Mac OSX
Quick Links
Hints and Fixes
Getting Apache to run under MacOSX 10.11, 10.12
- ensure ~/Sites is available (can be link to e.g., public_html)
-
check that we have index.html, index.xml in this directory
-
edit /etc/apache2/users/ajh.conf - it should look like
<Directory "/Users/ajh/Sites/">
AllowOverride All
Options Indexes MultiViews FollowSymLinks ExecCGI
Require all granted
</Directory>
-
check that the file ajh.conf has permissions 664 and owner root:admin
-
edit the /etc/apache2/httpd.conf file,
and ensure the following modules are enabled/disabled:
LoadModule authn_dbm_module libexec/apache2/mod_authn_dbm.so
LoadModule authn_anon_module libexec/apache2/mod_authn_anon.so
LoadModule authn_dbd_module libexec/apache2/mod_authn_dbd.so
LoadModule authz_dbm_module libexec/apache2/mod_authz_dbm.so
LoadModule authz_owner_module libexec/apache2/mod_authz_owner.so
#LoadModule proxy_module libexec/apache2/mod_proxy.so
#LoadModule proxy_connect_module libexec/apache2/mod_proxy_connect.so
#LoadModule proxy_ftp_module libexec/apache2/mod_proxy_ftp.so
#LoadModule proxy_http_module libexec/apache2/mod_proxy_http.so
#LoadModule proxy_fcgi_module libexec/apache2/mod_proxy_fcgi.so
#LoadModule proxy_scgi_module libexec/apache2/mod_proxy_scgi.so
LoadModule cgi_module libexec/apache2/mod_cgi.so
LoadModule vhost_alias_module libexec/apache2/mod_vhost_alias.so
LoadModule actions_module libexec/apache2/mod_actions.so
LoadModule userdir_module libexec/apache2/mod_userdir.so
-
The /etc/apache2/extra/httpd-vhosts.conf also needs to be adjusted. For dimboola, I use
<VirtualHost *:80>
ServerAdmin ajh@ajhurst.org
DocumentRoot "/Users/ajh/public_html/"
ServerName dimboola
ServerAlias dimboola
ErrorLog "/private/var/log/apache2/error_log"
CustomLog "/private/var/log/apache2/access_log" common
</VirtualHost>
-
Now restart the server
sudo apachectl restart
and check that the configuration is correct:
sudo apachectl configtest
which should reply with "Syntax OK". Rectify any flagged errors and restart.
Karabiner Keys
If you want to know what name to give various keys when
redefining them in
Karabiner, please refer to
this page.
Mail Folder Sort Order not maintained
My (Mac OSX) mail folders suddenly started being displayed in
non-alpha order whenever I added a new folder. I'm not the
only person to notice this - there is an Apple Disscussion
Thread on it. The
original page
is available, but in case it disappears, I've saved
a copy at
FixMailSort.html.
Here is the gist:
Kenji Kono
Re: Mail Not Sorting new Folders Added Alphbetically
Jan 28, 2010 8:05 PM (in response to Matt Garr)
Hi,
I'm not sure, but I suspect the new Snow Leopard feature ...
http://www.apple.com/macosx/refinements/enhancements-refinements.html#mail
... that lets you move folders around manually might be what's causing
the weird behavior.
In Leopard, you could move a folder inside another folder but,
otherwise, they would always stay in alphabetical order, I think.
Anyways, in Snow Leopard (and Leopard for that matter), there's an
invisible file around ~/Library/Mail/<name of your email
account>/.mboxCache.plist It seems to keep a list of the mboxes in
that folder/account. In Snow Leopard, the first time you manually move
an mbox out of alphabetical order, a new key called
MailboxDisplayOrder seems to get created in that plist for all the
existing "non-special" (i.e. not INBOX, Sent, Drafts, etc.) mboxes in
that folder. Once that key exists, it seems like new folders get
appended to the end of the order.
I don't know the right way to fix the problem though. I'm really just
posting my observations, based on what I'm seeing on my computer. I'd
be very careful about manually messing with invisible files in your
mail, especially if you don't have a good backup. (No idea if you can
restore an invisible file with Time Machine.) A lot of this is
guesswork. But I thought maybe it'd help someone.
Later,
k
The solution is to delete the offending
.mboxCache.plist file. You should exit Mail before you
do this, and it will get rebuilt next time you run Mail.
Invisible files
When I first obtained a Mac, using (IIRC) Mac OS 3.1 or
thereabouts, my son discovered that there was a resource fork
bit that made files invisible. He delighted in changing that
bit on files that I used, so I rapidly discovered how to unset
it again. That facility is still there in OS X, so I have
documented that little lurk to avoid any future mischief.
To make a file invisible:
$ /Developer/Tools/SetFile -a V file-name
(upper case V)
To make a file visible:
$ /Developer/Tools/SetFile -a v file-name
(lower case v)
Safari Plug-Ins
I installed/updated my Adobe reader, and the next time I used
Safari, it asked me if I wanted to install the Adobe plug-in
to make Safari use the Adobe reader for PDF files. I said yes
at the time, but after a bit of use, found it too slow.
