Ciqala.com

Quick Tip: making an image (.iso) of a DVD/CD using OS X

noreply@blogger.com (Ciqala) — Wed, 02 Sep 2009 12:10:00 +0000

This is just a quick blog post to detail how to make a (mountable) image of a CD/DVD using nothing but the pre-supplied tools in OS X. It's a bit of a no-brainer once you know how but it's something I keep forgetting and I figure here's as good a place as any to make a note of how it's done for the next time my brain malfunctions.

Step 1. Insert your CD/DVD into it's corresponding drive.

congratulations you are now more proficient with computers than my Grandmother. have a gold star.

Step 2. Open the Disk Utility application which can be found in a subfolder of Applications called utilitys. You'll see your disk listed in the left hand pane, click on its name to highlight it.

Step 3. Now we create a new disk image by selecting the menu option File -> New -> Disk Image from "your CD/DVD name here"

Step 4. A popup window will appear asking you things like the name of the image you want to create, where to save it etc. the main thing we're concerned with here is making sure we set the image format setting to 'DVD/CD master'. Click Save and the image will be created in the location you specified.

Nearly there. This is rather exciting isn't it,

Step 5. Once the image has been created browse to it's location in Finder and you'll see a lovely new image file that is called .cdr. "hey! wait a minute. you said this was going to make me an .iso file not a .cdr. what gives?" I hear you cry. well fear not my intrepid compadres because here comes the wonderfully clever/magic bit. rename the file from .cdr to .iso and you're good to go.

Fin

Minor Railo 3 / MySQL / Mango Blog gotcha

noreply@blogger.com (Ciqala) — Mon, 09 Mar 2009 12:28:00 +0000

I've been meaning to give Mango blog a whirl for a while now and as I'd just been given some server space by my pal Mark Drew (twitter:@Markdrew) for one of my pet projects I thought why not so this weekend I tasked myself with getting it up and running.

Now I have to say first and foremost I love the way Mango is installed. It's nice to see a CF app give as much care and attention to the install process as some of the bigger OSS apps from the PHP arena (Drupal, Joomla, Wordpress etc.) just unzip, upload and browse to the document root to view the installer.... perfect.

However after the hassle-free installation I immediately ran into a problem when trying to view the frontend site that left me scratching my head somewhat. the error message was...

"Can't cast String [] to a value of type [Array] Java type of the object is java.lang.String"

Nice and generic eh? Well I muddled about trying various things such as uninstalling and re-installing it to the webroot instead of a sub folder, installing it without using a prefix on the db tables. nothing seemed to work. I then consulted Google looking for an answer and found a similiar problem posted up on the Mango blog forums that suggested it may be an issue with the data in the db table concerning links. So I checked there and found nothing amiss and by this point I was at a total loss what to do.

Luckily for me James Buckingham (twitter: clarkee21) was experiencing the exact same problem when attempting to install Mango Blog on Railo 3 using MySQL as well. We exchanged a few messages back and forth last night about the problem and then I eventually gave up and went to bed. However James contacted the extremely helpful and lovely Gert Franz (twitter: Gert_Railo) from Railo and between them tried some bits but it was Laura Arguello who came up with the suggestion that it was down to a setting in the Railo datasources configuration section concerning the preservation of single quotes within the cfquery tag in the Mango Blog support forum here.

A quick trip to the datasource page under services in the Railo web administration panel to uncheck the box marked 'Preserve single quotes' and presto! all was now working.

I thought I'd mention this on the blog so people can find the solution if they do a search as I struggled to find anything pertinent when I attempted to do so.

It is also worthwhile to note that this setting affects ALL datasources in your context.

