Wesley's Tool-Box

Seeing that there weren't much show-stopping problems with OS X Yosemite 10.10.0, I decided to proceed with updating my Mac mini server's OS from OS X Mavericks 10.9.5. Experiences with the Mountain Lion - Mavericks update helped in getting the web server back up running again relatively quickly. The downtime was only about 2 hours. Not much of a drama to write about.

One problem I noticed is that MySQL does not automatically start on reboot, and it seems to be a known problem. I'll have to remember to manually restart it when I have to reboot the server.

I've reported about the server losing connection after a bit of idling time yesterday, and the culprit was the power management settings. Surprisingly, my Mac mini was set to go into power saving mode just ten minutes after idling. I'm not sure what kept it up before, but it certainly isn't kept awake now. So I set the setting to never go fall asleep. Now the connection doesn't drop.

I thought this was the end of troubles, but it turns out that the server now takes a long time to respond after several minutes of idling. Once it responds, subsequent pages load just fine. I haven't found out why this was the case, but I know it's not a DNS lookup issue because there's no delay while there is network activity on the Mac.

So I devised a way to work around this issue by automatically causing a small network activity every minute. After opening Terminal:

crontab -e

[Press "i"]

00-59 * * * * /sbin/ping -c 1 -n google.com > /dev/null/

[Press "Esc" button]
[Press "!wq"]

And that's it. Once this is done, the system starts doing a ping once every minute silently. So far, it's working nicely and the website loads fine regardless of idling time.

I've been wary of installing new OS upgrades on the server because it can easily mess up the custom configuration I set up. In fact, that was primarily the reason why my old iMac that ran my websites (including this one) until early this year ran Snow Leopard (OS X 10.6) for 3 and a half years until it broke down. I passed upgrading to Lion (10.7) or Mountain Lion (10.8 ) all that time. I ultimately moved to Mountain Lion only because the new Mac mini that replaced the iMac required it.

This time was different. I had simplified the server configuration and kept track of the modifications. Basically, it was down to a couple of configuration files for built-in Apache server, and a separate MySQL installation. Downloading Mavericks (10.9) from the Mac App Store was what took most of the time. It was released as a free upgrade from anything that ran Snow Leopard and up, so there was a huge demand. Once the download was complete, I ran the installer, and it took about half an hour to complete.

I noticed that the websites were broken after the installation, as expected. However, checking the changes revealed that I only needed to fix the main Apache server configuration file. A couple of minutes of fiddling with the file later, the websites came back working properly. This was easily the fastest and the most trouble-free transition to the new major OS X version ever.

As a bonus, Apple had decided to make iWork upgrades to the just-released latest version for free, regardless of whether it was bought on DVD or on Mac App Store. My old copy of iWork '09 installed from the disc got properly upgraded, and the apps now show up in purchases list. Free OS and office suite upgrade, and smooth server transition. Apple has spoiled me.

There had been mentions of Snow Leopard (Mac OS X 10.6) pre-release builds supporting read/write support for NTFS (native file system for current Windows versions). Read-only NTFS support was available since Tiger (10.4) days, so this was an interesting development. Unfortunately, read/write support was apparently dropped in the final release build of SL.

It turns out the support is still there, but disabled by default. This post by Chrysaor at MacRumors shows how to modify fstab to force an NTFS partition to mount in read/write mode. The drawback of this trick is that you have to manually do it to every partition you want to mount, and you need to unmount and remount the partition after applying the trick to get it to work. Hardly elegant, mind you.

Luckily, there is a much simpler and elegant way. Click below to find out.

I've gotten Snow Leopard on the server a week ahead of schedule. Yes, this website is running on Snow Leopard right now. My wife is expecting the baby in a couple of weeks, so I decided to get on with any time-consuming stuff early. The website seems to be running okay, so far...

Bringing newest development in the age-old war of the operating systems, Mac OS X 10.6, better known as Snow Leopard, came out last Friday, almost 2 months before Microsoft Windows 7 officially hits the shelves.

I've already gotten my hands on Windows 7 via TechNet+ subscription, and a copy has been happily running on the main laptop at home for about 2 weeks now. So it is natural that I would like to jump into Snow Leopard as soon as possible to see what improvements this release brings to my iMac. But since the iMac is a mission-critical system, I compiled a list of compatibility for the Mac software I have, using Snow Leopard Compatibility List at Wikidot as the primary source and then checking the developer's website to double-check.

Of the 100 software (the round number is purely coincidental):

Compatible - 54
In Progress - 6
Incompatible - 11
Unknown - 29

I'm expecting at least half of the 'unknown' ones to be compatible, so that's about 70% compatiblity right at the release time. The problem has to do with the 11 incompatible ones. Half of these software are being used daily, and I consider them to be rather important. So they need to be made compatible before I make the big move.

In conclusion, I'm holding off the transition for about two weeks until the dust is settled. Sigh...

With marriage, I moved into the new home. This meant moving everything out, including the servers. However, I was not sure of the quality of internet connection that the new place would provide, so I relocated the KT line (fiberoptic-to-ethernet 100Mbps line) first, and along with it, the Intel Mac mini which hosts XiGL.net on early April. Hanaro line (same quality as KT line) and its accompanying G4 Mac mini which hosts Tool-Box.info would be left behind for the time being.

It turns out that KT did not provide the 100Mbps connection at the new home, but only the traditional 30Mbps VDSL line. This persisted for several months and I did not see any sign of them upgrading to 100Mbps fiberoptic, all the while the competitors Hanaro and LG Powercomm were both providing 100Mbps line services of their own since at least May. My patience ran out, leading me to call Hanaro Telecom to relocate my connection. This would also mean that Tool-Box.info server would be moved to the new home as well.

Had I simply moved the old G4 box, the relocation would have been simple. But I decided to use this opportunity to replace the server hardware outright. That's when the trouble began.