Switching…

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 out through my trusted RSS reader, which is subscribed to the Hawk Wings blog amongst others, that there is a new email client on the horizon.

It’s called Kiwi and it’s going to be a full blown IMAP mail client from the ground up and not as an afterthought for most mail clients that started life as a POP3 mail client. There is nothing to download yet but the outlook is promising. The lead developer looks like he knows what he is talking about if you read of his latest blog entry on the IMAP protocol. I hope it’ll work well with the Courier IMAP server I use in my setup. I’m guessing we’ll have to wait and see when the first public beta arrives. I know I’m going to give it a try…

A short personal note, the baby stuff is taking more time than anticipated in me preparing for it’s arrival. I thought that I would have less time when it had arrived but it is already happening. Please note that I’m still working on the installation procedures for the v2 version but the MySQL issues as discussed earlier are taking a lot of time to solve as the static/shared libraries are used by all the programs involved.

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.

I’m rewriting, as discussed earlier, the ISP in a box documentation. Most effort is currently being put into removing the dependancies from the Server Logistics installation packages. They are very slow in updating their releases and I didn’t like to depend on them in case there is another security issue. The other item I wanted to address was the remarks I got on improving the installation process itself. People suggested if I could provide the configuration files and compilation scripts to prevent some errors and make the whole process a lot easier.

So here is the first public preview of the first pages of the new documentation. it’s not yet ready to be used properly as I only got MySQL and Apache2 covered. PHP is coming before the end of the week. But I wanted to see how you like the new way of documenting. Hope you like it…

Two more remarks:

• I’ve created a page to keep you informed on the funding of the new Intel based Mac mini. Donations and AdSense income are going strong and I think I can order an Intel based Mac mini before the end of the summer. I you want to contribute to this effort as well, use the PayPal button on the right side of the page.
• I don’t like the phrase “ISP in a box” too much but I still can’t think of another one that covers what I’m documenting here. So I wanted to ask you, can you think of a better phrase or slogan ? Or do you think “ISP in a box” is good enough ? Please let me know what you think.

I know it’s been awhile, but I’ve been a very busy boy lately with another project which at this stage takes a lot of work and attention. It’s still heavy in development and I’m making all the preparations for the first release. Me and my girlfriend are hard at work and the release schedule is still on track and the release is due in a few months. No it’s not software or computer related, it’s called project baby. But enough about that, you’re not reading this because of that, but I felt some explanation was due in the slow uptake of new things.

The good news is I don’t have to document and compile you a FTP-server as someone else has done the job for us and provided a great administration tool as an added bonus. It’s called Pure-FTPd and is a free (BSD), secure, production-quality and standard-conformant FTP server. It doesn’t provide useless bells and whistles, but focuses on efficiency and ease of use. Jean Matthieu Schaffhauser has written this nice Cocoa based front-end admin tool that lets you configure every aspect of this FTP server. A small list of features include:

• Virtual users, directories and hosts
• Support for SSL
• Limit up and download speeds per user
• Several ways to store user information like PAM or MySQL

The list is so long I would like to see the full list on the PureFTPd Manager homepage. From where you can download the install package as well. The install package also includes the compiled FTPd server but there are compilation instructions on the site available if you would like to compile our own. What a service…

It looks like security is the big thing in 2006. I don’t mind because if everybody takes this seriously then we eventually will have less problems. It just takes a for us to read the release notices and upgrade our software and test to see if nothing important has broken.
Apple has released a new security update called: OS X Security Update 2006-002 it’s only 13 days after the previous one. Most of the updates have to do with the problems discovered lately. I mention the update because of the mentioning of apache_mod_php, but you don’t have to worry as our setup isn’t touched and you can update without any problem.

I’ve also had to upgraded my Blog to WordPress 2.0.2 as there where some XSS security issues in version 2.0.1 I just installed two weeks ago. You can read more about it on the WordPress blog. Upgrading was as easy as before and I think not many of you noticed anything.

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.

