iPhoto tip

After using iPhoto for about 18 months now, I only just discovered today that I could remove a photo from an album and delete it from the library by selecting the photo in the album and pressing option-command-delete. No more trawling through the library looking for unwanted photos for me! I don't know when this was introduced but back in iPhoto 2 I did a lot of googling for this feature and it apparently didn't exist in that version. I'm using iPhoto 4.

Postfix broken ... again

I recently used Carbon Copy Cloner to back up my 30gig startup drive to an equal sized partition on my external 160gig. CCC is set to repair permissions on the source volume prior to cloning, and whattya know, Postfix didn't work afterwards. Applying the earlier fix got it working again.

tintin++ on OS X

Finally got tintin++ working on OS X! I think it's more to do with Apple switching to the bash shell than anything else. I did this on OS X 10.3.3, but this should work under any version of OS X 10.3. Pre-10.3 installations use the tcsh shell instead of the bash shell. tintin++ reportedly does work under tcsh, but it needs some special configuration to make it work (I've tried many times but always failed). Also note I am a unix novice and this is written for people like me

What is tintin?
tintin++ is a mud client for unix-based operating systems. It features triggers, aliases, tickers, paths, variables, gagging, and many other advanced features.

Getting the software
The first thing you will need is a compiler. Most users of OS X wouldn't know a compiler if they tripped over one, so it's not included in a default install. To get your compiler you will need to download the OS X Developer Tools (also known as Xcode 1.1). This is avalable at the Apple Developer Connection (free registration required). Note that the Xcode package is approximately 600 megabytes in size - we only need a tiny piece of it but this is the easiest way to get it). Note: recently-purchased Macs may come with an OS X Developer Tools CD.

Next you will need a unix package known as readline-4.3. This is available here.

Finally you will need the tintin++ package. The original tintin++ (v1.86) does not seem to be developed anymore (and the old homepage is dead), but my buddy Scandum has been working on updated version (v1.91) which is available at here.

Once you have all the software, you're ready to go!

Installing everything
1. Mount the Xcode disk-image. Launch the installer, follow the on-screen instructions for a default install.
2. Launch Disk Utility and repair permissions! This is recommended after installing any OS X system software.
3. Unpack the readline.tar and tintin.tar.gz packages by dropping them onto Stuffit Expander (installed by default with OS X). This will produce two folders, one called readline-4.3 and one called tt.
4. Copy the readline-4.3 and tt folders into your home folder.
5. Launch Terminal (inside /Applications/Utilities/).
6. Now you're going to compile readline. In the terminal, type the following:

cd readline-4.3
./configure
make
make install

You may get a couple of errors, but don't worry, you've just installed readline (enough of it for tintin anyway!). Congratulations. Type exit and quit the terminal.

Note: The readline install sometimes produces a load of messages about not having permissions to write in /usr/local/ This didn't happen to me - I don't know why - but it happened to another buddy Jeff. His solution was to type su and his root password before typing make (you may need to enable the root account and set a root password in NetInfo Manager [inside /Applications/Utilities/] - you should probably disable the root account after finishing this install).

Further note: Jeff has since told me that the permissions issue was due to him having just installed OS X and never having logged out since installing. After logging out and back in he was able to install readline without resorting to su.

7. You also need to compile tintin. Launch Terminal again and type the following:

cd tt/src
./configure
make

You've just installed tintin++. Congratulations again. If you get an error while compiling tintin saying it cannot find readline in either of the two usual locations, there's something wrong with your readline install (most likely you had the permissions issue described above).

Using tintin++
You can navigate to the tintin directory and launch it by typing

cd ~/tt/src
./tt++

.

Once tintin has loaded, you can connect to a mud by typing:

#ses sot sotmud.net 23

where sot is the name of the session you are starting and sotmud.net (port) 23 is the address of the mud you are connecting to.

Note: To exit from tintin press ctrl-c

Getting started with login scripts
Create the file run by typing the following:

cd ~/tt/src
pico run
./tt++ run.scr

save the file (ctrl-X, Y, <enter>) and make it executable by typing:

chmod 755 run

Create the file run.scr by typing the following:

pico run.scr
#read run.tin

save the file (ctrl-X, Y, <enter>)
Create the file run.tin by typing the following:

pico run.tin

To auto-load a login alias called 'loginsot' every session, type the following:

#alias loginsot #ses sot sotmud.net 23

An alternative here is to bind the login command to the F1 key (#help macro for more information) by typing:

#macro {\e[11~}{#ses sot sotmud.net 23}

save the file (ctrl-X, Y, <enter>)

What did that accomplish?
After all of the above typing ./run should start up tintin, and read in the contents of run.tin You can then type loginsot (or hit F1, depending what you did at the end of the previous step) to login to the mud address you defined.

While you have a session open you can now type: #config and set the configuration to your liking, and once done type: #write run.tin This will save your configuration in the run.tin file, so it'll be loaded whenever you use run.

Adding an alias for speedy launching
Launch Terminal and type:

pico .profile

This edits a hidden file (.profile) in our home folder. Use the down arrow to move down to the end of the file. Add the line:

alias tintin='cd tt/src;./run'

save the file (ctrl-X, Y, <enter>)

You can now launch tintin (and your run.scr script) by opening a new terminal window and typing tintin.

Additional help
While in a tintin session typing #help will give you detailed help on making the most of tintin++. Also don't forget to look in the docs folder (inside the tt++ folder) at the example scripts. Finally the tintin messageboards has some useful discussion about older versions of tintin (most of it is still applicable).

