I’ve been updating an installer bash script that needs to install different files depending on the version of Mac OS X (and Darwin, for that matter) that the machine is running and so set out to find the easiest, most straightforward way to check the OS version.

Of course, the hostinfo command shows you most of the juicy details one would need, but it’s not worth trying to parse it. sysctl lets you query various kernel states, including the OS release version:

sysctl -n kern.osrelease

Which will spit back something like the following (on Mac OS X 10.5.4, in this example):

9.4.0

This is the Darwin release number. To convert a darwin release version number to a Mac OS X version number just subtract 4 from the major revision (9, in this case) and then prepend the ’10.’ to the entire thing. So, 9.4.0 becomes 10.5.4.0.

You can also use uname -r to get the OS release version, but I’m going to stick with sysctl for now.

Of course, you can’t do a direct comparison, so you’ll want to compare either the major or the minor revision (the last release field is always zero, so it can be ignored). The easiest way to do that is to pipe the output from sysctl through the cut command.

The following will give you the major release number (again, 9, in this case):

sysctl -n kern.osrelease | cut -d . -f 1

It cuts the output of sysctl on the ‘.’ delimiter and returns the first field. We can return the second field (the minor revision; 4, in our example) like so:

sysctl -n kern.osrelease | cut -d . -f 2

In my script, I simply needed to test if the machine was running Tiger or earlier, or Leopard or newer. Here’s a quick example of getting that functionality:

#!/bin/bash
if [ `sysctl -n kern.osrelease | cut -d . -f 1` -lt 9 ]; then
	echo "Tiger or earlier"
else
	echo "Leopard or newer"
fi

If you’re doing something more advanced, it might be easier to set variables first:

darwinos_major=`sysctl -n kern.osrelease | cut -d . -f 1`
darwinos_minor=`sysctl -n kern.osrelease | cut -d . -f 2`

Then just reference $darwinos_major & $darwinos_minor whenever needed.

I had planned the migration from Tiger Server to Leopard Server for this week, but hadn’t intended to do it today nor during daytime hours. Unfortunately, a DOS attack on UNNA prompted me to go ahead and upgrade so that I could work on alleviating that issue.

About 13 hours later (including a few hours to walk the dog and eat dinner), my Mac mini server is back up and now running Mac OS X 10.5.3 Server. I’ve run into some issues with 10.5.2 Server and earlier at my day job, but this revision seems to be quite a bit better. The migration went very smoothly and some service configurations were just drop-in replacements.

I have yet to start migrating backup scripts and some special services requiring custom Startup Items which will need to be re-written as launchd jobs. Also, UNNA has many PHP 4 to PHP 5 growing pains for me to work through as I’ve been working on migrating it to the Textpattern CMS as of late. I may have to refocus a bit of that effort over the next few days to get it cleaned up again.

I’ll try to describe the funky setup I’ve got in further posts, but here’s to hoping that Mac OS X 10.5.3 Server really does embody many more improvements and will give me few headaches going forward.

To follow up on Monday’s initial impressions of Connect360 version 3.31, specifically the following note I added after attempting to upgrade to version 3.33 which they released later that day:

Update: [Later in the day] It’s now been updated to version 3.33 and the change log notes that v3.32 was supposed to fix Mac OS X 10.3.9 support, but it still fails to launch on Emily’s G3 iBook running 10.3.9 with all the latest software updates. It (v3.33) also will not start media sharing on my MacBook Pro running Mac OS X 10.5.1. Doh!

I contacted them regarding those two issues and yesterday morning received emails back from them stating that they had released version 3.34 to resolve those issues. So, last night I upgraded both machines to Connect360 v3.34 and tested.

It now works on my MacBook Pro running Mac OS X 10.5.1, but still fails with an, “Unable to load Connect360,” error message on the iBook G3 running Mac OS X 10.3.9. I wholly expect that they’ll provide another fix or workaround for 10.3.9 shortly.

