First of all, I don’t like the fact that if I actually want to play Portal I have to:

1. Download Steam (a few Mb).
2. Download the actual Steam files within Steam.
3. Download several Steam updates.
4. Download Portal.
5. Ignore a warning about the minimum system specifications and my windows video driver having an unknown version. Now that says something about the native OS X version they build…
6. Wait, because even tough the download isn’t complete and won’t resume there is a “play” button which cannot start the game because their servers are too busy.
7. Whatever the future may bring…

Second, I have less trust in a native application that doesn’t feel native (misaligned button labels; buttons, and worse, hyperlinks with no feedback weather I clicked them; custom colors, themes and icons; windows sometimes not showing up after switching applications; a crash when I press Command+Q), especially when it doesn’t work smoothly the first time I use it. Little inconsistencies like one window telling me it went wrong and the other it went fine does not help in gaining my trust either.

But, since I know I like Portal and because I’d like to be able to play more games on my Mac I’m just going to keep on trying. It is a good move to make an extremely popular game free to boost the number of Mac Steam users, because it makes users like me accept the rough patches and keep on trying.

Update: After deleting all local files and downloading Portal again everything went fine, except that the warning about minimum system requirements turned out to be meaningful: Portal does not work on my MacBook (2.16 GHz Core 2 Duo).

PHP Warning:  PHP Startup: Unable to load dynamic library '/usr/lib/php/extensions/no-debug-non-zts-20060613/pdo_mysql.so' - (null) in Unknown on line 0

Following instructions in the comment to remove all architectures but the x86_64 have no effect. I think I have to compile my own PHP installation and have apache use that. Which sucks so much I decided to just wait for Snow Leopard and pray that either pdo_mysql is installed or dynamicly loading libraries is allowed there. I am happy to inform you all that the first is the case. Hurray!

Creating a web symlink in 10.6

Configure Apache

The installation of Apache that ships with OS X I use doesn’t allow symlinks by default, so I’ve added Options +FollowSymLinks in the Apache configuration. These are located in /private/etc/apache2 and while you could enable this in httpd.conf I like to keep the system-wide configuration as clean as possible and edited the (ronald is my username) instead. I’ve also added AllowOverride All there to be able to use .htaccess files, but thats another topic.

Restart Apache by disabling and enabling “Web Sharing” in the sharing preference pane

Create a symlink

That’s just a matter of executing "ln -s ../Documents/website ." in the ~/Sites directory. Alas browsing to http://localhost/~ronald/website gives a 403 (forbidden) page. Inspecting the serverlog tells me that either apache is not allowed to follow symlinks (which it is) or the _www user hasn’t got enough rights to access ~/Documents/website.

It’s all about permissions

Well, that’s just stupid because the directory is readable/executable for everyone. Changing my ~/Documents folder to be world readable/executable did the trick. Apparently every directory in the path needs to be accessible. Damn me and my inferior UNIX permissions knowledge!

So it’s either making my entire Documents directory world readable, which I don’t really like, or adding the _www user and myself to some group and change ownership of my Documents directory to that group to make my entire Documents folder readable for myself and the _www user, which is slightly less bad. So chmodding everything except the directories linked for web access inside the Documents folder 700 seems the right way to go.

In 10.5 the holy grail was to mess around with the Access Control List but that wasn’t needed in 10.6, so I suggest leaving that part alone.

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