If you experience similiar problems when running your own code then you can also programatically set this option for each query by adding the following option to your cfquery tags

<cfquery psq="true">

Hopefully this post will be of use to someone as it would be a shame for someone to hit this minor stumbling block and swear off either Railo or Mango blog because of it as they're both pretty damn great if you ask me.

until next time...
À bientôt

Scotch on the Road - 90 days away

noreply@blogger.com (Ciqala) — Tue, 03 Mar 2009 17:08:00 +0000

My favourite ColdFusion event on the social calendar is rapidly approaching so I thought I'd re-iterate all the information bouncing around the net in case anyone wasn't already aware.

This years format for Scotch is slightly different to the other years. Following on from the great 1-day event 'A wee dram of Scotch' which took place in London the badgers are fully mobilising the conference and taking it on the road.

Venue details

1st June 2009 - The Sway Bar, London
3rd June 2009 - TigerTiger, Manchester
5th June 2009 - The Caves, Edinburgh

Pricing info

A 1 day ticket will set you back a mere £49 (+ vat)
A ticket to any of the 2 days is just £89 (+ vat)
And if you want to attend all three events it'll only cost you £129 (+ vat)

To top it off the ticket prices even include lunch and 2 drinks at the bar.

If you or your company are sending a group of people there is also a group discount which gives you 5 tickets for the price of 4. you'll need to use a code which you can find on the SotR tickets page.

Speakers / Sessions
These are still being confirmed I believe but details will be up on the Scotch site in short order I'm sure. either way if any of the previous events are to anything to go by it'll be a blast and you'll learn something new.

Any other details you need can be found at http://www.scotch-on-the-rocks.co.uk/

But Ciq will we get to meet you at any of these wonderful events?
Yes. My company are yet to confirm the details of which dates I can attend but even if all else fails I'll be showing my face at the drinks after the London event as it's just round the corner.

If you see me there say howdy.

oh and for people who have been waiting for another installment in my 'perfect OS X dev environment' series. I'm busily working on setting up a railo instance for testing the details of which I'll be posting in the upcoming few days.

until then stay loose and don't forget to book your Scotch tickets.

My perfect OS X development environment - MySQL part 2 - Installing phpMyAdmin

noreply@blogger.com (Ciqala) — Wed, 19 Nov 2008 17:02:00 +0000

In the last post we installed MySQL and I showed you how to administer it from the command line but that's not really ideal in day to day usage for most people so today I'm going to show you how to install phpMyAdmin a really handy tool for administering MySQL databases through a web-based interface. There are other alternatives out there but unlike some of the more popular choices like AquaDataStudio this is free to use which in the current economic climate can only be a good thing.

As you may have guessed by it's name phpMyAdmin runs on PHP so before we start installing it lets get the default Leopard PHP install enabled in Apache (apologies if this offends the sensibilities of any particularly hardline CF purists out there :-p ).

Enabling PHP

First up we need to make some changes to the apache config file (httpd.conf) so fire up Terminal and enter the following command...

$ sudo vi /etc/apache2/httpd.conf

Scroll down until you see this line of text and remove the # from the beginning (effectively uncommenting it)

#LoadModule php5_module libexec/apache2/libphp5.so

Handy tip: To search in VI hit the esc key then forward slash followed by what you're looking for then hit enter. It'll jump to the first result automatically and you can then skip through the remaining results by hitting n.

Typically that would be all we needed to do as by default a file in /etc/apache2/other/ called php5.conf is included in the Apache config which checks if the libphp5.so module is loaded and sets up how php files are handled automatically but as we're using a slightly finer grained setup with our virtual hosts we need to update the virtual host configuration file for our default site. In Terminal run the following commands.

$ sudo vi /etc/apache2/vhosts/yourhostname.local.conf

Find the line that looks like this

DirectoryIndex index.cfm index.html index.htm

And add index.php to the end so it looks like this

DirectoryIndex index.cfm index.html index.htm index.php

Save and exit the file

Simple as that! We just need to restart Apache now to pickup our changes so we can see if PHP is running correctly.

$ sudo apachectl restart

To test our handiwork just create a new file called phptest.php in the web root of your default web site and inside the file add the following text.

