The Geek Blog » macintosh

Mac OS X – Adding a loopback alias

Aaron — Fri, 04 Feb 2011 16:13:33 +0000

I do a lot of local web development on my MacBook Pro. Frequently I had multiple tiers of servers running – a Jetty instance running the web tier and a JBoss/EJB server doing the business tier behind it. The problem is JBoss opens up so many ports on a particular network adapter and trying to get JBoss and Jetty to share a single IP is a nightmare. So the easier way is to just create a new IP or alias your localhost (127.0.0.1) into something like 127.0.0.2. When you start up Jetty, you pass in the binding IP of .2 and then JBoss and Jetty place nice with each other.

The Mac OS command (at least 10.6) to create an alias is:

ifconfig lo0 alias 127.0.0.2

and to delete:

ifconfig lo0 -alias 127.0.0.2

This is not persistent – the alias will not survive a reboot. I don’t need the alias often even to require it to be permanent. If you’re curious how to keep it permanent, let me know and I’ll post that. This is the hacker way to do it on the command line. There is a much easier way to do it through the GUI but this way doesn’t stick around on the reboot, which is one of my requirements for my project – no retaining traces.

Installing MySQL 5.5.8 on Mac OS X Snow Leopard

Aaron — Tue, 21 Dec 2010 14:17:30 +0000

Installing MySQL should be a no brainer on any operating system, especially with how mature of a product it is. Apparently that assumption is incorrect. I tried installing the most recent GA release of MySQL on my new Snow Leopard machine, and found I couldn’t start the blasted server. I’ve become lazy the older I get – I don’t want to screw around with shell scripts, hacking this tweaking that. If I’m provided a Mac-based installer I WANT IT TO WORK. So, if you’re like me and are frustrated as all hell with not being able to get MySQL to start via System Preferences after installing the 64-bit version (maybe 32-bit as well), do the following:

Drop into Terminal.app
Type: sudo /Applications/TextEdit.app/Contents/MacOS/TextEdit /usr/local/mysql/support-files/mysql.server
Find the line starting with basedir and datadir and replace with:
basedir=/usr/local/mysql
datadir=/usr/local/mysql/data
Save the file
Start MySQL using the System Preferences pane button.

I’m amazed this is the fix and that the MySQL team overlooked the configuration change in their packaging. Very irritating. Enjoy.

Mac Screen Sharing (VNC) & White Screen

Aaron — Sun, 02 May 2010 14:10:32 +0000

I’ve had problems connecting to my Ubuntu 9.10 server via Mac OS’ built-in VNC client, “Screen Sharing”. Frequently when I connect, I get a white screen with no indication that the connection is working. If I type characters or click the mouse, it does actually send those events to the remote side. My only option was to use Chicken of the VNC (which sucks) to connect to my server. Finally, I did some digging and found the solution/workaround.

Open a new Finder window.
Click “Go” and then “Go to Folder” (or hit Command-Shift-G).
Type in “/System/Library/CoreServices” and hit enter.
Find the “Screen Sharing” application, click once to highlight.
Click “File” and then “Get Info” (or hit Command-I).
Find the checkbox labeled “Open in 32-bit mode” and check it.
Close the Info window and Finder folder window.

That’s it! Apparently there is a bug in the application only when running in 64-bit mode. I don’t really care why it fixes it, I’m just glad its fixed and I thought I’d share.

Thanks to the anonymous user on Mac OS X Hints!

Getting Macs to play with Ubuntu

Aaron — Fri, 06 Feb 2009 14:21:54 +0000

I’m a fan of Unix operating systems in general. That’s what got me interested in switching to Mac OS X because it’s Unix-based. It was inevitable that I would eventually get a server-class machine again that wasn’t Mac-based. The new Dell machine that I have running has Ubuntu 8.10 – a Debian-based machine which is something I’m new too.

I wanted to set up the Ubuntu machine to share files with the Macs on my network but not by using the crappy Samba protocol or even NFS. I know both are troublesome and not as speedy on a Mac. My only other choice was to get AFP working on the Ubuntu server and to my delight, packages exist for this. Netatalk is an Appletalk daemon and Avahi is a Bonjour zeroconf equivalent. Installing those packages and starting the services didn’t do it for me. Leopard was having issues with the cleartext passwords being passed to AFPD so I went nowhere.

I did some digging and realized that OpenSSL isn’t GNU and therefore support for it in netatalk isn’t compiled in. Not being super familar with how Debian packaging works, I looked for a guide to help me with recompiling and installing the updated netatalk package.

I found it and boy it’s an awesome guide.

http://www.kremalicious.com/2008/06/ubuntu-as-mac-file-server-and-time-machine-volume/

Take a look, try it out. It worked perfectly me for on Ubuntu Intrepid Ibex (8.10).