the glaring omission of DHCP in the core services, Apple finally managed to push me away from a product because it sucks so bad.

In 10.7 a very very big gripe was Access Control Lists conflicting on all kinds of things. Mountain Lion makes this a tad bit worse. The conflicting ACL’s are still there and now require me to give “everyone” read-only access even though the users are already in the ACL. This is a major security flaw if you ask me. Also FTP can only share one path not unlike in Snow Leopard (10.6) Where i could allow access to /Storage *and* /Library/WebServer/Sites/. It’s one or the other now. Terrible!

Not to mention the terrible idea of lock files and restricted access on every /Library and /System folder. Dammit Apple, I can take care of my own computer!

The road to victory

I’m going to phase out Mac OS Server for several things and be done with it. Ubuntu Server 12.04 seems really reliable and appealing and with it’s large community should be fairly easy to set up too. Plus I already have a Ubuntu jacket and some experience with Ubuntu Desktop.

In order to bring some order into the resulted chaos of upgrading my servers to 10.8 I’ve ordered a bunch of parts and am gonna build a PC server.

It’s small, cheap and has great reviews and good performance for small networks like mine. Many use them as Home Theater PC’s so certainly Network Services will perform even better on it!

I’ve ordered:

1x Antek ISK-300 mITX case
1x Asus AT5NM10T-I, Atom D525, 2xDDR3, mITX

I have suitable ram lying around and a bunch of harddisks that are new. And with that for just under 250 euros (including the already owned harddisk and ram) I have a “Mac Mini Grade” tiny PC.

This machine will be taking care of DHCP, DNS and when it’s all settled in and working I plan on moving some other things to it as well, VPN and perhaps even my File sharing.