<?php phpinfo(); ?>

Save and close the file then browse to the file in a web browser. If everything is working you should see a very long page that tells you the exact setup of your PHP installation. For a development environment this is a pretty handy page to have hanging around if you plan on doing anything with PHP but it is not advisable to leave this lying around on a public facing server. Just bear that in mind.

Installing phpMyAdmin

Now we have the basic php install working so we can finally download phpMyAdmin. Go to the projects site and download the latest version (i'm using 3.0.1.1). unzip it to somewhere sensible on your machine, rename the folder to phpMyAdmin and copy it into the webroot of your default web site.

Before I go any further I should probably explain the way I plan to set up the default (hostname) web site on my laptop. The idea is to use the default site as an overarching admin area where I can administer everything across all projects. To achieve this for phpMyAdmin we'll be setting up this phpMyAdmin install in the default webroot to have have full visibility of all databases (using an admin level user) and then later on I'll setup each individual site with its own phpMyAdmin install as part of the semi-automated site creation process I have planned so that it only allows visibility of the databases related to that project. It's not strictly necessary to do it this way but I like the separation of concerns between each project as you know you'll never accidentally change the wrong project as long as you're browsing via that projects domain. But I digress...

phpMyAdmin kindly includes a script to perform all the basic configurations we need to make but before we can run it we need to make sure we have a valid MySQL user account (using root is always a bad idea mmmkay) and an empty database for holding some phpMyAdmin data, we'll also need to create some folders to hold the configuration file that the setup script creates and any uploaded or saved files used by phpMyAdmin. The easiest way to do all this is by Terminal so fire it up again and run the following commands

First we login to the MySQL command line

$ mysql -u root -p

Then we create our new admin user that will hold dominion over any databases we create

mysql> GRANT ALL PRIVILEGES ON *.* TO admin@localhost IDENTIFIED BY 'enterapasswordhere';

Then we'll create an empty database for phpMyAdmin to use and exit the MySQL command line

mysql> create database phpMyAdmin;

mysql> quit;

Now we need to change to the directory where you put the phpMyAdmin folder under your default web root e.g.

$ cd ~/Development/Sites/yourhostname.local/webroot/phpMyAdmin/

Handy tip: you can use '~/' as a shortcut to the root of your OS X directory, saves some typing sometimes :-)

Now we can create the required folders

$ mkdir config upload save

$ chmod 777 config upload save

Now open your browser and browse to the following URL

http://yourhostname.local/phpMyAdmin/scripts/setup.php

You may see a warning about 'Not secure connection' but for now we'll ignore that as we haven't setup and kind of ssl yet.

Now we need to add our MySQL to the config so click the Add button under the Servers heading and fill in the following details...

Server Hostname: localhost
Server Port: 3306
Server socket: /tmp/mysql.sock
Connection type: socket
php extension to use: default (mysqli)
compress connection: no
Authentication type: config
user for config auth: admin
password for config auth: youradminpassword
only database to show: leave blank
verbose name of this server: .local
phpMyAdmin control user: admin
phpMyAdmin control user password: youradminpassword
phpMyAdmin database for advanced features: phpMyAdmin
session name for signon auth: leave blank
login url for signon auth: leave blank
logout url: leave blank

Click the green add button under actions to add the server to the config

Now we need to setup the upload/download functionality within phpMyAdmin so hit the Upload/Download button under features and enter the following

Upload directory: upload
Save directory: save

Then hit the update button under actions to save

If you would like to be able to do charset conversions then you'll need to enable the functionality now. Click the Charsets button under features and check the tick box that says 'Allow charset conversion' then hit update to save.

