About the Mac OS X Server 10.3.5 Update

Important: Read Before Installing

1. An administrator account password that does not contain spaces or Option-keyed characters is required to install. The password may not be blank. If your password must be changed, follow these steps: Choose System Preferences from the Apple menu. Choose Accounts from the View menu. Select an Admin account and click Edit User. Type your current password, and press Return. Change the password, and click OK.

2. You may experience unexpected results if you have installed third-party system software modifications, or if you have modified the operating system through other means. This precautionary statement does not apply to the normal installation of application software.

3. The installation process should not be interrupted. Monitor progress by clicking the Detailed Progress disclosure triangle. If a power outage or other interruption occurs during installation, use the standalone installer (see below) from Apple Software Downloads to install.

4. This update can be installed on non-startup volumes, but that should be done only when the current startup volume has already been updated to Mac OS X Server 10.3.5. The simplest way to avoid issues from an improper installation is to start up from the volume that you wish to update.

Installation

There are two ways to update to Mac OS X Server 10.3.5: Software Update and Standalone Installer.

Software Update Installation

You may have been referred to this document by Software Update. For more information on this feature, see How to Update Your Software.

Because some updates are prerequisites for others, you may need to use Software Update more than once to get all available updates.

Standalone Installer

An installer is also available from Apple Featured Software.

The Mac OS X Server 10.3.5 Update is specifically for updating version 10.3.4. There is also a "combo" installer available, which will update any version 10.3 to 10.3.4.


Remote Installation

If you need to install the update on a remotely located computer, you can do so using either the Server Admin application or the "softwareupdate" command-line tool. Choose the method that works best for you.

Enhancements

These are some of the enhancements that are part of Mac OS X 10.3.5 Server Update:

Open Directory (Directory Services)

• Active Directory Plug-in: Addresses an issue in which some Mac OS X computers would not bind to Active Directory, affecting computers with Mac OS X 10.3.3 to 10.3.4.
• Active Directory Plug-in: Addresses an issue in which only users for the Active Directory domain to which a computer is bound can authenticate on a client computer or be located in the Workgroup Manager user list.
• Active Directory Plug-in: Addresses an issue in which the "dsconfigad" command-line tool fails to join pre-existing accounts. When attempting to bind a computer to Active Directory, the -f option for forcing a bind to an existing account results in the following message: "Error: Undefined error occurred trying to Bind this computer to Active Directory."
• Password Server: Addresses an issue in which deleted user records may still appear in Kerberos replica databases.
• LDAPv3 Plug-in: Added option to enable or disable LDAP referrals in the file /Library/Preferences/DirectoryService/DSLDAPv3PlugInConfig.plist. In some configurations, LDAP referrals can cause symptoms such as slows logins, crashes, and overall unpredictable results.

Mail Server

• Mail Server: Addresses an issue in which mail server may stop functioning, especially in an environment with high mail volume. The race condition usually occurs if the cyrus database maintenance app (ctl_cyrusdb) is cleaning up database transaction log files at the same time a POP or IMAP session is active, requiring an update to the removed log file.

File Services

• AFP: Addresses an issue in which AFP clients may drop the connection to the server when attempting multiple copy or read-write operations with one or more AFP servers. Analysis of a network trace when this issue occurs will reveal that the TCP Window size will drop to zero.
• AFP: Improved reliability and performance of AFP login to AFP server share from both Mac OS 9 and Mac OS X clients.
• NFS: Improves performance and reliability of NFS, such as better handling of lookup caching, small files, and file locking.

System Imaging (NetBoot/Network Install)

• Network Image Utility: The Network Image Utility now creates a block-copy restore image if using a volume as the source. This change improves installation performance and maintains original volume integrity.

Print Server

• Print Server: Addresses an issue in which some print jobs may not execute if the file's Postscript header is larger than 1023 bytes. This issue is more likely to affect graphic or page layout applications such as Adobe InDesign or Adobe Illustrator.

QuickTime Streaming Server

• QTSS: Provides support for streaming 3G files to Real One mobile player. This benefits users with 3G handsets and compatible service.

Directory Services

• DSAgent: Addresses the issue in which the default cache life of 12 hours for user records (such as those appearing to the POSIX layer, finger, and id) could never be overridden. Now, in most configurations, the default will fall back to five minutes and can be correctly overridden by the manually setting of the time-to-live (TTL) values, as explained in the lookupd man page.

File Systems

• NTFS: Addresses issues which may prevent copying of large files (i.e. 4GB) from an NTFS volume to another volume. Note: NTFS volumes are mounted as Read Only.

Server Admin Tools

• Server Admin CD: The CD has been updated for the Mac OS X Server 10.3.5 release, and the updated software can be downloaded here.

Mac OS X Server 10.3.5 also includes the enhancements of the Mac OS X 10.3.5 client update.