My lovely Xserve runs and runs and runs, until something kills it and then..

Latest Note

#fail Number 1 - Server Tools isnt there anymore

I had installed them before, but they are gone! Huh. It dawns on me that I restored this Mac OS X Leopard MacBook Pro from a Time Machine version of its predecessor and asked it to do everything. Everything obviously doesnt include Server Tools. Shame Im on Mobile Broadband and now I need to download a big package of tools. Great. Never mind I can use Remote Screen Sharing because Ive set it up nicely..

#fail Number 2 - Remote Screen Sharing

It does work for a while and lulls me into a false sense of security. I can't bear to reboot so I load Server Admin via Remote Screen Sharing and try to diagnose whats wrong with my mail system. Im doing fine for a while. But I notice I can't seem to fix it from the GUI. I stop and restart it several times. Nothing. I'm still loath to restart. Call me old fashioned. Its a fail.

#fail Number 3 - ssh doesnt answer

I always like to have a separate command line. ssh isn't answering. Its a kind of clue to me that things are about to get worse, but I assume because Ive got a Remote Screen Sharing session working that I dont need to worry. Wrong McFly Wrong. This was my clue that I should have restarted it. It would have removed some uncertainty.

Too late. My Remote Screen Sharing Session froze, and once I quit, stubbornly refused to reconnect. Never mind, i thoght, the LOM facility will help me in my hour of need.

#fail Number 4 - LOM - Lights Out Management

My early Intel Xserve has Lights Out Management. You need to connect to the server via the special IP address that you setup for the LOM. In theory You can power the server on using Server Monitor by connecting to the IP address for the LOM and using the username and password that you entered when you did the setup. You can also use the command-line tool, ipmitool, to control the server. Thats the theory, but it didnt work for me. I found at http://www.stanford.edu/group/macosxsig/blog/2009/06/server_monitorapp_stupidity.html that the Xserve LOM is pretty bizarre. I cant connect to it. Nothing. Nada. Niet. Nil points.

Solution - Remote Hands

I have no choice but to call for a real person to attend to the server. Its ridiculous. But there we are. Once in front of the console and instructed how to fire it up they confirm to me that the servers happily sitting there running the finder. My remote hands restarts the server cleanly from the menu.

It comes up, and everything is working perfectly except for mail, and of course LOM.

I look into the LOM, and set it up from my own Remote Screen Sharing Console. Annoyingly it seems to work from there via Server Monitor but using the local admin account and password not the special lom admin account and password. Why Apple Why? But It still doesnt work from my remote MacBook. I think this is an ultimately simple to fix port forwarding issue but its irritatingly over complex. By way of comparison I have a Sun X4150 which has lovely lovely LOM with its own micro browser. Its also been up for nearly a year and never been power cycled.

Now to the mail system. amavisd has crashed and left a little PID file in a directory. Such a small file, but its brought my mail system to its knees. I found it by switching off all the filtering and watching the mail system start working again. Step to fix are simple really, so simple you would think that Mac OS X Server might notice and fix it up itself!

Steps to fix

This is really a note to self for me next time. This is the second time Ive had this happen and I forgot how to fix it in between times.

remove the PID file - !!!
Stop mail
```
sudo serveradmin stop mail
```

Unload & reload the launchd plist for amavisd:

sudo launchctl unload /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/org.amavis.amavisd.plist
sudo launchctl load /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/org.amavis.amavisd.plist

start mail
```
sudo serveradmin start mail
```

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