Tech fragments | Time n

OS X Windows file sharing rules

Tue, 06 Nov 2007 12:02:26 +1100

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.

Cmd - Tab crashing the dock

Mon, 04 Jun 2007 16:18:26 +1000

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).

FarCry CMS installation on OS X with ColdFusion 7.01

Thu, 29 Sep 2005 16:19:05 +1000

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"

Traffic and server monitoring tools (for free)

Wed, 28 Sep 2005 16:20:33 +1000

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.

Free and/or open source software for switchers

Tue, 30 Aug 2005 16:21:16 +1000

For those from Windows, below is a list of useful free and/or open source applications (* denotes pre-installed with OS X 10.4 Tiger)…

- Browsers: Safari*, Firefox, Camino, Shiira

- E-mail: Apple Mail*

- Instant messaging: iChat* (AOL/.mac and Jabber), AdiumX or Fire (both free and open source multi-protocol (MSN, Yahoo!, AOL/iChat/Jabber)). For connectivity to Microsoft’s Live Communication Server use Microsoft Messenger.

- RSS news reader: NetNewsWire Lite (at bottom of page)

- FTP client: Fugu (free and provides SFTP support), whilst Fetch is free for educational institutions.

- Terminal services client: Microsoft Remote Desktop Connection

- Text editor: Bare Bones TextWrangler

- VNC viewer: Chicken of the VNC

- Media players: QuickTime*, iTunes*, VLC (particularly for AVIs), Windows Media Player (although it doesn’t work for some DRM-protected files), and RealPlayer

- Other utilities: StuffIt expander (for expanding .sit archives amongst others)