Snow Leopard

Once again I’ve installed some new OS and write a small post about it. This time it’s all about Snow Leopard and as usual this is probably more interesting for myself as a checklist sort of thing than for the world to read. It gives more order and satisfaction in the long proces of installing and customisation and it functions as a central storage for all cool applications, tweaks and scripts that I install and create to make OS X function just the way I like it.

Installation

I’ve decided not to upgrade my existing installation of Leopard but to go for a fresh clean installation. Leopard was my first OS X installation and I’ve done quite some installating, customization and so forth and it sounded like a good idea to just start fresh. I remember reading something about a clean install option, but the installer just asks me for the location, gives me some options what to install and starts right away. I had to abort, reboot, and then used the disk utility on the installer DVD to first format my hard drive. Installation went smooth from that point on.

First impressions are as expected, it works smooth. I am surprised about the time it takes to wake from sleep, almost instantly, but that can also be because this installation is fresh and I was used to my old cluttered Leopard.

Afterwards

Time to install some.

• Firefox 3.5
• Growl 1.2b4, the latest beta of 1.2 because 1.1 is uncompatible with snow leopard. It seems to work fine, as does the HardwareGrowler.
• Perian 1.1.4
• Spark 3.0b9 for global hotkeys
• iWork ’09 en iLife ’09
• Software updates (10.6.1)
• Textmate
• Latest flash version since Snow Leopard ships with an unsafe one.
• MacTex

And to tweak some.

• Copied my old ~/Music directory, iTunes starts with my good old library. Hurray
• Copied my old ~/Photos directory, iPhoto cannot open (made with a newer version). Running another software update was the key to success.
• The first sync with my iPhone authorizes my computer with the iTunes store and gives me all my contacts back. Nice!
• Uncomment the line LoadModule php5_module libexec/apache2/libphp5.so in /etc/apache2/httpd.conf to enable php5. Fortunately for me, snow leopard provides me with pdo_mysql which Leopard did not (and it wasn’t possible to just add that module).

And to get stuck at some.

• System clock, going to System preferences > International > Formats > Times (customize button) and changing the medium format doesn’t work anymore :(

My ToDo list also has some.

• mail multicolumn
• mail imap subfolder check
• spark firewall status scripts
• adium

More Tweaks

Firewall scripts

I take my laptop everywhere so I want to keep the built-in firewall fully closed at all times. I do, however, sometimes take it down if some sharing/program/game doesn’t work, and I almost always forget to enable it again afterewards. Thats what the following script is for. I use the cron daemon to run it every 5 minutes and it checks the firewall status and gives me a growl notification if it’s disabled.

#!/bin/sh
if [ `defaults read /Library/Preferences/com.apple.alf globalstate` -eq "0" ]; then
  echo Firewall is currently disabled | /usr/local/bin/growlnotify -a /Applications/System\ Preferences.app -t Warning;
fi

I also added an applescript to a global hotkey in Spark to change the firewall status. It checks the status, displays it with the options to change it with a timeout of 5 seconds.

# brings the dialog window to front
delay 1
tell me to activate

set fw_status to (do shell script "defaults read /Library/Preferences/com.apple.alf globalstate")

if fw_status is equal to "2" then
  set dlg_result to display dialog "Allow only essential services" with title "Firewall Status" buttons {"All", "Specific", "Essential"} default button 3 cancel button 3 with icon note giving up after 10
  set res to button returned of dlg_result
else if fw_status is equal to "1" then
  set dlg_result to display dialog "Set access for specific services" with title "Firewall Status" buttons {"All", "Specific", "Essential"} default button 2 cancel button 2 with icon caution giving up after 10
  set res to button returned of dlg_result
else if fw_status is equal to "0" then
  set dlg_result to display dialog "Allow all incomming connections" with title "Firewall Status" buttons {"All", "Specific", "Essential"} default button 1 cancel button 1 with icon stop giving up after 10
  set res to button returned of dlg_result
end if

if res is equal to "All" then
  do shell script "defaults write /Library/Preferences/com.apple.alf globalstate 0"
  display dialog "Set to 'Allow all incomming connections'" with title "Firewall Status" buttons {"OK"} default button 1
else if res is equal to "Specific" then
  do shell script "defaults write /Library/Preferences/com.apple.alf globalstate 1"
  display dialog "Set to 'Set access for specific services'" with title "Firewall Status" buttons {"OK"} default button 1
else if res is equal to "Essential" then
  do shell script "defaults write /Library/Preferences/com.apple.alf globalstate 2"
  display dialog "Set to 'Allow only essential services'" with title "Firewall Status" buttons {"OK"} default button 1
end if

And now I can easily change the status of my firewall