Oddly, the CHANGELOG file in Connect360.prefPane/Contents/Resources/ still only lists the following changes for the version 3.3x updates, but it’s obviously more for internal reference:

VERSION 3.32
- Fixes 10.3 incompatibility

VERSION 3.31
- Stability improvements

VERSION 3.3
- Added folder support for Movies
- Made Movies folder rescan interval configurable
- Fixed size of prefpane in OS versions earlier than Leopard (10.5)
- Fixed port sharing with MediaLink
- Fixed a little bug with the prefpane when ports are in use
- Improved activation system
- Fixed trial mode song counts
- Updated ffmpeg transcoder
- Added WMA audio streaming
- Improved stability for shoutcast streaming
- iTunes Library is now auto detected
- Improved networking code
- Improved support for multiple Xbox connections (3.31 really, pushed in)
- iTunes video playcounts are now updated too (3.31 really, pushed in)

Also while I was out of town, Nullriver released version 3.31 of Connect360, their Xbox 360 media streaming app for Mac OS X, on April 24th. This new version has the following changes:

• Added folder support for Movies
• Made Movies folder rescan interval configurable
• Fixed size of prefpane in OS versions earlier than Leopard (10.5)
• Fixed port sharing with MediaLink
• Added WMA audio streaming
• Updated ffmpeg transcoder
• Improved stability for shoutcast streaming
• iTunes Library is now auto detected
• Improved networking code
• Improved activation system
• Fixed trial mode song counts
• Fixed a little bug with the prefpane when ports are in use
• Improved support for multiple Xbox connections
• iTunes video playcounts are now updated too
• Stability improvements

Jump Ship or Tread Water?

I was quite surprised as Connect360’s development has been quite stagnant for a while (esp. with the release of their PlayStation 3 media streaming app: MediaLink). I wasn’t sure how long I’d have to wait for an update, if one ever came.

I had been considering¹ Cynical Peak’s addition to the Mac Xbox 360 media streaming app market, Rivet, but had turned it away for the time being because it’s Leopard-only. Emily still uses a G3 iBook running Mac OS X 10.3.9—Yeah, I know, it’s well overdue for an upgrade to Tiger—to stream her music to the Xbox 360, so I didn’t really want to be running two different softwares and possibly causing confusion as to why some features work here and others only work there.

Impressions

Here are my initial impressions after the upgrade, feature-by-feature (at least the ones I’m interested in):

Added folder support for Movies

This had somewhat been the bane of my existence, esp. after the Xbox 360 2007 Fall Dashboard Update had changed—for the worse—the way is shortened filenames. One big list of all the movies in my movie folder, including TV & video podcast episodes, was not only completely unruly, but took forever to scroll through.

It’s a little better now, but unfortunately Connect360 only allows one level of folders, so it dumps² all subfolders (and subfolder’s subfolders) into the main Movies folder and tries to categorize misc. movie files in the various directories. In general it’s more organized, but things still aren’t where you’d expect them.

Two steps forward, one step back.

Made Movies folder rescan interval configurable

This one is useful since I never knew what the rescan rate was in the past. I wish they’d just use launchd to watch the directories in the movie folder you select so that they’d automatically know when anything was modified, but this is better than nothing.

Fixed size of prefpane in OS versions earlier than Leopard (10.5)

While I’ve since upgraded to Leopard, I noted this minor annoyance in regards to their update which coincided with the 2007 Fall Dashboard Update and so am glad to hear that it’s fixed. It was only a minor visual bug though.

Updated ffmpeg transcoder/Improved networking code

I don’t know if this is exactly the feature bullet point that this falls under, but it’s much faster to browse media from the Xbox 360 now and streaming starts faster.

Improved activation system

There was one side effect here, I had to reenter my activation code. No biggie.

Stability improvements

Only time will tell on this one.

The previous version had been pretty stable on my MacBook Pro running Leopard, but it frequently locked up on Emily’s iBook running Panther (requiring a full reboot). Hopefully all that will be solved.

The Not-Nearly-So-Final-At-All Word

It’s great to see that it’s still being actively developed and they’re focusing on significant improvements. Hopefully Nullriver will be able to improve the movie folder hierarchy issues, but it’s still worth the update as-is.

