© 2005 Lawrence I. Charters
Washington Apple Pi Journal, Vol. 27, no. 4, July-August 2005, pp. 7.
For some good things, you must wait. Regan and White’s excellent Visual QuickPro Guide: Mac OS X Server 10.3 Panther, made it on to bookshelves just a few weeks before Mac OS X 10.4 Server was released. Fortunately, it covers the basics of the server version of Mac OS X very well, so not only is it a perfect guide for 10.3, but it will also serve as a good guide to Mac OS X Server 10.4 for some time to come.
When Mac OS X was first introduced, Steve Jobs made a big point of claiming that the “regular” version of Mac OS X and the server version came from the same code base. This, he said, would make learning the software easier, and make updating and patching it easier, too. To some degree, he was correct, but the fact is that Mac OS X Server is significantly more complex and more difficult to learn than the standard desktop version of the operating system.
Adding to the difficulty is the documentation, or lack of it. The server comes with an LDAP server, Web server, mail server, print server, Windows file server, Apple file server, firewall, Domain Name Service, DHCP server, FTP server, and a whole bunch of other services, but the printed guide does little more than tell you how to run the installer. For documentation, you must visit Apple’s Web site and download megabytes worth of PDF files. The PDF files, in tum, are not cross-indexed, so it is very easy to miss the interdependencies of the various services. Were you to print out all the PDF files, you’d consume several reams of paper.
Mac OS X Server is significantly more complex and more difficult to learn than the standard desktop version of the operating system.
Or you could grab this single volume, complete with an integrated index, and advance quickly along the learning curve. Unlike far too many advanced guides, the authors limit themselves to what is actually included in Mac OS X Server and avoid discussing or requiring the use of various add-on packages. Want to run the Web server? They tell you how, using nothing more than what is included on the installation disc. Want to set up DNS? Again, they tell you how to use what is on the installation disc rather than editorialize on the relative merits of something else.
Because they are treating Mac OS X Server as an integrated set of services, they take pains to explain, for example, why you should set up DNS services before you set up file and Web services. Everything is illustrated in the usual Visual QuickStart (or QuickPro, in this case) style, so there is no ambiguity about what button to push or what screen is being discussed. Taken as a whole, the book covers its subject well. There are times when you might wish it delved into something more deeply but, at 459 pages, with absolutely no fat, it is already a lean but meaty feast. Unless you are dealing with some of the newly introduced features of Mac OS X 10.4 Server (such as the blog server, and access control lists), it is also an excellent reference for the new Tiger software, too.
Highly recommended.
Schoun Regan and Kevin White, Visual QuickPro Guide: Mac OS X Server 10.3 Panther. Peachpit, 2005. xii, 459 pp. $29.99. ISBN 0-321-24252-1