Posts tagged mac
Speed up Firefox!
Dec 10th
My Firefox on Mac was getting pretty lethargic — almost a minute to spin up, and multiple seconds to just open a new tab. I installed the new beta of Google Chrome, and remembered how nice a speedy browser was.
Google Chrome for Mac is a nice first effort, but without custom search engines, and all the other firefox add-ons, the shininess gets pretty tarnished. I needed my fast firefox back!
I made just a couple changes, though, and my Firefox is back to it’s prior speedy self!
How to bounce an application with Applescript
Nov 29th
Say, for whatever reason, you want to bounce iphoto once an hour. You can do that with AppleScript and cron.
Download Xcode 3.1.4 for Leopard
Nov 28th
Apple’s developer website only links to the latest version of Xcode, which requires Snow Leopard (Mac OS X 10.6).
If you’re still running Leopard (10.5), you need to go to this alternative developer website:
Log in with your ADC credentials, click “Downloads”, then click “Developer Tools” in the right sidebar, and then search the page for “3.1.4″. You might also want to check the wikipedia list of xcode versions to see if 3.1.4 is still the latest version.
Apache2, PHP, and MySQL on Mac OS X using MacPorts
Aug 24th
1. Install MacPorts
Follow the instructions here: http://www.macports.org/install.php.
2. Install apache2
sudo port install apache2
Note that the macports instructions suggest installing the launchctl script now, but we’ll do that after mysql and php are installed.
3. Install and configure MySQL
If you want 5.0.x, use mysql5-server. If you need 5.1.x, install mysql5-server-devel (at least as of August 2009).
sudo port install mysql5-server
As the macports instructions state,
In order to setup the database, you might want to run sudo -u mysql mysql_install_db5 if this is a new install.
It’s never a bad idea to set the root password, and as the document suggests, run:
/opt/local/lib/mysql5/bin/mysqladmin -u root password 'new-password'
You also want to install a database configuration file — there are a bunch of templates in /opt/local/share/mysql5/mysql/, but for development, my-small.cnf should suffice:
sudo cp /opt/local/share/mysql5/mysql/my-small.cnf /opt/local/etc/mysql5/my.cnf
Once the config is in place, spin up mysql:
sudo launchctl load -w /Library/LaunchDaemons/org.macports.mysql5.plist
Check that mysql is up and running by connecting with the mysql client:
mysql -h localhost -u root -p
4. Fix your PATH
Note that the mysql binaries in /opt/local/bin all have a “5″ suffix, but /opt/local/lib/mysql5/bin has “normal” named binaries, so you probably want that in your PATH too. The apachectl in /usr/bin will spin up the mac os x version of apache (that we’re avoiding), and that lives in /opt/local/apache2/bin. So in your .bashrc (or .profile or whatever):
export PATH=/opt/local/bin:/opt/local/sbin:/opt/local/lib/mysql5/bin:/opt/local/apache2/bin:$PATH
5. Install PHP5
sudo port install php5 +pear +apache2 +fastcgi +mysql5
Note that php5 has a lot of variants. If you think you want other goodness, run port variants php5 and cook up your own set of options.
Again, as the macports instructions state,
copy
/opt/local/etc/php5/php.ini-development(if this is a development server) or/opt/local/etc/php5/php.ini-production(if this is a production server) to/opt/local/etc/php5/php.iniand then make changes.
6. Install the PHP-MySQL driver:
sudo port install php5-mysql +mysql5
7. Configure apache2
The mod_php.conf from the php5 package is put into a directory that the apache2 configuration doesn’t read by default — so you need to add this line to the end of /opt/local/apache2/conf/httpd.conf:
Include conf/extras-conf/*
Hopefully this will be considered a packaging bug, and will be fixed at some point.
8. Run apache2
sudo launchctl load -w /Library/LaunchDaemons/org.macports.apache2.plist
Note that the logs, by default, are in /opt/local/apache2/logs.
If you change the PHP or Apache configuration files, run
sudo /opt/local/apache2/bin/apachectl restart
and watch the logs for errors.
Using Mac OS X 10.5’s keychain for ssh
Jul 26th
The version of ssh that comes with Mac OS X 10.5.6 has a -K option that stores your passphrases in your system’s keychain.
Run this:
ssh-add -K [path to private keyfile]
Provide your passphrase once when asked, and keychain will provide the passphrase for you automatically. You should probably enable “Require password to wake this computer from sleep or screen saver” in the Security pane of the System Preferences if you decide to do this.
