All posts tagged osx

Mac_OSX

Fixing Slow FTP Server on Mac OSX

By on October 25, 2011 in Mac, Networking, Opinion, OSX, Software, Troubleshooting, Tutorials & Explanations with No Comments

One of the very nice things about working with multiple platforms and technologies, not to mention just having longevity in the business (which is a nice way of saying I’m old!), is that you get exposed to a lot of different ways of solving problems.  “Oh, I’ve seen that before.  Back in the DOS days we used to…”

Administering FTP services on Mac OSX server has always left me wanting something better.   The built-in services work, but they have a few drawbacks:

1. I don’t like having to bounce around multiple places to administer things.  Over to the User section of the System Settings to add users.  Back over to the Server Admin to manage FTP Server settings, etc.  I always liked the all-in-one console approach with things like FileZilla on Windows servers.

2. I don’t like having to create real, actual user accounts in the system for FTP users.  I have multiple web hosting clients who need access, each to their own specific web site directories.  I don’t like creating “real” user accounts on the machine for them.  Partially a security concern, and partially just “…something bothers me about it.”  The Windows Server OS has FTP services built-in, but they are woefully inadquate and they too are all integrated and require actual user accounts.  For years I’ve used the open source FileZilla Server for Windows.

3. FTP access is SOOOOOO SLOOOOOOOW.

The very first thing I had done, when I first installed the Mac OSX Server, was to look for an OSX version of FileZilla.  Alas, they don’t make an OSX version of FileZilla.  I poked around didn’t find a suitable alternative.  So I stuck with the built-in services.

We hadn’t been using FTP all that much on the OSX Server, so we dealt with the slowness issue.  But more recently we’ve had the need to use it a bit more, and the time lags made us want to stab our eyes out.  So less we go blind, I started searching around for a cause and hopefully solution.  And to my great pleasure, I found TWO solutions!

First, it turns out that the slowness issue is very easily solved.  It’s merely a configuration setting that really ought to be part of the default installation, but isn’t.    Go here to find the full write-up from Apple.  But in a nutshell, I just needed to open the file   /Library/FTPServer/Configuration/ftpaccess    in a text editor, and then add the following line:

  passive ports Server_IP_Address 49152 65535

Then restart the server.

That’s it!  The slowdown was because when trying to go to passive mode, it was banging its head against the wall trying to find a valid port to use.

However, it gets even better…

In my travels, I also got clued into a FileZilla -like open source FTP Server!

pureFTPd is an active, open source FTP server project for the BSD unix / linux families including Mac OSX.  And there’s a GUI interface called pureFTPd Manager for OSX!    Just click the preceeding link, and you can download the GUI interface and ftp server all bundled up in one since installation package.

This software will allow you to setup multiple different username/password combinations, locking each into a specific set of “home folders”.  But these are all accounts setup within the software, and NOT actual system accounts.  Its much better security approach, and much “cleaner”.   And the software is FAST too, with better system monitors.

Enjoy!

How To Fix “Bluetooth Not Available” problem in Mac OSX

By on April 27, 2011 in Apple, Bluetooth, Diagnostics, Hardware, Mac, OSX, Troubleshooting, Tutorials & Explanations with 1 Comment

Ok, this will be short and sweet…

Today I booted up my iMac and my wireless Magic Trackpad was dead.  I had just replaced the batteries a couple days ago, and I could see the green light was on.  But nothing…

I had this happen once before, where the Bluetooth got snarked.  Like a true died-in-the-wool Geek, I grabbed my iPad and used LogMeIn Ingition to remotely access my iMac and control the mouse pointer like an over-sized trackpad, and toggled Bluetooth on and off.  It was being all wonky and not wanting to go off (took several attempts) then didn’t want to go back on…  So I did a restart on the whole OS.

When it came back, the Bluetooth logo on the menu bar had a squiggly line through it:  Bluetooth not available.

What?!

Ok, so here’s the solution:

Turn off the computer.  Turn it back on.

Yeah.  Duh.  Took me 30 wasted, frustrating minutes to figure that out…  The red-herring was that I *DID* do a restart.  But the problem was hardware, not software.  Power cycle.  Fixed.  *rolling eyes*

I’ve spent 20 years or so on DOS/Windows-centric PCs before Macs for the past couple years…  this is a typical computer hardware thing.  Sometimes things get inexplicably hosed up and a simple power cycle will “reset” it.  I was shaking my head at myself for not trying this sooner.

