ssh -Y user@openbsd_machine program

Voila!
P.S.: Actually, you don’t even have to start X on either end of this connection, it will still work. I just tried

To make a long story short (as my mother would say), I found a solution here: http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?messageID=6757490

It turns out that when I moved System Preferences to /Applications/Utilities it broke my mac’s ability to add networks to the system keychain! I moved it back to /Applications, deleted the network from my network preferences and keychain and then joined the network again. This time the network was added to the system keychain and all is well!

http://www.elharo.com/blog/software-development/web-development/2005/11/29/setting-a-permanent-host-name-in-mac-os-x/

It works on leopard, in case you’re wondering! Solved my problem after a reboot.

http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?messageID=6863360#6863360

Apparently the guys at rogue amoeba have some work to do – we need instant hijack!

If you are too lazy to read that thread, the fix is:

sudo /usr/local/hermes/bin/hermesctl unload

thereby uninstalling instant hijack and fixing the problem. Somehow…

… and here’s the fix from Rogue Amoeba:

http://www.rogueamoeba.com/utm/2008/03/19/security-update-2008-002-compatibility-fix/ 

Say you want to change this line:

 $config_file = $_SERVER['DOCUMENT_ROOT']."/dev/config.php";

To this:

 $config_file = "dev/config.php";

As a matter of fact… wait a minute! I don’t want to just change that line… no I want to be able to show what I’ve changed, so that the next person who looks at this can see what it used to say. In this instance it’s also important to show the work I’ve done because I’m making changes to someone else’s work. So what I want to do is comment out the line and then add a new line with my change underneath. Sounds a bit more complicated right? Well it’s not really – unless you’re using OS X (you’ll see why in a minute *sigh*). The goal is to end up with this:

 //$config_file = $_SERVER['DOCUMENT_ROOT']."/dev/config.php";
 $config_file = "dev/config.php";

On the linux machine I keep around the office the command to perform this change on the all php files in the current directory looks like this ( I had to split the line to fit on the site):

sed -i .bak "s/^\$config_file = \

\$_SERVER\['DOCUMENT_ROOT'\]\.\"\/dev\/config\.php\"\;/\/\/\

\$config_file = \$_SERVER\['DOCUMENT_ROOT'\]\.\"\/dev\/config\.php\"\;\

\n\$config_file = \"dev\/config\.php\"\;/g" *.php

The breakdown of the above command is as follows:

sed | the sed command

-i .bak | the -i option means do this change “in place” and copy the original file to originalname.bak

“ | we use the double quote here to start the sed command because there are single quotes in the command

s/^\$config_file =
\$_SERVER\['DOCUMENT_ROOT'\]\.\”\/dev\/config\.php\”\;/\/\/\$config_file
= \$_SERVER\['DOCUMENT_ROOT'\]\.\”\/dev\/config\.php\”\;\n\$config_file = \”dev\/config\.php\”\;/g | this is the magic of sed. it looks for the line we want to change, adds // to the beginning of it, adds a new line after it, and then adds the text that we want after the new line. Amazing isn’t it?

“ | the command ends with the double quote

and, finally:

*.php | represents all of the files that end in .php in the current directory.

Now if you thought that was a mess, check out how that command needs to look in order to work on OS X (10.5.1, possibly other versions)

sed -i .bak "s/^\$config_file = \
\$_SERVER\['DOCUMENT_ROOT'\]\.\"\/dev\/config\.php\"\;/\/\/\
\$config_file = \$_SERVER\['DOCUMENT_ROOT'\]\.\"\/dev\/config\.php\"\;\
\\"$'\n'"\
\$config_file = \"dev\/config\.php\"\;/g" index.php

The crazy part here is the need to use \\”$’\n’”\

What that represents is an escaped version of the literal newline character. With the version of sed currently in OS X, that is the only way (that I could find) to add a newline character with sed. Now you know too.