Feel free to go through and make any further configurations you may want, when you've finished hit the save button under configuration to write out all the settings you've just configured. The config file is written into the config folder but we need to move it into the root of the phpMyAdmin folder and then remove the config folder to make things a bit more secure so we need run to the following commands in Terminal

$ cp config/config.inc.php config.inc.php

$ rm -rf config

If you browse to http://yourhostname.local/phpMyAdmin/ you should now see your lovely fresh phpMyAdmin install ready for use.

Until next time Happy Databasing :)

My perfect OS X development environment - Installing MySQL

noreply@blogger.com (Ciqala) — Fri, 14 Nov 2008 13:48:00 +0000

Chances are if you're building websites you'll use some kind of data along the way, but where to keep it? the obvious choice of course is a database. Now there are a ton of databases out there that you could use but to get us started I'm going to use MySQL community edition a fantastic open source (and free!) database engine used by many hundreds of thousand sites across the web for their data storage needs.

Go to mysql.com and download mysql 5.0 for mac os x 10.5 (x86_64)

Once downloaded mount the file and run the mysql installer using the provided defaults.

When the installer is finished run the other installer for the mysqlstartupitem and again install using the defaults.

In the disk image you will also see a file called mysql.prefpane which is a handy preference pane that goes into your system preferences and lets you stop and start the mysql server with the push of a button.

To install it copy the file to /Library/PreferencePanes

Open system preferences and you'll see the new pane in the bottom row. click it and start the mysql server.

Now we need to secure the default mysql login so open terminal and run the following commands

First we need to add mysql bin to the path

$ vi ~/.profile

Add this line

export PATH=$PATH:/usr/local/mysql/bin

Save and quit then run the following script bundled with MySQL to secure the default installation

$ sudo /usr/local/mysql/bin/mysql_secure_installation

This will run you through securing your installation, select the following options:

NOTE: RUNNING ALL PARTS OF THIS SCRIPT IS RECOMMENDED FOR ALL MySQL
SERVERS IN PRODUCTION USE! PLEASE READ EACH STEP CAREFULLY!

In order to log into MySQL to secure it, we'll need the current
password for the root user. If you've just installed MySQL, and
you haven't set the root password yet, the password will be blank,
so you should just press enter here.

Enter current password for root (enter for none):
OK, successfully used password, moving on...

Setting the root password ensures that nobody can log into the MySQL
root user without the proper authorisation.

Set root password? [Y/n] y
New password:
Re-enter new password:
Password updated successfully!
Reloading privilege tables..
... Success!

By default, a MySQL installation has an anonymous user, allowing anyone
to log into MySQL without having to have a user account created for
them. This is intended only for testing, and to make the installation
go a bit smoother. You should remove them before moving into a
production environment.

Remove anonymous users? [Y/n] Y
... Success!

Normally, root should only be allowed to connect from 'localhost'. This
ensures that someone cannot guess at the root password from the network.

Disallow root login remotely? [Y/n] Y
... Success!

By default, MySQL comes with a database named 'test' that anyone can
access. This is also intended only for testing, and should be removed
before moving into a production environment.

Remove test database and access to it? [Y/n] Y
- Dropping test database...
... Success!
- Removing privileges on test database...
... Success!

Reloading the privilege tables will ensure that all changes made so far
will take effect immediately.

Reload privilege tables now? [Y/n] y
... Success!

Cleaning up...

All done! If you've completed all of the above steps, your MySQL
installation should now be secure.

Thanks for using MySQL!

Now that we have MySQL Installed and pretty well secured you can access it from the command line using

$ mysql -u root -p [enter]

Once logged in you'll see a prompt like this

Welcome to the MySQL monitor. Commands end with ; or \g.
Your MySQL connection id is 2
Server version: 5.0.67 MySQL Community Server (GPL)

Type 'help;' or '\h' for help. Type '\c' to clear the buffer.

mysql>

into which you can then run any commands you want to create databases, users etc.