Granted, it does have more features, but not the one I wanted,
which was to open it up outside the browser. With the
standard Preview option, this was just a right-mouse pull down
"Open in Preview", very convenient. But how to get back to
Preview?
A bit of Googling revealed the answer. In Tiger (10.4) and
Leopard (10.5), there is a folder /Library/Internet
Plug-Ins/ that contains all the plug-ins. Remove the one
called AdobePDFViewer.plugin, restart Safari, and you
are back with Preview.
And while on the subject of Safari, here's how to change the
default browser preference:
- Open Safari (/Applications).
- From the Safari menu, choose Preferences.
- Click the General button.
- Choose a different browser from the Default Web
Browser pop-up menu.
(from
http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1637)
Time Machine Repair
A colleague had difficulties recovering his Time Machine
backups when he had his motherboard replaced, and he sent me
this URL about a fix. It seemed like good insurance to add it
to this page: http://www.macosxhints.com/article.php?story=20080128003716101
OpenOffice recovery documents
When Open Office (version 3) "loses" its recovery
files, and keeps asking to recover (non-existent) files, edit
the file:
/Users/ajh/Library/ApplicationSupport/OpenOffice.org/3/user/registry/data/org/openoffice/Office/Recovery.xcu
to delete the element nodes containing the offending
file path. Then save this file, and restart OpenOffice.
Finding out the screen resolution
I run a number of different displays, and when starting up
various programs I need to know the current screen
resolution. This little script does the trick:
#!/bin/bash
#
# screenres determine screen resolution 'HEIGHTxWIDTH'
# screenres -w determine screen resolution 'WIDTH'
# screenres -h determine screen resolution 'HEIGHT'
#
res=`xdpyinfo | awk '/dimensions/ {print $2}'`
if [ "$1" = '-h' ] ; then
# extract height and print
expr "$res" : '.*x\([0-9]*\)'
elif [ "$1" = '-w' ] ; then
# extract width and print
expr "$res" : '\([0-9]*\)'
else
# print full resolution
echo $res
fi
Apple's X11 Cut and Paste
Apple did a Great Thing in making X11 available as part of OS
X, but it was always going to be a difficult task, given the
different "look and feel" of the two user interfaces. To
try and fix the inconsistency between the OS X cut and paste,
and X11's cut and paste, check out this
Fix for Apple's X11 Cut and Paste
Keyboard Shortcuts on Booting
To find out all those nifty keyboard things when things go wrong, here's a page to describe the
Keyboard Startup Shortcuts.
Automatically changing the Desktop Picture in Snow Leopard
I had a cool little script that changed the desktop background
picture (aka wallpaper) automatically, according to parameters
stored in an XML file. See this Multithreaded Image
Viewer for details. Most of it was pretty plain python
programming (I even set it as an exercise in concurrent
programming one year), but it relied upon a shell script
setBackground.sh that used an Applescript script to do
the actual picture change via a set desktop picture to file
MyPicFile.
Here's what that script looks like:
#!/bin/sh
#
# simple shell script to set the backgroup image
# uses an Applescript call to do the actual work
# call:
# setBackground.sh <imageFilename>
FILE=$1
#echo $FILE >>output.txt
/usr/bin/osascript <<END
tell application "Finder"
set myFile to POSIX file "$FILE" as string
set desktop picture to file myFile
end tell
END
But then it broke in Snow Leopard, for reasons I do not
understand. Attempts to find how to do this task via much
Googling also proved fruitless. While fiddling around with the
standard Apple Change Desktop Background pop-up memu, I hit on
the idea of having a folder with only one image in it, and
setting the reload time to 5 seconds, the shortest reload
time.
Hence this new script for setBackground.sh. It looks
like this:
#!/bin/sh
FOLDER=/Users/ajh/Pictures/Desktop
FILE=$1
rm $FOLDER/*
ln -s $FILE $FOLDER
I used a soft link without thinking about why. It could be a
hard link, I guess.
(20100330:094441) And this is not perfect by any means. It
breaks on my laptop when I put it to sleep, or change locations,
or both, or neither (hard to say which, since it seems very
erratic!) Every so often I have to invoke "Change Desktop
Background", and reselect the folder in which the temporary item
is placed.
(20101216:160200) The behaviour in Snow Leopard is now
consistent with Leopard again. I don't know what happened,
but I now use the script identified at the beginning of this
item. I'm keeping the rest of the story here just in case.
Filename extensions
I noticed while using Keynote that my filename extensions were
getting thrown away. I was not the only one to be puzzled by this
behaviour, so I thought I should comment on the fix required.
Go to the Finder Preferences, and click the Advanced tab.
Under Snow Leopard, the top check box should be "Show all filename
extensions". If this is unchecked, click it, and your filename
extensions will magically reappear!
For some reason, Apple appears to have changed the default
value on this from Leopard to Snow Leopard, leaving many users
puzzled as to what is going on.
Fixing the X11 "Focus Follows Mouse" hassle
In a terminal, type:
defaults write org.x.X11 wm_ffm -bool true
and then restart X11.