So that concludes this edition of mac unix geekery… until next time…

ERROR 2002 (HY000): Can’t connect to local MySQL server through socket ‘/opt/local/var/run/mysql5/mysqld.sock’ (2)

This is because the installation of mysql 5 server from the mysql site uses /tmp to hold the socket file. Of course if you read the README you’d know this:

“The installation layout is similar to that of a `tar’ file binary
distribution; all MySQL binaries are located in the directory
`/usr/local/mysql/bin’. The MySQL socket file is created as
`/tmp/mysql.sock’ by default.”

I, of course, did not read the README first, and so I wondered what I was doing wrong. The fix is easy, just add

-S /tmp/mysql.sock

to your mysql5 command to use it without any configuration (i.e. changing the location of the socket).

Though I could probably get away with an install of OS X Tiger, I knew in my heart that it would be wrong to use the Tiger install disk that I have to install it on a second machine. Actually I just thought it would probably run too slow, but hey it’s still illegal and that’s not how I do things… right? Right. So it was just a question of whether it would be Linux, NetBSD, OpenBSD, or some other free OS. I decided to try NetBSD first.

NetBSD has supported PPC for a while, just one of the many architectures supported by the ultra portable BSD. The story here is fairly short and somewhat funny – I was able to install the OS but never figured out how to get it to boot. Lesson learned: Knowledge of Open Firmware is essential when you’re dealing with an Apple PPC machine like the PowerMac G4. I found this site and this site to be helpful, as well as the install notes for NetBSD. Oddly though, even following the notes to the letter I was unable to boot the OS. I gave up after seeing that my Open Firmware 2.4 system might not be supported at all due to what might be a “broken” Open Firmware. In hindsight I think I was just using the wrong device designation in my boot command. I might try it again.

In part II of the Golden Apple Project I try out Terra Soft’s Yellow Dog Linux. Which operating system will win the right to run on my shiny old G4? Stay tuned to find out!

Step 1 – Preparations

First of all you need an eMac. The emac is one of those in-between apple
models- it looks like a cross between the first iMac and the new iMac. It’s
a one piece unit, all inclusive. I assume you have that already. It helps
if you have a powerbook handy, maybe even one running OS X. I found it to
be very helpful. You’ll also need one blank cd (at least) and a working
internet connection. Patience is not required! In fact if you had patience
you could install OpenBSD the easy way (remember the easy way is to just
read the directions and follow them. Feel free to give up trying the hard
way at any time!)

Step 2 – I could do this blindfolded

Here’s where the real fun begins! Download the entire macppc folder from
your favorite mirror and put it in the sites folder of your powerbook. You
don’t need the packages, just everything in /pub/OpenBSD/$VERSION/macppc/.
Trust me. Get the whole folder. From that folder find the iso image (there’s
only one iirc) and burn it. Burn it the right way, there’s no need to do that
wrong just to add extra fun

Once your cd is ready to go, pop it in your emac and boot it up by holding
c on the keyboard while it powers up. You should see a bunch of text scroll
by as the installer begins. Once you get to the prompt asking you what you
want to do, say install. Duh it’s what you’re here for isn’t it?
Now you get some warnings about data loss *pssssh* data shmayta we don’t
care so just get by those however you can. The OpenBSD folks won’t let you
just press enter so you might need to type “yes” explicitly. Don’t worry though,
they won’t stop you from making your life difficult, no one can!
When you get to a choice between HFS and MBR choose MBR. Don’t bother
reading the screen just enter it and lets’s go! We want this done NOW don’t
we? Of course!

Ok now you tell the installer you want to use the whole disk. Do you think
you really want to use os x on this old emac? No way… You already have a
powerbook with os x on it anyway right?

Here is where you should definitely stop paying attention to what’s on the
screen. There’s a warning there about removing the i partition or something?
On to step 3!

Step 3 – Making life difficult

Are you ready to make things hard? So far it’s been pretty easy right? We have
come to that crucial moment where everything goes wrong. You should be in
the disklabel editor by now. You might not know what that is, and if you don’t…
you should be installing OpenBSD the right way, not this way. So assuming you
know what disklabel is, use it to delete the a and i and anything else in there that
isn’t the c partition. Why not c? Come on! Every OpenBSD sophomore knows that
the c partition represents the whole disk and is not to be touched. Duh! Just get
rid of everything else.

