Geez, people are always so opinionatedly curious. Does it every occur to anyone that some people are different than other people, and that that, as well as technical issues can actually influence choices? I don't pretend to be purely rational. Have you all tried using OSX for a server? Or do you just "know" thing about it? I'm not "bent" on it, but I'd like to try it, and believe I can afford to, since I have various outs if it doesn't work. There are some "because" things that I can list here, but my point might be better made if you considered these secondary to the desire to try things.
My "reasons" for Mac: * After the UNIVAC 1108, the IBM 360, the PDP-11, and the Apple II, the Mac was my next computer, and is what I've used ever since except to run my server, or when I am forced to use Windows because in fact I have to develop for it. * I think Windows sucks bad, and I like UNIX only without a UI. I'm very good in vi. But for running my server this time I'd like to try a UI for a for vanilla file management and such, and I don't think I want it to be either Gnome or KDE, because I've never liked them enough to try to learn them. I won't mention X-Windows. Apple Remote Desktop has some problems but they seem not bad for a server without its own display, and I can always use a different remote desktop if needed. * I expected it might likely work well enough for me, and therefore will expand use of my familiar desktop into at least a portion of my server-related work, creating a smoother overall workflow. * I have a *new* (fairly new) Mac mini Server and have several things up and running on it. qmail+vpopmail is the only major requirement I haven't tackled yet. * Curiously the first point you mention "some sort of raid" is one reason I want to use OSX, because I really like SoftRAID, which runs only on the Mac. It is installed at home on all my Macs, and I'm quite fond of it and use it at levels that most customers don't touch. And there are some features planned for the future that I'm quite excited about. I've had terrible experiences with Apple RAID in the past and also would not want to use Apple's own drivers for data I care about. *** I would consider running QMT in a VM, but would rather avoid a VM. I've never touched CentOS. My "distro" of choice still would be Mac-native. I suppose I would try building from sources and see what happens. I really don't want my *entire* server in a VM (just qmail+vpopmail if really necessary) and also really don't want multiple IP's, and suspect sharing a single IP with host and mail VM would be problematic. I already have native Apache, SQL, PHP, etc. and figure it is a good thing to leave it that way if I want to "try" Mac for whatever it may be worth. But if the whole idea doesn't work maybe I will just install some linux on my Mac mini. But in that case I suppose I could put the whole thing in a linux VM under MacOSX and run SoftRAID in the Mac host. It is just not stuff I'd thought through since I naively didn't expect Mac to be such a problem. If it really is such a problem, then I guess the "why Mac" questions may be sensible. It just surprises me. *** Please address any non-OSX-related replies to the original thread. I still may want to ugprade my existing FreeBSD installation, and all my other questions still stand. Thanks. -Kurt On 8/2/12 8:13 PM, "Eric Shubert" <e...@shubes.net> wrote: > I wonder too, why OSX? The only thing I can think of is perhaps you have > an older MacMini laying around that you'd like to use. That's certainly > usable for something such as this, but I wouldn't recommend running a > server w/out some sort of raid (I prefer the SW variety). > > Disclaimer: I've recently taken charge of the QMail-Toaster.com project, > so I'm a bit biased. ;) > > If you're really bent on OSX, you could run a QMT mail server as a VM > under whichever virtualization platform you prefer. Migrating your > existing setup to QMT should be fairly easy, depending on your vpopmail > settings. QMT has a slew of qmail patches applied, and I'm presently > upgrading vpopmail to 5.4.33 (long awaited), which will bring all of the > QMT packages current with upstream releases. There is a large community > behind QMT, so you won't need to look far for helpful support. > > QMT is presently only available on CentOS/RHEL, so that might be a > drawback to you. If you're familiar with packaging though, you might > want to roll your own for whatever distro you choose. We hope to have > the sources available on GitHub by the end of the year, and will be > using OBS to build the packages. > > You're welcome to join us in our endeavors. !DSPAM:501bad5d34214839465487!
