jappler.com » Mac-OS-X

Growl 1.1.3 beta 4 + Mac OS X 10.5.3 = Nightmare

Jen — Wed, 04 Jun 2008 05:47:39 +0000

I use Growl mostly for email notifications because post the Mac OS X 10.5 update IMAP flag support (new mail notification) blows. Unfortunately x2 GrowlMail (the mail notification which I love and rely on) did not work with 10.5 – so I am forced to rely on having SquirrelMail open so I can see what new mail is where within my many mailboxes. Anyway – I recently saw there was a new(er) beta available for Growl and all was working as expected until I downloaded Mac OS X 10.5.3. After that – I had a lot of weird errors and most notably – the inability to restart without physically pressing the power button until a forced restart took place. Finally – tonight (this morning) I did some research and found that other people were having the same issue and everyone with this same issue all came to the conclusion it was because of some startup item (System Preferences > Users > Login Items). Sure enough – after disabling Growl on startup, my computer restarted without any issues. Phew. Tech support is bad – but worse when it costs you time (and then money because of lost time).

Undeleting Accidentally Deleted Files

Jen — Tue, 03 Jun 2008 21:04:41 +0000

It happens to everyone – and it happened to me last week. I use my MiniStack external 500gig drive for my iTunes music library…and to make room for a complete backup (using Time Machine) I accidentally deleted all my music. Did I have a backup of all my music? No. I recently cleaned up my backup files and deleted the backup that had all my music files.

I have since changed my backups to include music on a regular basis but to get back all the lost music – I used File Salvage. The process took a long time – but I expected that when combing through a 500 gig drive. If you ever need to recover files – check this application out!

Backup to Amazon S3 With Rsync.

Jen — Thu, 13 Mar 2008 15:56:02 +0000

Finally – I stumbled upon an article that outlines how to use rsync, Mac OS X, Jungle Disk, and Amazon S3 (all which I use). This will simplify and speed up my backup process. (Especially when my external backup drive has been acting a little irregular this morning.) If you do not backup your files, or have not looked at Amazon S3 yet – this is your chance!

Mac OS X 10.5 (Leopard) SMB Fix

Jen — Fri, 16 Nov 2007 20:00:25 +0000

I ran into an issue earlier today where I could not connect to a SMB share after my upgrade to Mac OS X 10.5. After some research, I found a thread in Apple’s Discussions.

Basically…you need to not use “Connect to Server…” – you need to mount/unmount the SMB share via the command line.

Basic Mount/Unmount Process

Create a directory (folder) where you want the mounted share to appear. I created a folder called “SMB” on my Desktop
Type in the following command: mount_smbfs //useyourusername@localhost/remote_share /Users/useyourusername/Desktop/SMB in the terminal
You will be prompted for your password, type it in
You now have access to the files on the remote server in the folder you created – enjoy!
Once you are done, unmount the server by typing in the command: umount /Users/useyourusername/Desktop/SMB

Hopefully Apple will fix this issue ASAP, but until they do, you now have a way to connect to servers via SMB.

Mac OS X 10.5 (Leopard) Finally

Jen — Thu, 01 Nov 2007 02:17:15 +0000

I finally had some time this evening to install Mac OS X 10.5 on my MacBook Pro. I have not done a thorough run through of all the new bells and whistles but I have to say – it is pretty sharp OS. Everything is very crisp and clean. I will report back later when I have more of an opinion.

so long, farewell ben!

Jen — Tue, 21 Nov 2006 04:02:36 +0000

After working with Ben for almost eight years he had decided to move on. I wanted to wish Ben all the luck in the world. We had a great time working together for many years…as he put up with my on again off again relationship with Mac OS X Server and I put up with his “not as funny as he thought” videos and comics We also had a good time playing Carmageddon 2, Diablo, Diablo II and Quake 3 Arena. We did do some great work in between all the games and great music (I got him out of the “ambient” music mode and opened the door to electronica, DJs, etc). We did do a kick ass job of putting together a really sweet Mac OS X/Mac OS X Server server set up using Apache, MySQL, PHP, WebObjects complete with failover. Best of luck and thanks for the good times.

fun Mac OS X screenshots.

Jen — Wed, 07 Jun 2006 00:55:01 +0000

I spent the majority of Monday night cleaning up my hardrive, my email, my server space, and my iDisk. During this cleanup I saw some interesting (and in my mind funny) things…I just had to take a screenshot. Enjoy.

The first screenshot is from my Mail.app. Someone had sent me an html email that contained lots of graphics…when I saw the number of attachments I had to laugh. Sometimes I think about putting something similar to that in my CC line of my email for those who copy everyone they ever knew. Stop the insanity! Good work Apple on putting this one in.

The next screenshot was taken when I was uploading my movies to my iDisk. I should only have 1gig of space, but on this day…my Finder thought I had 2 TB of space!

[tags]Mac OS X, screenshots, Mail.app, Finder, iDisk[/tags]

fun with defaults write in Mac OS X.