Create partitions any way you like… I guess it all depends on how much space you
have on the disk. Once you’re done, w and q and say yes to those prompts that
whine something about you losing all of your data. When the formatting is done,
we’ll continue.

Step 4 – That was easy!

Ok now that we made it through the disk setup, I imagine you’re smart enough to
get the networking set up. It’s pretty easy since you have a dhcp server. Don’t you?
You should… it makes things pretty easy Once you’re done with all that (you’re
so smart!) it’s time to install the OS.

I suggest you use that powerbook with os x that I mentioned earlier. Makes things so much
easier. All you need to do is put that macppc folder (directory, whatever) into your
Sites directory (folder, whatever) and turn on personal web sharing. Then we tell the
OpenBSD install program we want to use http. No proxy, and no need to list the servers.
We are going to use the server on the powerbook. *cough* The powerbook is on a network
with the emac isn’t it?

Right. So tell the install program the IP address of your PB (don’t put http://) and then
the directory (usually it’s ~User/macppc or something like that… but you’re smart enough
to figure that out aren’t you? that’s why you’re doing things the hard way!). It should work
(of course it does you genius!) and so you can just choose the install sets you want and say
done. Look at that! It’s installing!

Step 5 – Oops

Well hey whattya know?! OpenBSD seems to be complaining about a missing i partition. Ha!
Looks like maybe we should not have removed it earlier. I didn’t see anything in the INSTALL
doc though? Did you? Oh we didn’t really *read* that did we? haha *sigh* Oh well – you can fix this. It’s not like you’re an OpenBSD newbie! haha (you’re a sophomore!). But how?

Step 6 – Ok why is this so hard?

Figure it out yet? Well it sure took me a while haha. The problem is that we really do need
that i partition, and if we had done things the Right Way(tm) also known as the Easy Way(tm)
this would have been revealed to us while we were paying attention to the output from the
installer. You see after you choose MBR as your type and you say you want to use the whole
disk, the OpenBSD install program will create and format an i partition, which is where the
ofwboot program is copied (which is what allows OpenBSD to boot… imagine that!)

Well what I did to recover from this issue was get a firewire cable (luckily I had one handy)
and boot with my PB plugged in via target disk mode (t during boot up). This allowed me to
repartition the drive with my mac. Then I used fdisk -i from the installer shell just to be sure
that the MBR was fixed up, and I zeroed out the disklabel. After that, I actually READ the
install documentation AND the output during the install. Yeah, I gave up and went the easy
route It turns out that all you need to do is add i and make sure that it’s your 1MB msdos
partition. I used the b option to tell disklabel to use everything from sector 2049 to the end
of the disk, since i was from 0 to 2048. After I did that… I got a contratulations! message
instead of a “OpenBSD will not be able to boot” message. Hooray!

Now I’m having fun and installing all the packages I want… this is great. I could have been
doing this yesterday if I had gone the easy way… Learn anything?

THIS JUST IN – Trial ended and I decided to go buy it. read on!

I am so pleased with the way spam sieve is handling my junk mail. I used to get such easy to spot spam every day. I mean messages that I could tell were spam just by looking at the subject or the sender. It hasn’t been 100% perfect, a few false positives and false negatives, but aside from those few mistakes this app has been on point – there is no spam in my inbox.

SpamSieve is just another of the many apps that I’ve learned are worth the small price. Owning a mac has really gotten me into this “paying a little for good software” thing I used to think all the best software had to be free, but that isn’t true. Little programs like SpamSieve, Audio Hijack Pro (and nicecast of course), transmit… the list goes on and on… are great and all near or under 30 bucks.

Bottom line – if you are running OS X and you want to get rid of spam – SpamSieve is great.

(UPDATE: works great with leopard too!)