Using signed SSL certificates in Mac OS X Server 10.5 is a bit of a black art. In this article I describe how it’s done. Some services, such as the web service, work fine with signed certificates by default. However, the iChat (jabber), iCal (caldav), Mail (postfix/cyrus), and possibly other services do not work properly without some additional work on the command line (“Terminal”).

The problem in OS X Server 10.5 is that the System Admin app fails to provide decrypted private keys, and points some services to a certificate that doesn’t work for that service. The result is that those services will fail to allow connections over SSL.

I will describe how to fix the Mail, iChat and iCal services. The solution is basically the same for them all: decrypt the private key and replace the encrypted version in the combined certificate-key file, then update the service’s settings to use the proper certificate.

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This article will show you how to dramatically improve the effectiveness of the anti-spam system that is built into Mac OSX Server 10.5. After the upgrade, at least 99.9% of spam should be prevented from reaching your user’s e-mail Inboxes.

This process requires that the Developer Tools are installed on the system. As always, backup your server before making any changes.

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I recently installed and configured GNU Mailman on Solaris 10 and found the documentation a little lacking, so here are a few tips that you may find useful.

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