Data Scavenger's questions

I have a very old FreeBSD server at work.

atlas:~>uname -mprs FreeBSD 6.4-RELEASE-p8 i386 i386

I'd like to update it. I'm quite familiar and comfortable with the "make world" methods. I've just never used it for a system that was 1.5 years out of date.

What do you feel would be the upgrade method with the lowest risk? I can think of using freebsd-update and cvsup/make-world. I can go straight to the newest version or I can go to the newest 6.x version and then go to 7.x and then to 8.x. That "stepping stone" method seems safest, but also uses a lot of time.

Thoughts? Is freebsd-update able to go through so many versions at the same time? How about cvsup/make-world?

Thanks in advance!

I'm trying to get FreeBSD installed on a Dell R210 server with the H200 hard drive controller. I can boot with the 8.2-RELEASE ISO and the 8-STABLE-20110522 ISO. My problem is getting it to boot from the internal HDs.

It seems that I need a driver in the 8-STABLE branch (not in 8.2-RELEASE) in order to use the disks as da0 and da1. It doesn't work with them in a RAID-1 configuration at all, unfortunately. So I booted from the 8-STABLE-20110522 disk and can install with it. However, I think that I can only install official releases, not from the stable branch.

So...

1) Am I wrong? Is there a way to install 8-STABLE while booted from that DVD?

2) Is there a way to cvsup/makeworld the internal drive while booted from a DVD?

Thanks in advance!

I need to find a way to give some telecommuters access to the office network. However, there is a high degree of confidentiality involved. So I am looking for a way to give them dedicated hardware (computers, thin clients, etc.) to bring home for the task.

These devices must give access to file servers, printers, etc. in the office, but nothing else. Users must store files in the office server, etc. They should be prevented from storing items on the computer at their house, so something like a VPN isn't quite enough. I was thinking that a thin-client system would be great, but I don't know how to go about doing that.

Any suggestions on products or techniques? I don't have any prior experience with thin clint systems.

At the beginning of the day and on semi-random days, some of my Mac users are experiencing heavy lag. For example, 5-10 minutes to login, several minutes for Safari to load, visible delays while typing in a text field in Safari (e.g. the login form of a certain webapp). This doesn't happen with all users.

The common element appears to be that these users all have their home directories on the same XServe. Users in the same building who have their homedir on either of two other servers do not appear to be effected. All three servers are in the same subnet and all users are in the same subnet. They all have the same Open Directory master. Yet the users on one server have this symptom at the same time that the users of the other two servers do not.

Any suggestions?

Summary:

Users with Roaming Profiles on my XP workstations appear to be unable to do various things, e.g. set a default printer, disable toolbars in IE8, or see icons on the left side of the Start menu. Local accounts still work as expected.

Details:

I have a Mac OS X Server (10.6.4) Open Directory server that acts as a PDC for a few Windows XP workstations. Recently, I upgraded it (10.5 --> 10.6) and another Mac server that is the BDC and OD Replica.

A few weeks later, I found out that the XP workstations were having issues with the roaming profiles. Users would get an error at login (effectively, "I can't copy your profile from the server, so I'm using the local copy.") and then see their desktop. They thought that they were OK, so they didn't report the problem at first. However, it wasn't copying their profiles to the server.

In order to fix this, I moved a workstation from the domain to the workgroup "WORKGROUP", restarted, and move it back.

After that, they could login, but a new issue started. (I mention the previous stuff in case there is a clue in there.) Now a roaming-profile user can't do things that make lasting changes. For example, they DO get their documents but they CAN'T print, set a default printer, or disable the Google or MSN toolbars in Internet Explorer.

I'm out of ideas. I've tried a few things that I didn't list above, but none of them helped.

Any advise would be GREATLY appreciated.