Jen — Fri, 28 Apr 2006 01:37:23 +0000

Ever since yesterday’s defaults write question and then post, I have been doing some fun research on what else is possible with defaults write
Note:Most of these changes require you to restart the finder after entering these into Terminal.app killall Finder.

change your screenshot file format: defaults write NSGlobalDomain AppleScreenShotFormat JPEG or TIFF or PNG or PICT
Disable outlines around icon names on the desktop: defaults write NSGlobalDomain Desktop.HasDarkBackground 0
Show trash on the desktop: defaults write com.apple.finder Desktop.HasTrash 1
Configure AFP to exclusively use SSH
Create a login hook
Finally…when someone is driving you completely insane and it is time to show them not to mess with tech support…defaults write com.apple.Finder AllowCutForItems true This neat trick takes everything you cut but not paste. Everything you cut goes into the trash and not to the clipboard. April Fools!

As you can see, there are endless cool things you can do with defaults write. Check out the defaults man pages!
[tags]defaults write, Finder, Mac OS X[/tags]

Show Hidden Files in Mac OS X

Jen — Wed, 26 Apr 2006 22:55:41 +0000

A Mac OS X/UNIX newbie asked me if there was any way to show all the hidden files in Mac OS X so that he could browse the UNIX directories when using the Finder. Since there may be others out there that have the same need/want I thought I would share an easy way to show and then hide all hidden files within the Finder.

To show hidden files: open the Terminal application and type: defaults write com.apple.finder AppleShowAllFiles TRUE. In order for the Finder to recognize the change, restart the Finder by then typing: killall Finder.
To hide hidden files: open the Terminal application and type: defaults write com.apple.finder AppleShowAllFiles FALSE. In order for the Finder to recognize the change, restart the Finder by then typing: killall Finder.

Multiple IPs, One NIC, Apache, Multiple Virtual Hosts with SSL, Mac OS X

Jen — Thu, 30 Jun 2005 03:03:46 +0000

Set Up: Mac OS X Client OS, one network card, and multiple Virtual Hosts (three of the Virtual Hosts need SSL certificates) using Apache.
Problem: I have been using Virtual Hosts with Apache for a few years and until now, I have only had one web site that has needed a SSL certificate. After rethinking site security, I decided at least two additional web sites needed SSL certificates so no passwords were sent as clear text while using http basic authentication. However, my current Virtual Host setup only supports one SSL certificate…and I need to use three.

Basic Apache background:
When configuring multiple Virtual Hosts in Apache, you can use IP-based Virtual Hosts, or name-based Virtual Hosts. (When using IP-based Virtual Hosts, the server uses an IP address for each Virtual Host. When using name-based Virtual Hosts, all sites use the same IP address and the client’s browser sends the name of the site with each request. Apache then uses the name to determine which host should serve the request.) The problem with using name-based Virtual Hosts is that the host name is contained in the data stream (which is encrypted by SSL). In order for Apache to determine what name-based Virtual Host you are trying to access, Apache must first decrypt the stream. This process requires an SSL certificate so Apache must choose an SSL certificate before it knows the virtual host. So, if you try to configure your Virtual Hosts (name-based) with multiple SSL certificates, Apache will choose the first one listed and try and use that for all secure connections, thus producing errors for browsers.

Solution Part 1: Apache
Because Apache needs to determine which certificate to use without first decrypting the stream, you have to use IP-based Virtual Hosts so multiple Virtual Hosts can have their own certificates.

A snippet of my config:
ServerName www.jappler.com ServerAdmin fake@email.com DocumentRoot "/Volumes/www/Sites/jappler.com/documents" CustomLog '|/usr/sbin/rotatelogs "/Volumes/www/Sites/jappler.com/log/access_log" 604800' combined ErrorLog '|/usr/sbin/rotatelogs "/Volumes/www/Sites/jappler.com/log/error_log" 604800 SSLEngine off

ServerName dev.jappler.com ServerAdmin fake@email.com DocumentRoot "/Volumes/www/Sites/dev.jappler.com/documents" CustomLog '|/usr/sbin/rotatelogs "/Volumes/www/Sites/dev.jappler.com/log/access_log" 604800' combined ErrorLog '|/usr/sbin/rotatelogs "/Volumes/www/Sites/dev.jappler.com/log/error_log" 604800 SSLEngine on SSLCertificateFile /etc/httpd/ssl_cert/dev-cert.crt SSLCertificateKeyFile /etc/httpd/ssl_key/private-dev.key

SSLOptions +StdEnvVars

SSLOptions +StdEnvVars

ServerName webmail.jappler.com ServerAdmin fake@email.com DocumentRoot "/Volumes/www/Sites/webmail.jappler.com/documents" CustomLog '|/usr/sbin/rotatelogs "/Volumes/www/Sites/webmail.jappler.com/log/access_log" 604800' combined ErrorLog '|/usr/sbin/rotatelogs "/Volumes/www/Sites/webmail.jappler.com/log/error_log" 604800 SSLEngine on SSLCertificateFile /etc/httpd/ssl_cert/webmail-cert.crt SSLCertificateKeyFile /etc/httpd/ssl_key/private-webmail.key

SSLOptions +StdEnvVars

Solution Part 2: OS/Multiple IPs
To configure your computer/server to use multiple IPs on one network card, open System Preferences > Network. I like to name my “locations” logically, so I created a new “location” and named it “Multiple IPs.” I then configured my “Built-in Ethernet port (see first picture). The first IP configuration is now set up. To set up the next IP configuration, I duplicated the “Built-in Ethernet” by going to System Preferences > Network > Network Port Configurations, and I renamed it “Built-in Ethernet (Virtual)”. I then configured that to use a different IP, and that was all I needed to do. Questions? Let me know!

[tags]Mac OS X, apache, vhosts, SSL[/tags]