Postfix problems

Well ... I've already broken my Postfix installation. All I had to do was repair permissions! I noticed a bunch of Postfix related stuff in the repair log and, sure enough, I couldn't use my SMTP anymore.

After much googling I found this page which contains the following fix:

sudo chown -R postfix /private/var/spool/postfix
sudo chown root /private/var/spool/postfix
sudo chown root /private/var/spool/postfix
sudo chown :postdrop /private/var/spool/postfix/public
sudo chown :postdrop /private/var/spool/postfix/maildrop
sudo chown :postdrop /usr/sbin/postqueue
sudo chown :postdrop /usr/sbin/postdrop
sudo postfix start

Now it all works, but presumaby repairing permissions will break it again! We'll see.

Continuing in the spirit of experimenting with an 'always-on' internet connection, I've been playing with setting up my own FTP server courtesy of PureFTPd-Manager. This app makes the set up ridiculously easy, and after some teething problems with my firewall, all is well (time-saving tip: if you want your clients to be able to use passive FTP you will either have to open all ports from 1024 - 65535 on your server's firewall, or you will need to manually specify which ports your server will use for passive FTP, and then only open those ports on the firewall).

Postfix on Panther

I've become sidetracked. MySQL is on hold because after playing with Apache I got interested in setting up a mailserver on my laptop, especially since BT Broadband do not offer an SMTP service. I had been testing SpyMac's free SMTP but it doesn't always allow me access if I haven't checked my SpyMac mail recently.

However there is a solution - sending mail with my own SMTP server and not relying on any ISP. Prior to version 10.3 OS X came with sendmail installed but disabled; it now ships with Postfix installed but disabled. So I needed to enable Postfix. Graham Ordorff covers OS X and mail servering (including Postfix) in intricate detail here, whilst John Brewer has written a slick tutorial here concentrating on setting up Postfix with authentication. Reading through these two tutorials enabled me to get Postfix up and running for my outgoing mail. For incoming mail I still rely on Fastmail's excellent free service.

Update: since getting Postfix working I've discovered (via FreshGoo) that the easiest solution may be Postfix Enabler which is available here on Bernard Teo's excellent weblog (he also has a Sendmail Enabler for pre-10.3 installations).

What's new at Google?

There's a new service called FreshGoo which provides an easy way to search for recent entries to the Google database. Pretty useful if you're looking for recently-updated information and can't be bothered to negotiate Googles Advanced Search page.

Broadband revisited

I discovered that the BT broadband is actually going at almost full speed. The connection is reported as a 288000bps connection, but it seems that OS X is detecting the upstream and not the downstream. I didn't figure this out until trying out the excellent broadband speed test at the ADSL Guide. My downstream results were 444kbps (estimated at approx 480kbps with overheads) and the upstream results were 245kbps. Both values are pretty close to what they should be with a 256up/512down ADSL service.

Finally, a 24/7 connection

The broadband modem arrived today. Setting it up was pretty simple, just plug it in and a few clicks. BT's OS X installer even works (their dialup one didn't, I had to manually open up their coookie to configure that). It only seems to be able to connect at 256kbps though, instead of the advertised 512. I'll give it a few days and see how that goes, since some ADSL modems need to be 'trained'.

Setting up the Apache webserver that's built into OS X was very easy. One click fired up the server, but then I had to spend a few minutes googling to finding out where the root directory was (inside /Library/Webserver/Documents/ if you're wondering). I then set up an account with no-ip.com to forward emandtim.no-ip.com to my broadband connection's IP. no-ip.com make a nice little utility which will monitor your connection and regularly report your IP address to no-ip.com (and thus update the emandtim.no-ip.com redirection). Pretty slick for a free service. I'm now downloading the 600MB Apple Developer Tools - apparently I need them to set up MySQL. With my half-speed broadband it's going to take 4 or 5 hours.

Never enough storage

I got a new 160GB external firewire hard disk recently. I was just sick of copying things to and from DVD-RWs in order to make space on my laptop drive. The new drive is from StorageDepot and it seems to perform well and looks good. The price was great too. I'm very satisfied with it and would use StorageDepot again. However after owning it for 5 days and installing all my software that I couldn't previously fit on my laptop there is only 60GB of free space left!

Pondering email

I just learned that SpyMac has recently started offering a free email and webspace offer (which includes a mountable volume known as SpyDisk, very similar to Apple's iDisk service). I've signed up for accounts for both Emma and myself. The service includes both SMTP and POP, which will be useful once we cancel our BT dialup account. My preferred email service, Fastmail, does not offer an SMTP server with their free service so I had been wondering how we were going to send emails.

Hello broadband!

Signed up for BT broadband this week. I was originally going to go for Tiscali based on their advertising (30% cheaper, 50MB webspace, free web SMS) but after spending a while reading reviews on the web I've abandoned that idea and gone for BT instead. The only other choice in this area is NTL cable, but Emma and I have had bad experiences with NTL customer support in the past.

Broadband will be great, but it'll mean canceling our BT dialup account. Stupidly BT have decided that although you get 50MB of webspace with dialup accounts, you don't get any with a broadband account. So I'm looking around for free webspace - I didn't pay for it before and I'll be damned if I'll pay for it now! The alternative I've been thinking about is serving this webpage from my own Mac. The broadband will be always on after all! I just have to get the hang of the Apache and MySQL on OS X ... we'll see how that goes.