Update: [Later in the day] It’s now been updated to version 3.33 and the change log notes that v3.32 was supposed to fix Mac OS X 10.3.9 support, but it still fails to launch on Emily’s G3 iBook running 10.3.9 with all the latest software updates. It (v3.33) also will not start media sharing on my MacBook Pro running Mac OS X 10.5.1. Doh!

¹ See Jared Kuolt’s Rivet; A review. [via Daring Fireball]

² It doesn’t really move directories, that’s just the way it displays them through the Xbox 360 interface.

Nullriver’s always been quick to support upgrades to Connect360 whenever Microsoft releases an update to the Xbox 360 Dashboard, and this time is no exception. On Tuesday, they released the Fall 2007 Dashboard Update, yesterday I touched on my initial impressions of said update, and sometime thereafter Nullriver released Connect360 3.2.

Versions 3.2 is a small¹ update in that it simply adds support for streaming XVID/DIVX video (in AVI containers) to an Xbox 360 running the Fall 2007 Dashboard Update. I upgraded this morning and was immediately able to stream the GUIdebook Gallery’s archive of the Welcome to Newton video (which is XViD in an AVI container) to my Xbox 260.

I do now have a layout issue in the Connect360 preference pane, but it’s merely and annoyance and it’ll probably be fixed easily enough.

On a related note, I highly suggest those that want to play various media formats such as XViD/DIVX in QuickTime on Mac OS X go and grab a copy of Perian. ‘Nuff said!

Update: The “layout issue” I described above turns out to be a difference in the size of the System Preferences window in Leopard from Tiger. Nullriver is currently suggesting upgrading to Leopard to fix this annoyance.

¹ I say “small” only because with the Spring 2007 Dashboard Update, Microsoft managed to cause Connect360 to fail and so Nullriver had much more work cut out for them.

Yesterday marked the release of Microsoft’s Fall (2007) Dashboard Update for the Xbox 360. While it it’s not exactly, or even technically, Fall anymore, I still welcome updates to the Xbox 360 Dashboard since they only offer them up twice per year.

While there are a few features like friends-of-friends and enhanced profiles that may be useful, and Xbox Originals which could potentially provide some inexpensive additional fun if they didn’t require purchasing another hard drive, what I was really looking for was the video enhancements.

Although I enjoy the weekly Gears of War, Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare, and Halo 3 bloodbaths with the guys, the primary use for my Xbox 360 is actually as our entertainment system. The Spring (2007) Dashboard Update brought much-needed support for MPEG-4, H.264, and AAC video & audio formats which made it an excellent addition to our Mac-based household. Nullriver’s Connect360 software fro Mac OS X was then was able to stream our iTunes music, iPhoto photos, and all our MP4 videos to the Xbox 360 and thus our 1080p LCD TV.

This latest update has added support for further MP4 video codecs and the AVI container. This is less of a concern for me as I try to encode everything with H.264, but it does mean that videos from my digital camera can now be played natively. A nice little bonus.

However, it’s the User Interface changes that have both enhanced and curtailed my overall Xbox 360 experience.

First, the good. They’ve redesigned the Xbox LIVE Marketplace so that it’s easier & faster to browse. They’ve also added full-screen streaming previews, which is a very welcome improvement. And, what threw me at first, they changed around the way you select your music/photo/video source.

I thought it was going to be a pain in the ass and confusing, but it actually works fairly well and has one major bonus: multiple computers are now automatically displayed in the source list! Previously, you could connect to a computer (e.g. one of our Macs running Connect360) from the source list, but if you wanted to switch to a different one then you had to go to System -> Computers -> Disconnect and then back to the source list and search for a computer to connect to. Now it’s automagical:

Unfortunately, with User Interface change comes User Interface blunder. The one that I’ve noticed and is almost a show stopper: they now truncate video filenames on portable devices (e.g. my USB hard drive). They used to shorten filenames by replacing the middle of the string with an ellipse (...), but now they just unceremoniously chop them off.

Can you tell which South Park Season 10 Episodes each of the following are? I can make some guesses because I’ve watched them so frequently, but really there’s no point in trying.

