The Cat Convention

Those of you who have taken the plunge into 10.7.3 on your server may have discovered (much to your dismay) that the VPN is broken.

There’s a support article on the Apple support site that will bring your VPN service back to life. Basically, you need to flip a bit on the system VPN account.

This applies to any server that was running VPN prior to the 10.7.3 update, which would be a great deal of us. The good news is… PPTP is now supposedly working. I primarily use L2TP, so I didn’t care so much about that one. But when L2TP was also broken after the 10.7.3 update, I was flummoxed.

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If you have a Lion server behind a NAT router (for example, an Airport Extreme or Time Capsule) that is running a VPN service you may have difficulties connecting to it with Windows 7 using L2TP despite the correct setup.

I won’t go into the deep dive on this now, but just a total quick tip. You need to change the encapsulation parameters on Windows 7. Do that by setting a registry key:

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\services\PolicyAgent]

…add a new DWORD value:

“AssumeUDPEncapsulationContextOnSendRule”=dword:00000002

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Apple reveals new info about OS X Lion; launches Developer Preview | Macgasm: “”

(Via MacGasm)

Looks like OS X Lion will include the server components baked into the client. Interesting and probably a very, very good move. Could this be a preparation for licensing the OS on more hardware that is not developed by Apple?

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Now that we know Apple is refocusing its efforts on OS X, perhaps it’s time to reflect on OS X 10.5 and 10.6 and build up anticipation by way of wishful thinking.

These are the kinds of things I consider while spending idle time in a Thinking Chamber. I thought I would start the discussion by passing along the flotsam that arrived on my mind’s shore this fine afternoon.

Remember, this is a wishlist, not a list of predictions. I’ll also throw out a simple rule of engagement. Let’s make wishes that are plausible, not ridiculous or emotional.

Well, okie. You can still be somewhat emotional and fall into the plausible category.

OS X 10.7 client wishlist:

• Video chat with Facetime integration (with iPhone 4)
• More connectivity options in iChat (Windows Live, Yahoo, etc.)
• Better kerberos management
• Quicksilver or some type of Quicksilver-style OS integration
• Free MobileMe for all Mac owners (maybe that’s what the NC Data Center is for, yes? Not just iTunes…?)
• iDisk syncing replaced with DropBox, which is now part of the free MobileMe service
• Better CalDAV integration with iCal
• Better Exchange 2007/2010 Support (this list is long, so I’m generalizing)
• Push notifications actually work in Apple Mail with OS X Server
• iWeb improvements (i.e. multiple sites, better publishing with other hosters, etc.)
• Some type of improvement or re-engineering of hard drive encryption (FileVault is nice, but the Time Machine trade off is huge)
• ZFS!

OS X 10.7 server wishlist:

• High availability clustering for iChat Server, Address Book Server, iCal Server, Web Services (wiki, blogs)
• Improved wiki and blog management tools
• ZFS!
• Push Notification actually works and meets expectations
• Some type of server backup mechanism that isn’t hacky and doesn’t hose Open Directory
• Improved client management capabilities
• Open Directory improvements and stability enhancements
• iCal Server delegation
• Address Book Server sharing

I’m sure we’ll think of more, so let’s get to talkin’… again, don’t be emotional, think what’s actually possible. Think about what plagues you on a regular basis. What would you like Apple to do about it? What do you think they could do to extend OS X’s reach to the general populace?

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