However I would advise using a GUI tool so you can administer your databases in a much nicer and easier fashion, there are a number of them out there for the mac (like Aqua Data Studio, or MySQL.com's very own Mysql Administrator and Query Browser tools)

In the next post of this series we'll be configuring Apache to use PHP so we can install an extremely handy web-based MySQL administration script called phpMyAdmin which we can use on each of our sites to do pretty much any database task you may wish to think of.

Until then stay loose :)

update: workaround found for OS X Java Update 2 / CF 64-bit incompatability

noreply@blogger.com (Ciqala) — Thu, 13 Nov 2008 17:04:00 +0000

Thanks to Chris Hough's latest tweet it has been brought to my attention that there is now a workaround for the apparent incompatability between the supported java version of 64-bit Coldfusion and the version installed by the latest OS X java update here and here.

I haven't had call to try it myself just yet (I have refused to install the update since my last re-install because of this) but for those of you who are currently stuck with this problem and unable to install Coldfusion on your macs it's worth a try.

the usual disclaimer applies in so far as you do this all at your own risk. if you do go ahead and try it though I would appreciate it if you could leave your findings here in the comments. I'm seeing a lot of traffic from google regarding this issue so it'll help anyone else who finds their way here searching for an answer.

the link to the adobe thread with the workaround is:

http://www.adobe.com/cfusion/webforums/forum/messageview.cfm?catid=3&threadid=1403654&forumid=1

good luck!

The internet is a funny place sometimes...

noreply@blogger.com (Ciqala) — Thu, 13 Nov 2008 00:26:00 +0000

First of all can I quickly apologise for the lack of on-topic posts for the last week or two, i've had a lot on my plate so haven't had much chance to update things as often as I'd like. there are a few drafts for the next couple of 'my perfect dev env' posts so i'll hopefully have them up in the next few days.

My main reason for posting however is the product I just found for sale online whilst browsing google. To give you some background, my first name is how can I put this, somewhat unique. Up until a year or two ago I knew of one other person in the world with the same first name as me. since then it's become a little more popular (although not in its common usage, there's the tower block, the scantily clad wannabe glamour model blogger[poss nws], the computer game npc and a whole raft of dog and cat owners who seem to have taken a shine to it too as a name for their pets).

But the find today shows just how far my name has come in recent times and proof positive that Internet really knows it's stuff too... All those years of having people misspell it even when I'm telling them how to do so (note: there is no 'u' anywhere in my name people, seriously) and re-telling the story of how I was given it and what it means have finally paid off... finally I've arrived and I'm getting the recognition I so rightly deserve. Ladies and Gentleman I present to you quite possibly the worlds greatest t-shirt (available in mens, ladies and even childrens sizes).

And this has had the added bonus of helping me decide what gifts to buy my friends and family for christmas too. awesome!

Something strange is happening...

noreply@blogger.com (Ciqala) — Fri, 31 Oct 2008 16:34:00 +0000

Ever since the sun started going down I've begun to feel odd, almost not like I was myself. I'm also really thirsty all of a sudden but nothing seems to quench my thirst everything seems to have lost it's taste as well, nothing seems to taste as nice as that weird red drink they were handing out at the station last night, was really good, like a thick milkshake but I think it was an energy drink of some kind, tasted a little bit like copper.

anyways I sneezed just now and damn near bit through my lip which was when I realised this had happened...

and you wouldn't believe how much hassle it was getting that photo... I tried my digicam, my webcam, everything seemed to be playing up and would only show the background behind me. eventually i found a dusty old polaroid camera in a cupboard and manage to snap a shot with the last exposure...

but yeah i'm really worried now, this isn't normal. is it? I just don't know anymore...

any ways it's pretty dark outside now so screw this i'm going out for a drink. happy halloween all.

My Perfect OS X Coldfusion Dev Environment - Installing Coldfusion 8 pt 2

noreply@blogger.com (Ciqala) — Fri, 31 Oct 2008 13:22:00 +0000

Right in part 1 we installed CF 8 (woo hoo!) but before was can use it we need to do a few bits to get it working within apache because we opted to move the cifde folder outside of the default OS X webroot.

