Switching…

Wow, did I forget to do something. I was just cleaning up my mac mini server. Well that’s what you do when you’ve been playing around with lots of configurations and compiled different versions of software to see if it will work. When I found out that I completely forgot about the logfiles for my Apache installation. Some of the logfiles of the more popular sites where already a whopping 100+ Mb.

Normally, for the Apple installed Apache, the logfiles would reside in /var/log/httpd, but I didn’t think and just followed the standard layout that was provided by the installation which directed the logfiles into /Library/Apache2/logs as you can see in the installation document. This means that the default weekly script (located in /etc/periodic/weekly) that takes care of the regular maintenance of your Mac, and rotates your Apache logfiles, didn’t take care of my new Apache2 logfiles. (more…)

I had read some time ago on the Apple Developers site that the Xcode developer tools that Xcode 2.4 has been released. However downloading it was a problem for some time as the link didn’t show when you had login to the ADC site. But it’s there now, the whole whopping 938,2 MB. I’m currently downloading to find out if there are many improvements. Unfortunately I we won’t be able to test the new 64 bit compatibility…

Changes in this release are:

• Xcode 2.4 adds support for 64-bit Intel development, with support for creating four-architecture
  Universal applications (32 and 64 bit for both Intel and PowerPC).
• Selected fixes were made in the Xcode IDE, cctools, debugger, and compiler.
• Xcode 2.4 also fixes bugs and enhances performance in several areas over Xcode 2.3. Most notably,
  stepping behaviour when debugging DWARF binaries has been made more precise, and Dedicated
  Network Builds (DNB) has received several usability fixes.
• The 10.4u SDK has been updated for development with Mac OS 10.4.7.
• CHUD has been updated to version 4.4.0.

Just found my Software update icon jumping again in the dock of the server when I used VNC to remotely login. It looked like another security update has arrived. Mostly minor issues as you can see here. The most important ones where the fix to OpenSSH and telnet which I frequently use myself. Another security hole bites the dust. I’ve got my server updated, when do you update yours.

It’s been a month since the last update and there where some rumours about the update running around on the internet. The actual update is finally here and it solves a lot of issues people might have with their mac and even fixes some security issues.

Check out all the improvements that where made in the knowledge base article. The update also includes some security issues on which you can read in this article.

I’ve updated both my mini’s without a problem. The mail and web server weren’t affected by the update and are still running as strong as ever. The only problem is that the up-time of my server isn’t going to be more than a few months with all these updates

Just read on the Apple Developers site that the Xcode developer tools that Xcode 2.3 has been released.

Xcode 2.3 adds support for the DWARF debugging format for enhanced debugging fidelity. This release also includes stability and performance improvements to the Xcode IDE, build system, and Code Sense. It is recommended that all Xcode users install this update. Please see the attached release notes for further information and system requirements.

GCC has been updated as well, the new version included in this version is 4.0.1. Read the release note on this version here to see if it affects you. I don’t know if this release solves my previous problem with compiling on the Intel platform and if it still needs the ‘-arch i386′ option.

By the way, the download is a big one, it’s 915 MB.

Well, I’ve spend some time since yesterday helping Andy Vestergård to get everything compiled and running on his new Dual Core Mac mini. He started with Apache, PHP and Mysql. Apache seemed to compile fine but when trying to start it it would just die and give you a segmentation error as he reported yesterday here.

The compilation process looked allright. The ‘./configure’ command looked like it detected it should be compiling for an Intel based darwin environment. But still we couldn’t start it up. After trying all sorts of things, and reading through the developer documentation at Apple.com on porting unix applications to OS X.

When I googled on some terms and found this post on Marc Liyanage’s site. It seemed that the gcc compiler still needs an extra flag to tell it to compile properly for Intel. You need to add:

CFLAGS="-arch ppc -arch i386"

to the configure command to create universal binaries. It’s still strange how we need to tell the compiler to compile for Intel as it should do this by default. I guess this is a minor bug of some sort that will be solved in a later release of OS X or the XTools.

We are still struggling with mailserver but Apache, MySQL and PHP are running smoothly.

Just noticed the jumping software update icon in the dock of my server which I regularly check using Chicken of the VNC. It looks from the knowledge base article that this is mostly an update to prevent security breaches with malicious code using buffer overflow problems. The items that where updated included: AppKit, Bom, CFNetwork, ClamAV, CoreFoundation, CoreGraphics, libcurl, Finder, FTP-Server, KeyChain, ImageIO, LaunchServices, QuickDraw, Ruby and Safari.

I’ve updated the Mac mini server and there were no noticeable issues after installing the update.

It’s time again for an update from Apple, we are getting a lot lately and this is a big one. You can read all about it on this knowledge base article. There are some security issues being covered plus some iSync issues. Please note that if you do the update and press the restart button PowerPC-based Macs will restart twice, instead of once, after the initial installation.

I’ve just updated my internet server after I tested it on my other test mini on the internal network. There were no noticeable issues and everything kept working as expected. Just wanted to let you know you can upgrade safely as we have experienced with all the updates till now. Hope we can keep this up.

Well, that was quick… exactly one month ago I upgraded my server with the latest patches and I’ve done it again, but with a newer patch. I just updated and tested my server and it passed the tests with flying colours. I anticipated no issues from reading the knowledgebase article on what was solved and changed.

So this means that you can upgrade your Mac mini safely without any problem if you used my instructions for the installation of the mail and web server. I can’t vouch for any other software you might be using.

It’s been a while since I wrote anything, but that was because I spent some time in another country and couldn’t spend some quality time with my Mac mini’s. When I got home and turned on my monitor I saw the software update icon jumping in the dock for attention. When I read the knowledge base article describing what was included in the update it all looked quite harmless. (more…)