Snow Leopard server FAQs, part 1
Snow Leopard server is a good system, however it does still suffer nasty bugs and you have to learn small gotchas to make things work as expected.
Here's a roundup on what I found.
Safari CTLoader errors?
CTLoader Toolbar has not been tested on this version. Toolbar bundle will not be loaded
Try this:
- Open a new finder window.
- Click on Applications.
- Open the Toolbars folder.
- Open the Vuze folder.
- Double click on Uninstall.
From the Vuze FAQ:
If you installed the Vuze Toolbar for Safari and are getting an error when launching Safari (an error about CTLoader), you can fix the issue with an updated toolbar. Download it here:
http://ct1609479.ourtoolbar.com/sf
If you didn't want the Vuze toolbar installed for Safari, you can remove it with these instructions:
http://faq.vuze.com/?View=entry&EntryID=346
MacRuby Nightlies
As you may have noticed I got a Snow Leopard server, therefore some days ago I built a Sinatra application to manage MacRuby nightly builds.
You can reach the service here: macruby.icoretech.org.
The source is on github here.
Reminder: empty email subjects in Snow Leopard server’s postfix
By default Snow Leopard server doesn't allow sending emails with blank subjects.
In order to change this behaviour open:
/etc/postfix/custom_header_checks
and comment the:
/^subject: *$/ REJECT empty subject header
line by prepending a # , so it reads:
#/^subject: *$/ REJECT empty subject header
Restart the mail service.
Reminder: Outlook vs. Snow Leopard server’s postfix
Snow Leopard server implements some good anti-spam measures, on top of all Greylisting.
But there's a subtle issue with sending emails from Outlook, many users will get an error on the lines of:
helo command rejected: need fully-qualified hostname
In order to solve this open up:
sudo nano /etc/postfix/main.cf
Find this line:
smtpd_helo_restrictions = reject_invalid_helo_hostname reject_non_fqdn_helo_hostname
and change it to:
smtpd_helo_restrictions = permit_sasl_authenticated permit_mynetworks reject_invalid_helo_hostname reject_non_fqdn_helo_hostname
Restart the mail service.
do_sqlite3 on Snow Leopard
If you have encountered architecture issues installing the do_sqlite3 gem on Snow Leopard I resolved running the following:
sudo env ARCHFLAGS="-arch x86_64" gem install do_sqlite3
Xslimmer review on Snow Leopard
There are times when you want to optimize your system, probably because you are starting to notice slowdowns or for the sake of saying "my OS is uber clean now".
Whatever reason you are up to, you may want to check out Xslimmer.
Xslimmer is one of the utilities that can strip out unneeded files from your applications.
For example, before Snow Leopard we have seen what Universal binaries are.
A Universal binary (also called "fat binary") contains code for two architectures: PPC and Intel, so, through Rosetta, a Mac OS X was able to run the code for the proper platform; the "problem" lies in the disk space usage.
Now we can see that universal binaries are expanded with other code: PowerPC, Intel, Intel 64, etc., along with language files; every bit of this stuff takes up disk space, and this is where Xslimmer comes into play, by stripping what your architecture/language doesn't need.
It recovers valuable disk space and boost application startup.
Xslimmer have a built-in blacklist, which contains applications' names that are dangerous to slim, so it will automatically skip them.
Be careful what you strip stuff in Snow Leopard though, and always make backups preferably on another disk, since there's no point of having megabytes of backed up stuff lying on the same disk if your mission is to recover disk space, because when using the backup feature you are up to remove data from a source only to move it to another point on disk.
Another feature of Xslimmer is that it handles the new HFS+ compression introduced in Snow Leopard.
In Snow Leopard applications are in compressed state, decompressed on the fly when the user requests them.
There was a bug in version 1.7.1 that actually skipped the recompression, but, developers told me, was out only for one day.
The application does the job promised, and I can recommend it for curious, SSD or power users; however in those times disk space and performance is abundant, tampering with files this way can be not advisable on a critical platform, therefore always make a backup.
A word about performance before and after slimming applications: for me it starts to be noticeable on:
- slow computers
- starting up very big applications
Xslimmer features also a slick interface and support seems to be very cordial and fast.
$14.95, trialware, download here.
Last.fm loved tracks to iTunes
Update: now includes experimental Windows support.
I wrote a little (raw) ruby script that imports your loved last.fm tracks into iTunes in a discrete playlist.