Fortunately, I can just rename the files to alleviate the issue, but it’s still a shame that they had to go from graceful solution to an inelegant and perplexing one.

Overall I do like the update, but there’s one thing that I’ve been waiting for the Xbox 360 to support that I have yet to see: DVD upscaling.

I have a large collection of DVDs and my Xbox 360 is configured to run in 1080p mode since I have a 1080p LCD TV. The problem is that every time I pop in a widescreen DVD—which, let’s face it, is the preferred format of DVD—I have to switch the TV to stretch the DVD to fit. Why? Because the Xbox 360 switches to the native resolution, but still sends the video in anamorphic (squashed horizontally) format.

If only they’d support upscaling of DVDs, I’d be all set!

A friend wanted to Launch Front row by pressing the programmable button on his new LaCie D2 Quadra hard drive, but the software wasn’t letting him program a keystroke, so I whipped up the following AppleScript to press Command-Escape for him and so launch Front Row. I’m sure there are plenty of other solutions out there or maybe even this same one, but here it is anyway:

tell application "System Events"
	key code 53 using command down
end tell

Save it as an application (preferably “run only” without a “startup screen”) in your ~/Applications folder if you want to launch it as an app, or in ~/Scripts if you want to launch it from the Script Menu or Quicksilver.

For more information on using the key code AppleScript command, check out the System Events, Key Code and Keystroke article over at Doug’s AppleScripts for iTunes.

While I subscribe to the "Less is more" philosophy, I’m actually pretty poor at adhering to it. I have a major case of information overload in my digital life and junk clutters up both my digital and anolog lives. I’ve been pretty good with the RSS feeds that I subscribe to, I’ve slimmed down this site, and I’ve started attacking the piles of unused computer gear in my apartment.

I’m going to continue whittling away what computer gear that I actually need and use until I reach a perfect harmony, a blissful happiness, or complete enlightenment. This week’s part of that task is the server rack in my living-room.

I’ve done all my web hosting from home for years due to the increased flexibility & control I have over the servers, the challenges I get to face, the practice, and the somewhat lower operating costs (ignoring the labor, of course). However, having a half-height server rack housing two servers, plus a bunch of networking gear, in our living-room for the past few years has grown tedious. It takes up a lot of space, it’s frickin’ loud, and it’s an eye-sore¹.

The current setup consists of:

• A home-built 18U, 4-post, open-air rack
• A Comcast cable modem
• A Dual 2.0GHz Xserve G5 providing web hosting and acting as a gateway/router²
• A 400MHz PowerMac G4 in a Marathon G•Rack, my former media center & file server
• An Intel Express 530T Switch
• A “Snow” AirPort Base Station
• LaCie D2 hard drives (rack-mounted, naturally)
• Rack-mount power strip & cable management accessories

Now, I’m not about to stop hosting from home, but I do want to reclaim some of the space, reduce the noise, and cut the electricity usage a tad. To pull this off I hatched a master plan to consolidate my server and network equipment to one small, quiet 8U desktop rack. The new setup will be as follows:

• A Middle Atlantic DR-8 8U desktop rack (with a couple Middle Atlantic U1 shelves)
• My Comcast cable modem
• A Gigabit AirPort Extreme Base Station which will provide WiFi as well as act as my new gateway/router
• A 1.83GHz Core2 Duo Mac mini which will provide web hosting and act as a file server
• My Intel Express 530T Switch
• My LaCie D2 hard drives
• My rack-mount power strip & cable management accessories

This new configuration will be a hell of a lot smaller, much quieter (there will be only three small fans: one in the Mac mini and two in my Express 530T), and draw much less electricity. An added bonus: the boxes for all the hardware take up less space in a closet than that of just one of my servers. There are also some added technical benefits, as well, including: a better NAT implementation³, support for more WiFi standards, gigabit uplink from my server to my router & network, reduced load on my server, etc.

The cost break-down?

