Tag: osx

Changing the default Umask on OSX Leopard

We use Macfuse to connect to our office development services. It lets us mount remote folders via SSFHS. The problem is that when we create a file via this connection, the default permissions are missing the group write bit, and so other users who connect to this system can’t write to them.

There is a fix available for OS X 10.5.3 and above – http://support.apple.com/kb/HT2202

One of our developers at Fubra has released a small package that automatically fixes the umask settings this for you. You can download it here. 

Or if you want to do it yourself via the command line, I’ve written some brief instructions. Basically, it involves 2 steps.

  1. Open up the Terminal application, and then create a file called /etc/launchd-user.conf 
  2. Add a line to the file containing the umask setting you want, in our case this was umask 002 

Commands

sudo vim /etc/launchd-user.conf
umask 002

NB: This sets the umask for every user on the system. So be careful what you choose!

Sharing a CD/DVD drive over the network with OS X

Problem

I’ve got a Mac Mini with a broken DVD drive, but I wanted to install iWork on it from the installation DVD. 

Solution

I used the Remote Disc feature of Leopard that Apple developed for the diskless MacBook Air to share another machine’s drive over the network.

Instructions

On the client machine were you would like to use the CD / DVD, you need run 2 commands on the terminal.

defaults write com.apple.NetworkBrowser EnableODiskBrowsing -bool true
defaults write com.apple.NetworkBrowser ODSSupported -bool true

Then restart your computer.

Next on the server machine where you will be inserting the physical disk, you must enable CD / DVD sharing in System Preferences > Sharing.

CD & DVD Sharing with Remote Disc

Once you’ve done that, insert your CD or DVD and then you should be able to connect to it via finder on the client machine.

Installing Zend Framework on OS X (Leopard)

Today I needed to use Zend Framework on my iMac’s local web server, so here’s how I installed it. 

I prefer using subversion where possible to download any open source projects, and since Zend have an svn repository available I decided to use that. 

sudo svn co http://framework.zend.com/svn/framework/standard/branches/release-1.7/library/ /usr/lib/php/libraries/zend-framework-1.7/

This will follow the latest updates to version 1.7 – you can simply run svn update anytime a minor version is released.

You can then include this in any of your projects with:

set_include_path(
get_include_path().PATH_SEPARATOR.
'/usr/lib/php/libraries/zend-framework-1.7/');

Although I’ve gone through these steps on my OS X Leopard workstation, they would also work equally well on other Unix / Linux distributions like Ubuntu, Centos, Fedora etc..