Mac Mini

Apple Mac Mini

How-to
• Burn a Debian installer CD
• Partition the hard disk
• Configure yaboot
• Configure NFS
• Configure SSL certificates
• Configure an IMAP server
• Configure an SMTP server
• Make a Mini cluster
• Configure a UPS

Configuring NFS

For my desktop Mac (running Mac OS X), I'd like to be able to access my home directory on the Mini easily from the Finder. The way to do this having the fastest file transfers it to use NFS.

Configuring the server

First, you need the following packages installed: 
    apt-get install nfs-common nfs-kernel-server portmap
Then, to export directories via NFS, add them to the file /etc/exports. For the Mini, I have:
/home/login  *.domain.com(insecure,no_root_squash,rw,sync)
/tftpboot *.domain.com(insecure,no_root_squash,sync)
The first line exports my home directory. (The second exports the Linux filesystem for my Rio music player.) Then restart the NFS server by doing: 
    /etc/init.d/nfs-kernel-server reload
To test, try to connect from the Finder:
  1. From the Go menu, select Connect to Server....
  2. For Server Address, enter: nfs://mini/home/login
  3. Click Connect.
If everything works, a server icon will appear on the desktop. If you get an error, check the log files on the Mini.

Configuring the Mac OS X client

There are two kinds of NFS mounts:
  1. Dynamic: these are the kind normally used under Mac OS X, i.e., you connect to a server and disconnect when done.
  2. Static: the server is connected upon boot and stays connected all the time.
Since I want my home directory on the Mini always available, I configured a static mount. There are two parts to doing this:
  1. Create the directory to be the NFS mount point.
  2. Create the static NFS mount entry.
To create the directory to be the NFS mount point, simply do:
mkdir -p /private/mnt/mountpoint
(The directory can be named anything you want; it just has to match the name in the table below.) To create the static NFS mount entry, you can use Apple's NetInfo Manager:
  1. Launch NetInfo Manager.
  2. Authenticate by clicking the lock icon and entering your password.
  3. Select mounts.
  4. From the Directory menu, select New Subdirectory.
  5. Edit the value of the name property to be as shown in the table below.
  6. For the remaining two properties shown in the table, from the Directory menu, select New Property then edit them to the correct values.
name    mini:/home/login
dir /private/mnt/mountpoint
type nfs

To make Mac OS X notice the new NFS mount without rebooting, do: 
    kill -1 `cat /var/run/automount.pid`

Static NFS mounts don't appear on the desktop, so I simply created an alias for the directory and placed it on the desktop.

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Last updated: June 6, 2005