Install memcache and APC on Mac OS X Server (snow leopard 10.6, Lion 10.7, Mountain Lion 10.8)

Looking to speed up your SocialEngine, Drupal, or other PHP/MySQL web site? The combination of APC and Memcache can really speed up sites based on these platforms. If you’re an admin of a server running Mac OS X Server (10.6), here’s how to install APC and memcache on Mac OS X server:

Download and install MacPorts from http://macports.org.

Continue reading

Set up Screen Sharing (VNC) via command line on Mac OS X remotely using SSH

Locked out of a Mac because Remote Desktop has suddenly taken a crap on you? Want to remotely enable Screen Sharing (Apple’s fancy name for VNC)? Well, as long as you have SSH active, you can enable Screen Sharing on Mac OS X 10.5 by following these easy instructions.

Continue reading

Configure Apache Web Sharing for user accounts in Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard

Apple’s new Mac OS X 10.5 (Leopard) changes how web sharing is set up. Thankfully, they’ve moved us all to Apache 2 codebase (a good thingâ?¢). But in doing so, they’ve disabled the ability to serve web pages contained in your home Site directory.

If you turn on Web Sharing from the System Preferences panel, it works for the main computer (http://localhost) but not for user accounts (http://localhost/~username/). Most perplexing is that Apple’s graphical interface confirms that web sharing is turned on for your personal account, but it doesn’t work. This is *very* un-Apple.

Even if you turn on web sharing from the System Preferences panel, you’ll still receive the dreaded 403 Forbidden. You don't have permission to access /~username/ on this server.

Thankfully, it’s a simple oversight on Apple’s part. Your options are two-fold. You can either set it up to activate the Sites directory in all your user accounts, or just for individual ones. I’ll cover both. Continue reading

Apple bug breaks 3rd party USB web cams; no fix from Cupertino

Since the release of Apple’s 10.4.10 update, users (including me) have been complaining to Apple that their third-party USB web cams have lost audio capabilities. Although a bug report was issued and acknowledged (ID #5285354) by Apple, no fix has been forthcoming. In fact, Apple has stranded a large number of users in a void where iChat AV no longer has audio and video chat functionality. Continue reading

Prevent Mac OS X from mounting a hard drive volume at boot

Reader Charles asked a great question after reading my post about hiding a mounted disk volume on the desktop. He asked, in a nutshell, how to cause Mac OS X to not automatically mount a volume. Basically, Charles wants to leave his bootcamp volume unmounted when in Mac OS X. As it sits, Mac OS X automatically mounts all non-removable drives at startup. Continue reading