Apex81

In my quest to use VNC less I’ve come across as pretty helpful command line application to check the health of my server’s disk drives. It’s pretty handy and works well with both OS X Server, and regular OS X 10.4.10. Most of the problems I seem to encounter have to do with messed up file permissions in OS X Tiger, so this comes in really handy for me. Hopefully it will help you out as much as it did for me. Read the rest of this entry »

The more I use quicksilver the more I love it. It’s so complicated it can be daunting at times, but its time well spent. Today, I spent some time trying to streamline some of the things I do on my laptop without having too many windows open. I stumbed across an interesting article that lets you post to twitter with quicksilver.

Read the rest of this entry »

I’ve decided to write a couple tips for administering OS X Server 10.4.10 (Tiger Server) from the command line both locally and remotely. This first one will help you reboot your server, and shutdown your server. Read the rest of this entry »

I wrote a quick article over on macgasm.net about the reasons I made the switch and the reasons why I won’t be switching back to windows any time soon.  You can read it here!

So, as most you probably know by now or at least should, all of the new mac’s come with intel chips, and have for well over a year! I was an early adopter, I jumped ship from the Windows world about 2.5 years ago. I have an iBook G4. It kinda sucks, but I’ve gotten over it… for the most part, until earlier this week. I’m a geek, there is no denying it. I was trying to download a powerpc version of Ubuntu to try out on my mac. It took forever to track one down. I heard on a podcast that they were phasing out production of ppc based software. An Immediate red flag went off in my head. What would happen to me and my laptop? Will other software providers follow suit in the short term? Will I be left with a legacy product? Will I be “forced” to upgrade, and if I don’t will I be left out in the dark? It’s only a matter of time before universal binaries for software stop appearing… and intel based software takes over. I guess it’s a harsh reality, something I never thought about until this week. I’m going to have to start a funds initiative to upgrade my laptop! My financee won’t be to happy about that! Ah well, it’s a neccessity, or is it? Excuse me while I go and cry a little.

So, my shuffle officially died today… well not 100% dead, but the buttons no longer work for the audio player. I can still use it as a flash drive i guess. But this thing was rugged as hell. I put it though the wash three times accidentally. Dropped it down a flight of stairs 4-5 times, and even lost it in a couch for two weeks, a god knows nothing escapes that couch alive. Some how it lived through all that… but at my time of need (I started to jog again) the damn thing dies 3 days in.  Grrrr….

I was hoping this shuffle would hold out until apple officially drops the iphone, but it looks like thats not going to happen.

So, I was just checking the NSA security guides for a number of operating systems on my network, notably Windows XP, and OS X 10.4. I can not believe what they have posted for both of these operating systems.

Apple Mac OS X “Tiger”

As part of a change in our development strategy for security guidance, the National Security Agency does not intend to publish separate security guides for the Macintosh OS X operating system beyond that which was produced by the vendor, beginning with Tiger, OS X version 10.4.x. The recommendations in Apple’s “Mac OS X Security Configuration For Version 10.4 or Later” and “Mac OS X Server Security Configuration For Version 10.4 or Later” track closely with the security level historically represented in the NSA guidelines. It is our belief that these guides establish the latest best practices for securing the products and recommend that traditional customers of our security recommendations use the Apple guides when securing Macintosh OS X 10.4.x and Macintosh OS X Server 10.4.x.

It’s pretty much the same of XP as well. Talk about ironic. I doubt that both of these vendors have the same security levels, and frankly I doubt that XP comes close to the OS X framework. But, that could just be my bias speaking… I’m going to go through the manuals and checkout which one requires the least amount of work to “secure”. Until then I will reserve any judgements…

Out of the box, the Apache Web server that comes with OS X does not take any notice of .htaccess files (used to set passwords, rewrite URLs, point to custom error pages, etc).

The first step to getting .htaccess working is to edit your httpd.conf file. Open the Terminal, go to the Apache config directory and open httpd.conf. You will need to supply your admin password:

cd /etc/httpd/
sudo pico httpd.conf

Use ctrl-w to find �Override�. You need the second instance of the term so search twice. You should see:

# This controls which options the .htaccess files in directories can
# override. Can also be “All”, or any combination of “Options”, “FileInfo”,
# “AuthConfig”, and “Limit”
#

AllowOverride None

Change the setting to AllowOverride All then exit and save. Each site has a conf file that would need changing too. Back in the terminal, move into the sites directory and get a file listing:

You should see a .conf file for each site on the system. As before, open the conf file for your username and change AllowOverride All:

Options Indexes MultiViews
AllowOverride All
Order allow,deny
Allow from all

I’ve been thinking a lot lately how music has changed over the years for me.  In the beginning when I had my first job, I spent tons of money of cd’s.  I’d say about 60% of the funds from my paper route went to buying new cd’s. Today, i’m lucky if I buy 5 albums a year.  Sure, downloading has a lot to do with it. But, that’s not the point i’m trying to make here, and probably deserves a post on its own.   Since the mp3 was created my  music consumption process has changed.  I don’t think I really appreciate Read the rest of this entry »

Man, Oh, Man! I stumbled across a screen cap of the first computer game that I played (Lode Runner). Now, I had an Atari 2600, and I remember playing that all the time, but it didn’t even come close to measuring up to the first time I sat infront of the Macintosh. I think the first application I ever used was the paint program, but I got bored with

that pretty quickly. I graduated to videogames at a pretty young age. Just seeing this screen shot sent me back in time to almost 2 decades. I guess I’ve come full circle. The first computer I ever used was the original Macintosh, and now I’ve made the “switch” back to Apple products. It’s kind of funny how things work out. Anyway, I spent countless hours on this game (damn was it hard). I don’t think I ever managed to beat the damn thing either. Man I miss the day of simple videogames. Hopefully my Wii can recapture that for me. Ahh, the memories.

…and we don’t care about the old folks