The plan for our development environment is to leave the default webroot alone and move all our sites into our development folder that sits within our user directory (/Users/{username}/Development/Sites/). We will use one site per dev project with additional ones being created for test/qa purposes should they be required. But before we can do any of this we need to enable virtual hosts in apache and create at least one site so we can attach the CFIDE folder to it and run the ColdFusion administrator.

So lets open terminal app and run the following commands...

$ cd /etc/apache2

$ sudo vi httpd.conf [enter password if prompted]

If you're unfamiliar with vi then you can learn the basics here or alternatively if you prefer to use a different text editor then feel free...

once you have the file open in the text editor locate the following line(s) and remove the # from before the include statement...

# Virtual hosts
#Include /private/etc/apache2/extra/httpd-vhosts.conf

so it looks like this

# Virtual hosts
Include /private/etc/apache2/extra/httpd-vhosts.conf

save and close the file

What that has basically done is enable a number of settings in the included file that turn on virtual hosts. however this file also includes some default virtual hosts that we do not want to use so we need to make some basic changes to the included file to remove these defaults and tell it where to find the configuration for our real virtual hosts.

$ cd extra

$ sudo vi httpd-vhosts.conf

comment out the two example virtual hosts by placing #'s at the start of each line from to like so...

#<Virtualhost>
# ServerAdmin webmaster@dummy-host.example.com
# DocumentRoot "/usr/docs/dummy-host.example.com"
# ServerName dummy-host.example.com
# ServerAlias www.dummy-host.example.com
# ErrorLog "/private/var/log/apache2/dummy-host.example.com-error_log"
# CustomLog "/private/var/log/apache2/dummy-host.example.com-access_log" common
#</Virtualhost>

#<Virtualhost>
# ServerAdmin webmaster@dummy-host2.example.com
# DocumentRoot "/usr/docs/dummy-host2.example.com"
# ServerName dummy-host2.example.com
# ErrorLog "/private/var/log/apache2/dummy-host2.example.com-error_log"
# CustomLog "/private/var/log/apache2/dummy-host2.example.com-access_log" common
#</Virtualhost>

add a line at the bottom of the file like this...

Include /private/etc/apache2/vhosts/*.conf

save and close the file

$ cd ../

$ sudo mkdir vhosts

$ cd vhosts/

Now we will create the virtual host configuration for our default site, this will use the machine name you chose in this post mine is badapple so my default site is BadApple.local simply replace all instances of BadApple in the following code with your own machine name.

$ sudo vi badapple.local.conf

then into the file insert the following (remember to replace badapple with your own machine name!)

<Virtualhost>
ServerAdmin webmaster@badapple.local
DocumentRoot "/Users/Ciqala/Development/Sites/badapple.local/webroot"
ServerName badapple.local
ServerAlias www.badapple.local
ErrorLog "/private/var/log/apache2/badapple.local-error_log"
CustomLog "/private/var/log/apache2/badapple.local-access_log" common

DirectoryIndex index.cfm index.html index.htm

<Directory /Users/Ciqala/Development/Sites/badapple.local/webroot>
Options Indexes FollowSymLinks
AllowOverride None
Order allow,deny
Allow from all
</Directory>

# JRun Settings (cfusion server instance)

</Virtualhost>

save the file but leave it open. spawn a new terminal window and run the following command...

$ sudo vi /etc/apache2/httpd.conf

go to the end of the file and you should see something like this...

