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Setting Up A Site Server with Jaguar
rgraham writes "James Duncan Davidson (the original author of Apache Tomcat and Apache Ant) has an article over at O'Reilly's MacDevCenter that walks you through the steps of not only getting Apache up and running on 10.2 (pretty simple, I know) but also DNS and Mail. The aricle goes along well with Alan Graham article on how to setup your own .Mac type service."
no no you have it all wrong, its BUELLER!
seriously though, i dont think the idea is to fully dedicate a mac to being a server, i think the idea is to turn your desktop mac into a desktop mac AND a personal mail/web/etc server, just to make things convenient for yourself. anyone who goes and buys a $1500-3000+ mac just to install apache and sendmail and put on their dsl connection is an idiot.
also keep in mind that jaguar *does run* on some not-so top of the line macs, which would cost fairly little (or nothing, if they're laying around).
The coolest part about a Mac these days is having a $200 dollar linux box in the closet and a Powerbook on the coffetable.... playing music wirelessly through the stereo system served from the mp3 streamer in the closet through the PBook with iTunes while reading /. and checking out how many other people are also listening to your stream via the webpage you designed in PHP and MySQL on the PBook localhost and then moved to your linux box w/o any hassle or reconfig... just a straight tarball copy and an apachectl graceful...
So why would anyone pay $3000 for a home server? It's not about the server, it's about having a perfect machine that you can do it all with... the ultimate pro-sumer device for the home. Develop, play, remore-admin, play, manage the household, play, play games, play, stock market, play, develop some more, play....
any questions?
A fool throws a stone into a well and a thousand sages can not remove it.
The last line of /etc/httpd/httpd.conf in the default OS X.1.5 installation reads:
/private/etc/httpd/users
/private/etc/httpd/users file being added for each user which enable you to serve anything you put in the Sites folder in your personal home directory. These are served in turn as http://your.domain.name/~username/page.html or the prevailing DirectoryIndex file to you (me) locally as http://127.0.0.1/~ynotds/
/library/webserver/CGI-Executables
/library/webserver/CGI-Executables/*
.cgi to get scripts running throughout your site.
Include
one
The main config file includes a script alias to run any CGI scripts in
They have put one Perl test script in that directory which you can view locally at http://127.0.0.1/cgi-bin/test-cgi, or at least you can after you have done a
sudo chmod 775
from your Terminal window.
From there, it isn't a lot of work to tweak your config files and uncomment AddHandler cgi-script
Of course the real point to setting up your Mac as a fully functional server is that you get to do all your editing in BBEdit which not only does syntax checking and colour coding on the fly of HTML, Perl, JavaScript and more, but also can directly run Perl in an open document window, enabling you to all manner of extrancting and reporting on the fly.
Now I just need to get brave enough to install MySQL.
-- Our systemic servants do not good masters make.
also in linux you don't get photoshop, or perhaps other commercial tools that most web developers are familiar with.
:)
If not directed to print media, The GIMP surpasses Photoshop in quality (not to mention that it by FAR surpasses Photoshop in Freedom). And if you're a web developer that uses a GUI to do web pages, well, you just plain suck as pro man
Well, the worst thing you can say about GIMP is not supporting CYMK and a probably a couple more other patented stuff.
Plugins, it will not load Photoshop's, AFAICS even if run on Windows, but that is hardly something you will really miss, since it has a huge amount of plugins by itself, and if you're not happy with how one works, or need something extra, it's *relatively* easy to change and extend (or maybe you could convince a more experienced GIMP user/developer to help you extend it).
GUI, it's not Photoshop (and who said Photoshop's gui was simple?) but it has already won some prizes, and, its the origin of GTK+ (GIMP ToolKit), which is used in one of the two most used Free Software desktop environments.
Feature set, if you consider Photoshop as a 100% feature set app, GIMP may not be 100% to your eys, but if you consider PaintShopPro as 100%, then GIMP is eons ahead.
The lack of CYMK, makes GIMP not ready for the world of print, but in the fully digital world, there's absolutely no need for Photoshop. It may have a different UI, or you may not like the interface, the extensibility and the Freedom (no, you are not free to share a Photoshop copy with your friends or family, for instance).
But do join the GIMP mailing lists, and you'll see that in the digital world, you can (and probably will) live very happy without Photoshop.
Take for example automation, which is critical for anyone that's going to be driving the software as their job. Photoshop actions, kind of like Applescript, allow you to record your activity and then have the software play it back to you by pantomime. There isn't much to get the hang of, because you're just recording the activity you're doing normally. Gimp's ScriptFu, on the other hand, allows you to script actions in Perl -- right? Now I love Perl, use it all the time, am a member of the local Perl Mongers group, etc, but that is *not* how I picture the average graphics professional wanting to work.
Gimp over Photoshop is an argument much like Linux over Windows -- in spite of all the shouting, the dominant player actually does have some strengths going for it, and the hackishness of the open source competitor just doesn't compare to the polished maturity of the dominant software. If you've got the time to spend on beating the open source stuff into submission -- and hey, that can be fun, I'm not trying to knock that if it's what you're in to -- then sure, the path of "freedom" might be worthwhile. But for everyone else, this isn't a political matter, and they don't exactly feel like slaves because they happen to prefer the [unfortunately] generally superior proprietary software to the open/freee/whatever alternative, whiich has been "almost catching up" for years now...
DO NOT LEAVE IT IS NOT REAL
I know the point of this article is to set up all these services on plain-jane Mac OS X, but even easier than all that, and still cheaper than (m)any commercial solutions, is Mac OS X Server:
http://www.apple.com/macosx/server/
Instead of going through 4 pages of convoluted configuration (if that's not your cup of tea), Mac OS X Server reason for existence is to provice a nice GUI for all of the server components. It's really amazing; anyone here who likes Mac OS X and hasn't really seen what Apple's done with Mac OS X Server 10.2 should check it out.
For years.
PPC chips use only a fraction of the power of Intel chips, and generate far, far less heat. This is why they are Motorola uses them in the embedded market, where they sometimes need six nines of continuous heavy-CPU-use uptime.
Most models of powerbooks don't even have a CPU fan installed, because they never need it.
Information wants to be anthropomorphized.