Help Setting Up Home Server

tehpwnerer19 said:

Here's my story... I got a 2006 Xserve for free. It has 2 dual core 2.66 Xeons, 4 GB of RAM, and 2 300 GB SAS drives that I have turned into a RAID 1 array. I've installed OS X Lion Server on it and all is running okay. My OS X Server knowledge is slim to none. I do a little work with it at my job, but our main servers are Windows. I'd like to set it up as a DHCP server at home, just for fun. My home network consists of this Xserve, my 27" iMac, a MacBook Pro, an Xbox, a Samsung TV, a couple of iPads and our iPhones.

I go from my Charter modem, to my AirPort Extreme, and then broadcast wirelessly to my other devices, and have my Xserve plugged into port 1.

To get DHCP working, do I need to go from my modem to my Xserve, and then from my Xserve to the WAN port on my AirPort Extreme? Or do I just need to configure something?

Thanks in advance for any help you can offer!

Click to expand...

Nope just turn DHCP off on your router and turn it on on your OS X Server.

The way DHCP works is a client sends out a request and the first server to pick up the request responds. It has nothing to do with paths, it's all about broadcast domains since a DHCP request is a broadcast.

I think you have mixed up DHCP and Internet access.
How did you connect before ?

Usually DHCP refers to the IP addresses of your internal network. Not always, as your internet provider can also give you DHCP. I don't know what Charter does, but if your internet connection was PPPoE then you should still use that setting again.

What will be different this time is that your internal DHCP should refer to the location of your external network point. When the Airport Extreme was doing DHCP and being the connect point, then there was a setting in AE that effectively pointed to itself. Now you have to point the DHCP server to the AE.

Can I suggest that you go back to what worked before (AE as the DHCP server), make sure you can connect normally, write down what the AE settings are for the internet connection and then start making changes.

I've switched from the iPad to the MBA so can give you better info.

In the "everything was working OK" settings, then the iMac network settings should point to the AE. It does this in the DNS part of the iMac network connections. The AE puts this info in automatically with DHCP.

The OSX server should have a setting that allows you to point DNS to the AE, but to do this the AE needs to have a fixed internal IP address (I think). If not then the iMac network settings under DNS will allow you to add a DNS setting. Enter the internal IP address of the AE and delete the one that the OSX server has given the iMac.

I'm guessing for some of this as I don't have an OSX server but I'll try to disable the DHCP on my AE and replace it with the DHCP server on one of my NAS units. This should work in the same way.

More info later - unless someone else has solved your problem by then.

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PS - see : https://discussions.apple.com/thread/2418793?start=0&tstart=0

This gives more info on what you are looking for.

Here's a way of disabling the DHCP server on the AE. : http://macnugget.org/projects/aebx/

Your router should not be in bridged mode. Looks like Apple Airport Extremes can only be DHCP or bridged, which is kind of lame. Even the cheapo Netgear routers let you turn off DHCP but keep NAT.

You will have to leave your Airport Extreme in "DHCP and NAT" mode but change the DHCP range to something very small. Like 10.0.1.2-3. And then set the range on your XSERVE to 10.0.1.4 - 230 or something, as long as it's outside the range of the router. Create two bogus DHCP reservations on your AE and its range will be filled and it won't give out any addresses.