If you see
$ ssh-add -K ssh-add: illegal option -- K
it’s because you’re using the macports (or fink) version of ssh. (run ‘which ssh’ to find out). With macports, uninstall the “openssh” package:
sudo port uninstall openssh
The ‘-K’ option was discovered courtesy of http://www-uxsup.csx.cam.ac.uk/~aia21/osx/leopard-ssh.html.
http://kimmo.suominen.com/docs/ssh/ has some excellent ssh documentation.
Viscosity and Search Domains
Apr 23rd
I’ve really enjoyed Viscosity as my openvpn client for Mac OS X (instead of Tunnelblick). It’s stable, bounces back after system sleep, and is well supported.
After upgrading from 1.0.3 to 1.0.4, I found that my search domain configuration from the Network Settings control panel wasn’t being respected anymore while the VPN was up. I got the following reply (in 30 minutes, no less):
The 1.0.3 behavior was actually a bug (your system should use any search domains associated with the VPN connection for security reasons, rather than local search domains).
You can specify search domains to use while connected instead like so:
1. Edit your connection in Viscosity
2. Click on the Advanced tab
3. Add the command “dhcp-option DOMAIN mydomain.com” (no quotes) where mydomain.com is your search domain
4. Repeat step 3 for each search domain you have
5. Click Save and try connecting
These instructions worked perfectly. Thanks!
Skype Beta for Mac 2.8 has screen sharing
Feb 5th
Skype Beta for Mac OS X version 2.8 adds screen sharing, and it’s easy to use — but screen sharing is only available on the Mac version of Skype.
Until they port screen sharing to Windows and Linux, teamviewer and VNC will have to make do.
TaskPaper is All Sorts of Awesomeness.
Nov 26th
I finally got around to trying out TaskPaper (one of the apps I got from MacHeist a while ago), and it’s a brilliant and simple todo app.
You enter something like this:
Inbox: - Put camera in car - Put pizza stone in car Groceries: - Milk - Eggs - Pizza toppings Yard work: - Rake leaves - Put away hose @done - Clean up garden @done
And you get a GUI treatment that looks like this:
Accessing git over ssh on a non-standard port
Nov 24th
Simple ssh access to a git repo can be sufficient for a small dev team–but what if you’re using a non-standard ssh port?
The solution–do as Linus says. Use ~/.ssh/config.
My config now looks like this:
Host my.servername.org Port 1234
Remember that ~/.ssh needs to be 700 (read/write/execute for only the owner), and the files inside are all 600:
$ chmod 700 ~/.ssh $ chmod 600 ~/.ssh/*
Installing git with MacPorts
Nov 15th
The Good: MacPorts makes git, the new source version control system hotness, available to Mac users.
The Bad: MacPorts sometimes has attitude, and poops out trying to compile or install packages.
The Ugly: MacPorts doesn’t tell you how to fix it.
So here was what I saw:
mrm@whack:~$ port search git cogito devel/cogito 0.18.2 Git core and cogito tools to provide a fully-distributed SCM git-core devel/git-core 1.6.0.4 A fast version control system qgit devel/qgit 2.2 A graphical interface to git repositories stgit devel/stgit 0.14.3 Push/pop utility on top of GIT cgit www/cgit 0.8 A fast web interface for the git source code management system
Great. I’ll install git-core. What additional goodies are there?
mrm@whack:~$ port info git-core git-core 1.6.0.4, devel/git-core (Variants: universal, doc, gitweb, svn, bash_completion) http://git.or.cz/ Git is a fast, scalable, distributed open source version control system focusing on speed and efficiency. Library Dependencies: curl, zlib, openssl, expat, libiconv Runtime Dependencies: rsync, perl5.8, p5-error Platforms: darwin Maintainers: bryan@larsen.st maccheck@gmail.com openmaintainer@macports.org
OK, so I want svn and doc and bash_completion extras:
mrm@whack:~$ sudo port install git-core +svn +doc +bash_completion +gitweb ... Error: Target org.macports.fetch returned: fetch failed Error: The following dependencies failed to build: p5-svn-simple subversion-perlbindings subversion p5-term-readkey rsync popt Error: Status 1 encountered during processing.
So we’re now at the bad and ugly. When ports cops attitude, run these two commands:
sudo port selfupdate sudo port upgrade outdated
and wait. If there are any failures, look at the package that failed, and restart the installation of that package. Once that’s completed, re-do the original port install git ... command.