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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.
It is a wonderful thing to do j2ee dev at the local Starbucks on your localhost Apache /Tomcat/whatever... then finally to upload it all to your dedicated server through your tMobile account... I mean can you get any better? Not to mention how jealous all your friends are that not only can you afford the Powerbook but that it actually makes more money for you while you appear to be taking it easy (well, you really are at least half of the time...).
A fool throws a stone into a well and a thousand sages can not remove it.
lots of code written to run on windows web servers (even the win32 version of apache) needs to be rewritten to run on the production unix server because of locations of libraries, stuff that's not ported, etc... (i guess some of this could be overcame with cygwin, but...)
also in linux you don't get photoshop, or perhaps other commercial tools that most web developers are familiar with. lots of web developers are also stuck with design assignments mixed in with the development, so it's a good idea to have solid graphical tools.
the mac you get both a stable and compatible unix environment, and industry standard graphic design tools.
This is the exact reason why i bought myself an iBook, and I don't regret it a bit.
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.
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.
1. It's not some wonky, secure, stripped, stable *nix box that can't run GUI IDEs.
2. It can give me multicolored colored visual cues to code, so monochrome terminal sessions are out. Colored terminals are OK, but they lack the same elegance of a full GUI.
3. It can quickly deal with running those additional programs I need when reading laughable client 'specs' in PowerPoint, MS word, HTML email from hell, etc.
4. The code, on my GUI-heavy isolated dev box, can run identically to the code deployed on the stripped, burly, boxen.
5. If I need to test speeds without a GUI, I can ignore it, and use the box in a stripped, clean, mode.
6. It must be stable without being cold and wooden (Red flag of personal preference, I find almost all *nix platforms to be far less comfortable than they could potentially be. I know the KDE/Gnome/Solaris folks are working on it, and have their advantages as well)
7. It must support additional "development necessary tools" such as playing mp3's, accounting for my time with professional accounting software, play mpg's, and run the occasional "break tool" in the form of some game that isn't 5 (or more) years old.
8. It must support running javascript, and be able to test IE, NN, *and* lynx, and be able to run MacOS 9, MacOS X, X windows (and sub-managers), as well as MS windows (and their many variants).
9. The hardware and software should need my personal intervention for tweaking and updates, well, almost never. I am not paid to update my box, I am paid for writing original code.
I run a business, and I use (deep breath) LinuxPPC, Yellow Dog Linux, SuSe (on X86 and PPC), Debian (on PPC and X86), Mac OSX, RedHatX86 (four versions), OpenBSD (PPC and X86), FreeBSD (X86), SunOS (really, some clients still use it), Solaris (all 'of the flock, ugly), Win 3.1, Win 95, Win 98, Win ME, Win NT 3.x, Win NT 4.x, Win2K, Win XP (all).
Of all of the above OS's, which one, do you think, can actually do requirements 1-9? (There's only one, take your time...) I used to do dev work on no less than 3 different boxes a day to meet those requirements. Now I use one.
Of course, if I have a few sites with a few million hits a day (I do), I'll host it elsewhere than my test box, an OS X box.. But I'm not going to develop on that box. I'm going to develop on a box that makes me the most productive, a box where I don't care about IRQ's, drivers, optimizing window managers, running rpm or apt-get or any other time-wasting CLUI tools that interfere with writing code.
For writing code, use a box that meets *your* needs. All platforms prior to OS X meant I was using far too many comps, because I needed multi-platform, multi-client-platform, code. No other platform allows you to test as many platforms at once as PPC/OS 9/OSX on Mac.
-Bop
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.
You wouldn't necessarily buy a new Mac to use as server. But since the entire Mac world is being migrated to a platform that installs Apache, etc., someone has decided to write a piece explaining how to take advantage of that fact. What's your problem with that?
As for price, I would have paid just as much for a PC as I did for this Mac. All the PC would have given me was the need to install Linux and spend hours tweaking the thing so I could stand to look at it. My time is more important to me than the money, so I went the Mac route.
Why does a "community" that whines so much about "choice" and "freedom" have such a hissy fit every time someone says something positive or useful about a competing platform? Any chance that's because you want to limit choice and freedom to only one kind of software?
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