Install FMSA 11 on Mac OS X 10.6.3 client - Gotcha with VPN

This post is a recount of my ultimately successful install today. I just post it for reference, hoping it may help someone else who might stumble on similar issues...

After rejoining TechNet today, I proceeded to download and install my complimentary FMSA 11 (11.0.1.99 label on disk image). I did so on my development machine, a MacBook Pro 15" Unibody Late 2008 running Snow Leopard 10.6.3.

The deployment assistant got stuck when configuring the webserver with the error "Could not get a list of web servers from the specified worker machine."

Google led me to a few forums incl. FMforums with posts about similar problems, not just for FMS 11. None of the advice posted worked for me, but I still got it working, like this:

1. Turned off IPv6 config (Airport interface)

I don't think this matters, because it still didn't work after that. Just mentioning it, in case it did part of the magic...

2. Restored default httpd.conf file

I found this tip somewhere else. It didn't help by itself either.

3. Disabled VPN

Turned off my active IPSec VPN connection which is setup with IPSecuritas 3.4.

This did the trick. I had the deployment assistant waiting in the background while doing all of the above. I switched back to it, hit the back button on the screen showing no webserver found, then continue and it worked like a charm!

Subsequent testing then revealed that I lost my existing PHP (5.3.1 form MacPorts), because I had restored the default httpd.conf : . I reenabled it and FMSA passed the PHP technology test.

Note:

For some reason, my install has my local unconnected manually configured Ethernet IP address hardcoded into the links to the technology tests. Confusing at first, but manually replacing 192.168.2.1 with 'localhost' in the address box in Safari was enough to get it to work...

I guess FMI didn't give much consideration to dev users running on laptops with multiple network interfaces...