LoadModule jrun_module /Applications/JRun4/lib/wsconfig/1/mod_jrun22.so
<ifmodule>
JRunConfig Verbose false
JRunConfig Apialloc false
JRunConfig Ignoresuffixmap false
JRunConfig Serverstore /Applications/JRun4/lib/wsconfig/1/jrunserver.store
JRunConfig Bootstrap 127.0.0.1:51020
#JRunConfig Errorurl url
#JRunConfig ProxyRetryInterval 600
#JRunConfig ConnectTimeout 15
#JRunConfig RecvTimeout 300
#JRunConfig SendTimeout 15
AddHandler jrun-handler .jsp .jws .cfm .cfml .cfc .cfr .cfswf
</ifmodule>

copy this and paste it into the other terminal window directly under the comment...

# Jrun Settings (cfusion server instance)

save the file and then go back to window with httpd.conf open and remove the code you just copied. this is so that our default jrun/cf instance only runs inside our default site and doesn't cause any conflicts with the other sites we create later that may use another jrun instance. make sure everything is saved and closed then run the following command...

$ sudo apachectl -S

this tests the virtual host configuration is valid, if all looks ok then we need to restart apache so it is aware of these new changes.

$ sudo apachectl graceful-stop

$ sudo apachectl start

now fingers crossed if you browse to http://{machinename}.local/CFIDE/administrator/ you should successfully see the cf administrator (and as this is the first time using it you will have a quick wizard run to set things up)

If this works you now have a valid coldfusion install and any code placed into the default sites webroot should run just fine.

In the next post I'll take you through installing MySQL so we can starts to store some data in our apps.

If you have any problems with the contents of this post please post a comment and I'll do my best to help you out. alternatively you can drop me a message on Twitter using the button on the top left of this page.

My Perfect OS X Coldfusion Dev Environment - Installing Coldfusion 8 pt 1

noreply@blogger.com (Ciqala) — Fri, 31 Oct 2008 13:06:00 +0000

This post is going to be of little interest to most people as running the installer is fairly straightforward but it does include some minor changes to the default install that will be used as this series of posts continues and will have a knock on effect as the time goes on with regard to location of files etc. so apologies if this feels a little like I'm trying to teach you to suck eggs but it is pertinent in the grand scheme of things honest guv.

Right lets jump straight into things, go and download the 8.01 64-bit developer edition installer for os x from the Adobe site, unarchive it to a sensible location on your hard drive and run the installer.

The installer uses a wizard to gather details about the install requirements just choose the following options...

The first screen with nothing important on it [next]

accept/agree to license [next]

tick developer edition checkbox [next]

choose multiserver configuration [next]

is jrun4 or cf8 already installed? select no [next]

check all subcomponents to install [next]

install jrun4 in default location [next]

accept/agree to livecycle data services es license [next]

no need to enter lc ds es serial [next]

migrate settings? no [next]

configure web server connecter for CF [add]

webserver: apache

accept default locations for cfg, binary and control script [ok]

[next]

choose webserver location [choose]

select /Users/{your username}/Development/Sites/MachineName.local/webroot/ [open]

[next]

enter administrator password and confirm it [next]

leave enable rds unchecked [next]

enter os x admin password to enable installer to run [next]

double check install settings look something like those below then... [install]

Installation Type:
Multiserver configuration

Licensing:
Developer Edition

Installation Directories:
Product: /Applications/JRun4
Web root: /Users/Ciqala/Development/Sites/badapple.local/webroot

Server Information:
JRun Server: cfusion
Web Server: Apache (/private/etc/apache2)
Port: 80
Search Services: not installed
Adobe LiveCycle Data Services ES: installed
Documentation: installed
RDS: disabled

Disk Space Information (for Installation Target):
Required: 352,474,613 bytes
Available: 60,494,663,680 bytes

After a short while we have a message informing us of Good Success!

The final screen of the installer will appear with a few options of what to do next. Uncheck the option to launch the config wizard in the default browser as we need to make some changes to apache first as we moved the webserver location so we need to make some changes to apache to set up our proper 'default' site in the location we specified.

In part 2 (coming immediately hereafter) I'll take you through configuring apache for virtual hosts and we'll set up our first site which we'll be using as a generic location for various tools that are useful for more than just a single project.

