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OS X Windows file sharing rules

When activating Windows file sharing on OS X Tiger, by default OS X only configures the firewall to allow ports 139 (TCP) and 137 and 138 (UDP). To successfully connect from a Windows PC it may require that port 445 (TCP) is manually added to the list of firewall port exceptions. To do so:

1. From the Apple menu, choose System Preferences.
2. From the View menu, choose Sharing.
3. Select the Firewall tab.
4. Select New.
5. Choose Other from the port menu.
6. In the TCP Port Numbers field, type 445 and in the description type “Windows sharing”.
7. Click OK.

06/11/2007 12:02 PM

Cmd - Tab crashing the dock

The issue of Apple (cmd) + tab crashing your dock (see an older discussion on Apple Support) appears to be solveable via the re-installation of the combo updater of 10.4.9 (saving a full reinstallation).
04/06/2007 4:18 PM

FarCry CMS installation on OS X with ColdFusion 7.01

ColdFusion 7.01 for Mac OS X installed flawlessly on a PowerBook running OS X.4. It integrates with apache (no context root) and by default offers to make the web root /Library/WebServer/Documents. By default it adds index.cfm to the DirectoryIndex line in the httpd.conf file to enable the default document (although this seems to be failing at this stage). With CF 7.01, FarCry now deploys successfully on OS X (without all the long paths and context root issues from the past). Based on the improved FarCry install documentation (which outlines the Apache configuration required) the following line was added to the httpd.conf file to provide for a FarCry installation as the default site (where farcry_site is your farcry site name).
 DocumentRoot /Library/WebServer/Documents/farcry_site/www ServerName localhost Alias /farcry "/Library/WebServer/Documents/farcry_core/admin" Alias /CFIDE "/Library/WebServer/Documents/CFIDE"
29/09/2005 4:19 PM

Traffic and server monitoring tools (for free)

For those running a small Windows-based network (one SNMP capable router and 1 - 3 servers), the following client-limited versions of commercial applications may be useful:

- PRTG for monitoring network and bandwidth usage using SNMP, packet sniffing or Netflow protocol. The freeware version is limited to a single sensor (try the 'Internet' port on your router).

- GFI Network Monitoring for monitoring raw server statistics (CPU, disk etc for Windows and some Linux distributions) and applications (SQL Server, IIS, Exchange and others). A full list of features is available. The freeware version is limited to 3 servers.

28/09/2005 4:20 PM

Combining PDFs on Mac OS X

Combine PDFs is a freeware Mac OS X application that combines multiple PDFs into a single file through a simple drag 'n' drop interface (useful for when needing to collate documents with varying formatting arrangements (particularly header graphics) into a single document for distribution).

28/09/2005 4:20 PM
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