1. Mac mini & AirPort Extreme – approx. $750
2. Middle Atlantic rack & shelves – approx. $90

Well under $1000. I’ll also be selling the PowerMac G4, the 18U rack, and possibly the “Snow” AirPort to further reduce that. Even when I bought the Express 530T switch two weeks ago the net cost to me was only $30 after I sold the switch it was replacing.

I brought home the Mac mini and AirPort on Friday and have already integrated the AirPort into my network as the new gateway. The 8U desk rack and shelves are on order and should arrive sometime this week. The migration of the Xserve’s configuration and data to the Mac mini will be the most time-consuming part of the project and I’ve got plenty of practice doing that sort of thing.

All in all, what will this get me? First and foremost: a much happier girlfriend; but also more space in a cleaner living-room, a quieter living-room (all the better for watching movies in), a lower electricity bill, and a pretty powerful server that I actually own.

I do still need a proper 1U rack-mount UPS, but that’s for later. I know, I know… I live in Vermont so I do really need a long-lasting UPS. Unfortunately, that’d cost as much as this entire new server setup.

¹ Emily’s never exactly been a fan either. In fact, she’s always hated it.

² Graciously loaned by Small Dog Electronics, Inc. for continued development, testing, and training. Fun, fun.

³ The built-in NAT in Mac OS X 10.4 (Tiger) Server always tests as “Moderate” on my Xbox 360 and so I get kicked off Xbox Live fairly frequently. The new Gigabit AirPort Extreme’s NAT tests as “Open” and so I have nary a hiccup now.

There has been an an ongoing discussion regarding a better e-mail application for Mac OS X.

I have to agree with Brent Simmons on the specific needs to make e-mail friendlier to Pro users (emphasis mine):

1. No clicking to file a message. Keyboard only.

2. No clicking—or tabbing plus arrow arrow arrow arrow arrow arrow arrow arrow arrow—to go to a mailbox.

3. Easy searching multiple mailboxes.

4. IMAP.

5. Editor with macros (think BBEdit’s clippings, TextMate’s snippets, vim’s abbreviations).

6. Mac-app-ness.

Mail doesn’t do 1, 2, and 5.

I have to deal with a lot of mail and I don’t always deal with it appropriately because it’s not easy enough to get through. I’m now great at training my mail server’s junk mail filters via various keyboard twitches that I’ve mastered, but the rest of the e-mail client should function just as well.

I’ve been using Adam Tow’s excellent MsgFiler plug-in for Mail.app and it’s helped me greatly with the filing of e-mail messages and with the opening of most¹ folders in Mail.app. However, this functionality should be built-in as well.

In terms of the no market for a non-free ‘Pro’ e-mail client for Mac OS X, I definitely have to side with Michael McCracken that there is definitely for a market for a paid, Pro e-mail application:

How is the market for programmer’s editors? XCode is free and very good, emacs, vim, etc. are also free and excellent. But there are people making money selling text editors. People buy BBEdit, TextMate, and SubEthaEdit because these programs have important features that give you more power over something that they do all day.

I bought SubEthaEdit. Hell, as I mentioned above, I bought MsgFiler, a Mail plug-in that adds functionality that I feel should be built-in!

Paul Kafasis also noted: “What’s to stop an open source client? I’d say very little, except for the incredible effort needed. “ And went on to say the following:

I think a nice solution here, and perhaps in general, would be a MailKit framework, similar to WebKit. Mail could be built on top of it, and be free, and developers could build custom clients as well.

The thing is, Matt Ronge has been working on MailCore (i.e. Paul’s ‘MailKit’) and Kiwi (the e-mail client) for quite some time now. It’s far from done, but we’re well on our way.

Now, Paul is entirely correct that it’s a lot of work. Interestingly, Matt’s original reason for writing MailCore and Kiwi is because Mail.app (and it’s not alone here) is horrendous at handling IMAP appropriately.

If Kiwi is released with excellent support of the IMAP protocol² and can check-off everything on Brent’s list then I’d totally dish out some cash for it. In fact, I think many people would. If someone else beats him to the punch? I would plunk down my credit card for the best option for me.

Just because Apple includes a free Mail application in Mac OS X that’s about as good (give or take a feature here and there) as most other free e-mail clients, doesn’t mean that there’s no market for a paid, ‘Pro’ e-mail client.