As a former user of squirrelmail on my Sun box I loved the use of a webmail client to access my mail all over the world on any computer connected to the internet equipped with a graphical browser. When confronted with the Roundcube webmail project I had to try it out and installing it on my mac mini server was the natural thing to do. I subscribed to the announcement mailinglist to keep track of updates as the official release version was and still is 0.1. (more…)

Just a quick tip on how to set the root (or System Administrators) password. I’ve had some questions from people reading the ISP in a box articles on how they could do this. Because after compiling the sourcecode you need to install the software as root user to get and set all the right privileges. During the installation of Mac OSX or when you first power on your new Mac there is no possibility to set the root password. As a normal or power user of a Mac you don’t really need the root password. You will be able to do all the things required by using an account that has administration rights.

To set or reset the System Administrators (or root for short) password yuo need the original Mac OSX install disc. Insert it into your drive and restart the computer. During the boot sequence (just before the boing sound) press the ‘C’ key on your keyboard and keep it pressed untill the spinning icon has dissappeared from the screen.

It will look like you are about to re-install your system but don’t panic. There is an item in the menu bar called Utilities, which contains an item ‘Reset Password’ in the drop down list. Select this menu item and a new window will appear.

It will show all available bootable discs connected at this time to your computer. Select the disc you are going to use for your server. Then in a drop down box beneath that you see all the configured accounts on that disc. Select the ‘System Administrator (root) from the list and type in the new password. You’ll have to enter it twice for confirmation and to make sure you typed it correct. Press the ‘Save’ button and your done. Quit the reset password utility by closing the window or select Quit from the menu.

Then close the installation screen and select the restart option. The computer will reboot and the root user will have a known password.

Finally found some spare time to have a look at how to compile Postfix on my Mac mini. When looking around for information on configuring Postifx on the Mac I also bookmarked all the information regarding compiling Postfix. Most of the info I found was out of date or targeted older versions. So I had to combine and try out what still worked and what not.

By the way this is just a quick write down on the things I found out, it’s not a complete guide. I’m planning to write a step by step guide on how to compile and configure a proper Postfix mail server on your Mac mini.

Via some backdoor (can’t remember how I found it) located this article on AFP548.com. It’s for an older version of Postfix and OS X (panther) but it’s got some nice pointers on the stuff you have to do. You have to remember that I’m not an Unix guru and just have fumbled my own current Postfix installation into a working environment. This time it’s going to be a repeatable effort and I’m looking for all the info I can get.

I’m including PCRE into the Postfix build as well as it’s faster than regexp for contect filtering. I’m not sure if I’m going to use this but it was quite easy to do. It was as simple as downloading the source from http://www.pcre.org/, extracting, running ./configure, make and make install. Done.

Installing SASL was a bit more complex because of the compiler errors I got when trying to compile the latest release. But to cut a long story short, I got it compiled when using version 2.1.18 of the source. I’ve still got to find out which is the latest version that compiles without a problem.

Compiling Postfix was also not nuch of a problem. Just getting the latest version of the source (2.2.5 in this case) and getting the first make command working with the options needed. We wanted MySQL support (what all this effort was about) and include PCRE ad SASL. So you end up with a command looking like:

make -f Makefile.init makefiles \
CCARGS='-DUSE_SASL_AUTH -I/usr/local/include/sasl \
-DHAS_MYSQL -I/Library/Mysql/include/mysql'  \
AUXLIBS='-L/usr/lib -lldap -L/usr/lib -llber -L/usr/lib -lsasl2 \
-L/Library/MySQL/lib/mysql -lmysqlclient -lz -lm'

I’m using the Server Logistics package for MySQL (as told here), if you are sing a package from a different source your path to the mysql.h file might be different. Please check it before compiling.

If the above make command worked for you then issue it, followed by a make and make update command and everything should be up to date and installed. To check if we got MySQL tables in this version run the following command and look for MySQL in the output:

# postconf -m
btree
cidr
environ
hash
mysql
pcre
proxy
regexp
static
unix

Next step is the IMAP server and configuration but that is for another time, now I’m happy I got this done. Just taking one step at a time.