Virtualmin and Mac OS X or OS X Server

I know there is not any official support for the installation of Virtualmin on OS X, but that through the manual installation process, it should work just fine.

I know that OS X Server is basically the same as OS X, but with some added utilities to facilitate management of workgroups of Mac OS X machines, and to provide access to network services.

I also realize that Nextstep (The OS X core) is based on Certain parts from FreeBSD’s and NetBSD’s implementation of Unix.

FreeBSD is a GRADE B supported platform for Virtualmin Pro, but NetBSD isn’t listed at all.

So here are my questions:

  1. Is Virtualmin Pro capable of running on OS X as fluidly as on Debian 4 or 5, once it is installed?
  2. What kind up package management problems are there with using Virtualmin Pro on OS X?
  3. Are there any issues with server stability when using OS X to host Virtualmin Pro servers?
  4. Does it matter whether Virtualmin Pro is installed on the standard OS X or does it have to be installed on OS X Server?

FreeBSD is a GRADE B supported platform for Virtualmin Pro, but NetBSD isn’t listed at all.

I don’t know of anyone running Virtualmin on NetBSD. There are at least thousands of FreeBSD installations, and dozens of Mac OS X installations. There are also a few OpenBSD installations. I’ve even talked to someone yonks ago using it on Dragonfly BSD.

Is Virtualmin Pro capable of running on OS X as fluidly as on Debian 4 or 5, once it is installed?

Probably not entirely so. I’m not deeply familiar with the limitations of Mac OS X. There are a few dozen Mac OS X Virtualmin users, and I haven’t heard any major complaints…so I think it’s probably pretty reasonable to use. It definitely won’t be as easy to install or use.

What kind up package management problems are there with using Virtualmin Pro on OS X?

Mac OS X does not have a package manager, in any useful sense. So, no package management problems. But, no package management, either.

Since you don’t have any package management tools on Mac OS X, you’re pretty much stuck doing everything manually. I consider this a major flaw of the platform, myself. But, apparently, Apple’s “package” installer is so pretty that nobody notices that it’s just spewing a bunch of files across the disk, and pretty much nothing else. Not that I have any strong opinions about what a good package manager looks like or anything. :wink:

Are there any issues with server stability when using OS X to host Virtualmin Pro servers?

I wouldn’t think so. It’s all the same code. Perl is reportedly fine on Mac OS X, so Virtualmin/Webmin/Usermin will work fine, and Apache, BIND, Postfix, etc. are all quite cross-platform.

Does it matter whether Virtualmin Pro is installed on the standard OS X or does it have to be installed on OS X Server?

I believe it works fine on either. But you’ll have to install the services yourself (but I guess that’s somewhat true in either case). I think if I were doing a Mac OS X install, I’d start with fink or macports and use that to install all of the various services (I slightly prefer fink, as it uses apt-get, which is a much better package manager than ports; though macports reportedly has more and newer packages).

You might look into things like username limits, group membership limits, etc. The FreeBSD OS notes cover some of these issues (FreeBSD defaults to 16 char usernames, which is too short for the default naming conventions in Virtualmin), and they might apply to the Mac OS X tools, as well. I’m not sure.

I currently run Virtualmin on two OS X servers. Let me start with saying that using Apple’s built in Apache is not recommended. It’s also not going to be a straight forward installation, you have to configure everything manually. Additionally, I wouldn’t use anything less than OS X 10.5 server.

I have not run into anything major. I host about 600 domains between the two servers and it operates almost as if it were on a Fedora or Ubuntu box.

Their are a few “glitches”. For example, when it comes to having virtualmin auto create additional network interfaces they don’t get saved after you reboot.

I can point out is that OS X does NOT have the same username limit that FreeBSD has, which was a pleasant surprise.

Here is a link for setting up Apache/PHP/Perl on OS X 10.5
http://www.unibia.com/unibianet/node/32

Also, I found Apple’s built in FTP is also no good, I use ProFTP:
http://www.unibia.com/unibianet/node/40

Also helpful is wget and some instructions on installing Webmin:
http://www.unibia.com/unibianet/node/34
http://www.unibia.com/unibianet/node/33

I hope this helps!

I definitely want to try Virtualmin Pro on a Mac OS X server, just because I use Mac desktop/laptops quit a bit.

I don’t have a problem using Virtualmin Pro on a Debian GNU/Linux server and I like the built in automated features I can use. I would like to think that once Virtualmin is fully installed, the Web based control panel can still handle all the automated tasks. Is this true?

Is there a user guide or article out there somewhere, which states how to go about installing/configuring Virtualmin to work on a Mac, from start to finish?