Update: Matt Ronge has posted regarding the state of e-mail in which he discusses his improved motivation for developing MailCore/Kiwi and the fact that he had considered making Kiwi a commercial app.

¹ It currently doesn’t allow you to search for and file messages to or open one’s various inboxes, so that has to be done manually.

² If it also supported IMAP’s IDLE command, I’d be even happier.

I’ve released another minor update to my Sysmon StartupItem.

This release enables the ability to disable the Startup Item without needing to actually move/remove it. It now requires that either a SYSMON=-YES- or SYSMON=-NO- line in your /etc/hostconfig file, but this is a fairly common practice/requirement for Startup Items.

Of course, now the Mac OS X 10.5 (Leopard) has been delayed until October, I can continue to procrastinate on porting this over to a launchd job.

It’s odd that I’ve done this seven months, to the day, since the initial release, but today I’ve released a minor update to my Sysmon StartupItem.

This is a very minor release and just improves the implementation of RestartService() as well as moving the install directory to the more appropriate /Library/StartupItems (instead of /System/Library/StartupItems/).

I really need to port this to launchd instead of improving it, but hey, that’s how it goes sometimes.

I have quite a [messy] collection¹ of Apple hardware and paraphernalia taking up much of my old bedroom at my parents house² that I would love to still have available to show off and to play with occasionally. Some of the collection is actually scattered throughout the closets of our current apartment, but my Color Classic still sits out since I still tinker with it frequently.

Seeing this collection makes me realize just how much I have and that it really could be displayed nicely. As much as I hope this’ll help convince Emily to let me bring it out of storage, I have a feeling it’ll still get vetoed.

We sure don’t have even a fraction of his space available and although it looks really clean, I’m personally opposed to doing all my shopping and decorating through the IKEA catalog. Impressive, nonetheless.

[via Daring Fireball ]

Update: The owner of this collection is one Jeremy Mehrle, and there’s now a walkthrough and interview video up on YouTube.

¹ After all, I was running The Classic Mac Workshop for a number of years there.

² And to think I was partially moved out seven years ago (college) and have been officially moved out for the last five. Wow, my parents are great for putting up with so much!

Update: Wow, I’m really kicking myself right now!
The following is a rough post that I wrote on January 7th, but held of posting for a little spit and polish. Unfortunately, I never got a chance to clean it up last night (I was planning to do it somewhat Chandan-style and actually provide a little description of the technology behind it, including comparisons between iChat & Starfire). Well, with Steve Jobs’ announcement of the iPhone — which, honestly, I was extremely skeptical about — you can really see why I should really have just made it live. Doh!

For the past week, every time a coworker has asked what I’m hoping for most at MacWorld, they always look down at my hand with the Newton MessagePad 2100 in it and just chuckle and say, “Oh, a Mac tablet!” Well, duh! Er, I mean, naturally.

However, when OWC’s ModBook was brought up on NewtonTalk I couldn’t help but think, “Flop.”

Don’t get me wrong, I’m still requesting that my coworkers take some pictures of it while they’re at MacWorld next week, but I have to agree completely with Steven Frank — Well, almost completely, I might be the only person in the world that wants a Mac tablet more than him — that there really just isn’t a big enough Market for one and surely running Mac OS X with some tweaks to make it function better for pen input is not the right solution. Especially when it’s not even Apple implementing it. Nothing against OWC and Axiotron — in fact, I wish them the best in this endeavor and a hope it’s a great product — but this seems like a fairly risky business venture for them to try to undertake, esp. considering the cost of repackaging MacBooks (they’re not exactly cheap, even for bulk orders) and the consumer is left to hope that: 1) OWC/Axiotron can make additions to Mac OS X to allow better control using only a Wacom tablet, and 2) that they can keep up with Apple’s changes.