Hopefully this will help save someone some time and frustration in the future.  You’re welcome. :-)

Enabling Pretty Permalinks in WordPress on OSX 10.6

By on June 16, 2010 in Mac, OSX, server, Software, Wordpress with 5 Comments

WordPress on Mac OSX is pretty neat out of the box, but I found that when trying to enable the pretty permalinks, to make posts more search engine friendly, I was getting errors.   Oh sure, I could configure it in the WordPress Admin, but then I’d just get 404 Page Not Found errors when trying to access blog entries.

There are lots of articles online about this problem, but they all suffer from a few problems, the most common being that they’re all for a previous version of OS X.  Apparently some directory paths have changed, and the old advice is not applicable to Snow Leopard Server. Some of them also toss out a handful of things-to-do that are actually red herrings and don’t really solve the problem (the old “throw a bunch of stuff against and wall and see what sticks” approach).  Furthermore, most of them speak in very high level terms, assuming you’re incredibly and intimately familiar with all of the details and will know how to fill-in-the-blanks.  I, personally, am a long time veteran of Windows Server, and do have Unix experience from bygone eras. But OS X Server itself, in this particular iteration, is still somewhat new to me.  I’m no babe in the woods, but I can’t necessarily say I know every nook and cranny inside out (yet) either.  So I’m pleased to share what I’ve learned, and boil it down to it’s most simplistic, straight forward, bottom line.

For those of you who are intimately familiar with all the details, and have already researched and read the other blogs, I’ll start with a very quick overview.  This may be enough to trigger the “ah ha!” moment and send you running…    Then, if not, I’ll drill down to the step by step approach.

The main hitch I was running in to was that the .htaccess was being ignored.  All of the blog posts say to check /etc/httpd/sites for the config files,  but there ISN’T one.  Snow Leopard Server moves the httpd stuff to an “apache2″ directory.  So /etc/apache2/sites  is the folder you want to look for.  There you will find the .conf file where you can change the AllowOverrides to FileInfo.  OK, if that didn’t trigger an “ah ha!’ moment, then read on!

Step by Step:

1. First, make sure your .htaccess file is present and has appropriate permissions set.  (For me, I was all set already and was able to entirely skip this part, but I’ll review just for the sake of completeness).  In Terminal:

Read more…

Compress ( aka Zip ) Problems in Mac OSX Leopard

By on May 18, 2010 in iPad, iPhone, iPhone SDK, Mac, programming, Tutorials & Explanations with No Comments

Here’s a curious issue!

I was having issues with entitlement / code signing on an iPhone app.  I was positive everything was correct, yet the beta tester I was emailing it to could not install it.  I was ripping my hair out.  (And boy, did I look funny!)

I’ll cut to the chase.   The beta tester’s iTunes kept reporting that his entitlements are not valid.  In plain english: his device did not have permission to install the app.  If you checked out my previous blog about short cuts to checking entitlements, you’ll forsee where I eventually ended up.  We went to check the code signing and entitlement files/folders within the .app package, and low and behold they were gone!!   Hmmm.

Well, to again compress the story and jump to the end, it turned out that the file he had was NOT the same file I had sent!   When right-clicking on the sample.app file and selecting “Compress”, we ended up with a SAMPLE.ZIP file that, when unzipped, had files missing!

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Fixing “Pages has quit unexpectedly”

By on May 7, 2010 in Crash Fixes, iWork, Mac, Pages, Software, Tutorials & Explanations with No Comments

After installing iWork ’09 on my iMac, I clicked the icon for Pages, watched it load up, then uncerimoniously crash.  Lovely.

After going ’round and ’round the mulberry bush with all of the basic first attempts, it became clear that this was going to require deeper digging. I started doing Google searches and went through every suggestion I could find online.  I went through the crash logs.  It looked like a problem loading fonts.  I found some tips online about holding down the SHIFT key to boot up into safe mode, which flushes some font caches.  I tried everything I could find, to no avail.  But I had seen references in the crash logs to loading fonts, so I went down that path… Read more…