Wright This Way

June 28, 2010 09:25 PM

iPhone 4 review coming

Filed under: iPhone

So, like many folks, I now have an iPhone 4 in my hands, and will be posting a review in the upcoming days of my precious the new model. I also have confirmation of some new cases on the way, and will have those reviews online when samples arrive. Most manufacturers that I've checked with for the better cases won't be shipping for at least a few weeks, so hopefully I'll be able to offer some advise on interim protection shortly.

April 18, 2010 10:36 PM

Upgrade to 10.6.3 complete

Filed under: Mac Postfix Web/html/Apache

As I mentioned last week, I've been working on upgrading my system from 10.5.7 to 10.6.3, performing as clean of an install as possible to clear out years of crud under the hood. I've wrapped up the last of my upgrades, and am up and running on a freshly built system.

The only real hiccup was with the Postfix compile, once that was sorted, everything else was fairly straightforward, simply a matter of grabbing all of the various packages to make everything here run, run through all the necessary compiles, then finally transfer over various changed files since the last copy.

Here is a list of the software currently installed for mail and web services:

Xcode 3.2.2
PHP 5.3.1 (10.6 built in version)
Apache 2.2.14 (10.6 built in version)
MySQL 5.1.45
Postfix 2.7
Dovecot 1.2.11
Cluebringer 2.0.10 (Policyd 2.0)
PCRE 8.0
DBI 1.609
DBD-mysql 4.014
Net-Server 0.97
Net-CIDR 0.13
Config-IniFiles 2.57
Cache-FastMmap 1.35

Initially I needed to copy the etc/postfix directory to preserve configuration files when installing the new Postfix,also copied over /var/mail to bring over the mail stores used by Postfix/Dovecot, and a handful of other config files, /Library/Webserver for the web pages.

To get Apache running, there were some simple edits to enable the built in PHP, and setting up the correct vhosts again; I hand edited the files to match the old config to keep from introducing any unneeded changes.

I think that the only real surprise was that there weren't more surprises. I now have everything running in 64 bit mode on the new server, with the exception of some 3rd party apps. Sweet.

April 14, 2010 09:08 PM

Great site with Mac server info

Filed under: Mac Postfix Web/html/Apache

In my web searching recently, I came across DIYMacServer, a site who's focus is all about running Postfix, Apache, PHP, Dovecot, and related code on the Mac. There are numerous articles about each software update that comes down the line, and the author, Richard Valk, does a great job at documenting everything he can about changes each update brings, and how it effects his system.

April 14, 2010 10:58 AM

Compiling Postfix on Mac OS X 10.6

Filed under: Mac Postfix

So, I'm trying to compile Postfix 2.7 on my new 10.6 system. During make, I get this:

In file included from dns_lookup.c:152:
dns.h:23:29: error: nameser8_compat.h: No such file or directory
make: *** [dns_lookup.o] Error 1
make: *** [update] Error 1

A google search found a suggested fix, in /src/util/sys_defs.h, the following line should be commented out:

#define RESOLVE_H_NEEDS_NAMESER8_COMPAT_H

With this line commented out, I'm able to get a good build, but at what cost? Presumably this is going to break some of the name resolution that Postfix uses, which would not be good. After reporting this on the Postfix mailing list, I spent some additional time researching the issue, but ironically kept coming up with various pages that mirror the Postfix list, and kept coming back to my own posting... Time to switch gears.

April 11, 2010 08:41 PM

Upgrading to 10.6

Filed under: Mac Postfix Web/html/Apache

It's upgrade time again here, and I've made the decision to set up a brand new system on the Mac Mini here. The current system originally started out under 10.3, was then upgraded to 10.4, then 10.5, and also saw at least one hardware switch in there. While fairly stable, I know there's a lot of crud under the hood left over from all the various installs, upgrades, and software changes. So, I'm setting up a new server completely from scratch on Snow Leopard, Mac OS X 10.6.3. I've set up a spare Mini for this work, so I can have both systems up and running simultaneously.

April 7, 2010 08:22 PM

Thermaltake Mobile Fan II

Filed under: Reviews

Recently I had to add a second external hard drive to the web server here to get a clone of the main drive to work with on another machine. The web server is a Mac Mini, with data cloned nightly to an external 2.5" hard drive via FireWire. I plugged in another 2.5" drive, after hooking up an old FireWire hub, and got the clone started, then promptly forgot about it. A day or so later I remembered, did another clone to catch any updates, and went to unplug the drive, and about burned my hand the enclosure was so hot. It was at this point that I realized that my original drive was no longer online, after some testing it appeared that the heat had caused it to shut down. Not good! So the search was on to find a way to keep the drives cool, should I ever need to stack them again in the future.

After some searching, I found a number of fans that connected via USB, a perfect way to add a small fan to get some air moving around the drives. One model stuck out because of the name, Thermaltake, well known for their cooling products. So I headed down to the local comp-u-mart, and picked up the Thermaltake Mobile Fan II