There’s a reason I still use my Newton every day and have not switched to a Palm or just carrying my MacBook Pro around with me everywhere: the Newton OS. There’s a reason that Paul Guyot has put so much work into bringing it to other hardware platforms with his Einstein Newton emulator: the Newton OS. Starting to see a pattern here? A PDA/tablet computer just isn’t useful if you try to “strip-down” a desktop computer OS in an attempt to shoehorn it into such a device. Apple’s Newton team and Palm’s teams did excellent work designing the OS to go along with their devices and work for the type of usage such a device gets.

As much as I love Mac OS X, I do have to completely agree with Steven Frank on this one:

Here is a handy trick you can apply to any rumor to determine its validity: Does the rumor contain the phrase “stripped-down version of Mac OS X”? If so, the rumor is almost certainly false.

Even Mac OS X would not easily be “stripped-down” to work on an embedded device or a PDA/tablet. The User Interface has been heavily optimized for desktop use. Sure, one could easily get a slimmed down version of Darwin running on the hardware, but that says nothing about the windowing & UI layers that Apple has built-up ontop of it.

I don’t think that a real tablet computer will have a large enough potential user base to be a profitable product until multi-touch displays are available in a tablet-size device so that on-screen keyboards are a viable option when large amounts of text input are required.

I’d guess that a Mac (or other) tablet would really have to be a device not too much thicker than the base of a MacBook or MacBook Pro (not including the display), a multi-touch sensitive display (which, incidentally, must also have a very wide vertical viewing angle), and a modernized OS similar to the Newton OS. This is a significant amount of development for a product category that would likely have a much smaller user base than even a single laptop model.

Disclaimer

This cookbook is intended for those that are atleast slightly familiar with building and configuring unix applications on Mac OS X and Mac OS X Server. No support is offered and the author is not responsible for any lost data due to following these steps or mistakes made while attempting to follow these steps.

With that in mind, these steps did work for the author and will provide a quick copy & paste solution for those that don’t want to figure out all the steps themselves (although this is a really easy one).

Caveats

Unfortunately, the CLI is currently broken on Darwin/Mac OS X in OpenPBX RC2, so that reduces its overall functionality considerably.

OpenPBX RC2 also requires editline, so you’ll have to build that as well (see instructions below). RC3 and the current trunk in Subversion will use readline and so can be linked to version of readline included with Mac OS X.

Preparing the Build Environment

cd ~/Desktop
mkdir openpbx-build
cd openpbx-build

Building & Installing LibTIFF

curl -O ftp://ftp.remotesensing.org/pub/libtiff/tiff-3.8.2.tar.gz
tar -xzf tiff-3.8.2.tar.gz
pushd pushd tiff-3.8.2
./configure --prefix=/usr/local
make
sudo make install
popd

Building & Installing SpanDSP

curl -O http://www.soft-switch.org/downloads/spandsp/spandsp-0.0.3pre27.tgz
tar -xzf spandsp-0.0.3pre27.tgz
pushd spandsp-0.0.3
./configure --prefix=/usr/local
make
sudo make install
popd

Building & Installing Editline Library

curl -O http://www.thrysoee.dk/editline/libedit-20061022-2.9.tar.gz
tar -xzf libedit-20061022-2.9.tar.gz
pushd libedit-20061022-2.9
./configure --prefix=/usr/local
make
sudo make install
popd

Building & Installing OpenPBX

curl -O http://www.openpbx.org/openpbx.org-1.2_rc2.tar.gz
tar -xzf openpbx.org-1.2_rc2.tar.gz
pushd openpbx.org-1.2_rc2
./configure --enable-iax-trunking=yes --enable-t38=yes --prefix=/usr/local/openpbx
make
sudo make install
popd

Allowing Communication with the Outside World

Open the following ports in the firewall (via Server Admin.app):

• “iChat – Session Initiation Protocol” (UDP port 5060)
• “iChat – audio/video RTP & RCTP” (UDP ports 16384-16403)
• “IAX – Inter-Asterisk eXchange” (UDP port 4569; you’ll need to add this one to the list)

Reference

• http://www.openpbx.org/
• http://www.voip-info.org/wiki/index.php?page=OpenPBX.org
• http://www.voip-info.org/wiki/view/OpenPBX.org+How+to+build+on+OSX%252FDarwin
• http://wiki.openpbx.org/tiki-index.php?page=BuildNotes
• http://developer.apple.com/documentation/Porting/Conceptual/PortingUnix/additionalfeatures/chapter_10_section_9.html
• http://www.remotesensing.org/libtiff/
• http://www.soft-switch.org/downloads/spandsp/
• http://www.soft-switch.org/installing-spandsp.html
• http://lists.mactelephony.net/pipermail/mac-telephony-list/2006-December/000043.html
• http://www.thrysoee.dk/editline/

Download This Cookbook as Text:

Cookbook – OpenPBX RC2 on Mac OS X 10.4 (Tiger) Server.txt

Simon Bell, developer of some excellent Newton software such as Mail V, has released a pre-beta of his previously-unannounced Newton Connection for Mac OS X software (or “NCX”, for short). It’s basically the Mac OS X functional (and visual, although modernized) equivalent of Apple’s Newton Connection Utilities which ran on Mac OS 9.x and earlier.

It appears that it’s built on the Desktop Connection Library (now hosted on SourceForge), but I’m sure Simon has included plenty of extra glue and shims, esp. considering he’s planning on using Mac OS X’s built-in Sync Services.

From my initial testing using my Newton MessagePad 2100, Buffalo WLI-PCM-L11GP WiFi card, and my MacBook Pro (Core 2 Duo), it seems to be slightly more stable than DCL & Escale, but some of the instability may be due to the fact that neither NCX or DCL/Escale is Universal yet.

What works:

• Installing a package from the MacBook Pro
• Using the MacBook Pro as a keyboard

What doesn’t work:

• Synchronization (I didn’t bother testing it, since Simon says)
• Backup (It fails every time I try¹, but some have gotten it to work)

What’s untested:

• Restore²
• Import³
• Export³

I’ve had constant problems with my connection being lost between the Dock app on the Newton and Escale and not being able to get Escale to respond for long periods of time (15 minutes or more) after relaunching it, often having to resort to a reboot (my guess is the socket was being kept open even after the crash). I have not seen this problem with NCX, so I’m very happy about that.

The interface is beautiful—an excellent job modernizing the Desktop Connection Utilities icons and interface—and functions better than Escale.

It has now already replaced Escale on my system and I can’t wait to see the future updates.

Update: A fellow NewtonTalk-er provided the solution to my issues getting the backup functionality to work: although the “Documents” folder is selected as the default backup location, you need to select a destination (or reselect “Documents”) for it to function. After doing so I was able to initiate and complete a full backup from NCX, but it still seems to fail when trying to initiate the backup from the Newton.

Update #2: Simon e-mailed me, as well as the list, to inform us that he did not, in fact, use the DCL. He wrote his own custom libraries to do this, so mad props to him! I was definitely wrong on that guess.

¹ Of course, I was attempting to back up all packages, so it may have been conflicting with NIE or Hiroshi’s WaveLAN Drivers. I really need to do some additional testing. Update: I’ve gotten backups to work when initiated from NCX.

² Obviously, since I couldn’t do a backup I’m not really able to test the restore functionality. This is my day-to-day Newton, so I’m not about to test the restore functionality on it yet anyway.

³ I just haven’t had time to do this yet, partly because it’s a lower priority as I currently use BlueTooth (with a Pico card & Blunt) to transfer files between my Newton and MacBook Pro.

Note: This cookbook is based on building Asterisk 1.2.10 on Mac OS X 10.4 (Tiger) Server somewhere as of August 15th, 2006. It should work for Tiger client as well, but I definitely won’t guarantee it.

Disclaimer

This cookbook is intended for those that are atleast slightly familiar with building and configuring unix applications on Mac OS X and Mac OS X Server. No support is offered and the author is not responsible for any lost data due to following these steps or mistakes made while attempting to follow these steps.

With that in mind, these steps did work for the author and will provide a quick copy & paste solution for those that don’t want to figure out all the steps themselves (although this is a really easy one).

Caveats

Although Asterisk compiles cleanly and functions pretty well on Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger (Client & Server), you wil