Interesting gotcha when creating a new server instance in coldfusion 8

noreply@blogger.com (Ciqala) — Tue, 28 Oct 2008 11:40:00 +0000

I just came across an odd error when trying to create a new coldfusion 8 instance on my macbook using the CF administrator and running the cf admin for the instance for the first time.

Permission denied for creating Java object: coldfusion.server.SystemInfo.

Access to Java objects in the ColdFusion package has been disabled by the administrator.

luckily it was a simple fix but as it's a bit of a gotcha it's worth mentioning so it can be kept in mind and also might help anyone else who ends up scratching their heads trying to figure it out.

Basically what was happening was the new instance had inherited the settings from the parent CF instance and in the Server Settings -> Settings page I had enabled the option to 'Disable access to internal ColdFusion Java components'

Which for some reason when firing up the new instances admin page must have been tricking itself into thinking that it was an unauthorised script and then triggered the error.

To fix it I just deleted the new instance, unchecked the setting and recreated the instance and all was right with the world once more.

Just how CF are you?

noreply@blogger.com (Ciqala) — Mon, 27 Oct 2008 00:45:00 +0000

Given that it's now technically Monday (being past midnight and all) I thought I'd pose a bit of a fun question that might take the edge off the post-weekend blues while you're waiting for the first dose of caffeine to take effect... Just how "CF" are you?

Answers can be in any form you like, draw a picture, take a photo, record a video, write an essay, whatever takes your fancy. You can just post it directly in the comments here or just put a link to anyplace else you might want to put it (like on your own blogs).

I'll get the ball rolling by showing you my Macbook. now most developers I meet have one or two stickers on theirs but when I saw a lonely roll of CF stickers sitting amidst the post-giveaway carnage at 'A wee dram of Scotch' a few weeks ago I just had to grab a handful to decorate my machine and here's the result...

In case you are wondering how it's received my fellow dev's just rolled their eyes when they saw, everyone else declared me a massive geek. deep down I know they're all just jealous of how "CF" I really am. :)

So what have you got?

Interesting new mac app: HyperSpaces

noreply@blogger.com (Ciqala) — Wed, 22 Oct 2008 16:41:00 +0000

Spaces is one of the newer features of OS X that never quite settled right with me. On paper it sounded fantastic, switch between different screens each setup for a different task but in reality it was a bit too bland, each space looked just like the others to the point that you may not immediately know which one you were in. In the end I disabled spaces with the faint hope that a later version of OS X would include further enhancements.

Today whilst reading through my various RSS feeds however I noticed an entry on Gawker site 'LifeHacker' recommending a new app for OS X that added functionality to spaces called HyperSpaces.

The blurb on the apps homepage describes the app thusly...

"Hyperspaces is the ultimate way to customize your spaces. Customize each and every space the way you want using colors, desktop pictures, text labels and even the name of each space!"

At the moment it's only in public preview so don't expect it to be fully polished but even in it's pre-release state I can already see that this may be the app to make Spaces useful enough to spend some time looking at it. I'll certainly be keeping an eye on the app as it heads towards a full release candidate.

Removing software updates from update list without installing them (OS X)

noreply@blogger.com (Ciqala) — Wed, 22 Oct 2008 14:03:00 +0000

As you will have gathered from my last post there is currently a problem with the latest Java update for OS X being incompatible with Coldfusion 8 with the recommended course of action being to avoid installing the Java update until the supported JDK version for CF8 changes.

The only problem is that everytime you run Software Update it'll check the update and you're a slip of the mouse away from accidentally installing it. Given that there is no way to reverse the update without reverting to a backup (or formatting and re-installing) this is a bad thing so I thought I'd see if there was a way to prevent certain updates from displaying in the list and as it turns out there is and it's simple as pie...

In the Software update window you simply select the update you would like to ignore/hide and select Update -> Ignore Update (or hit backspace).

A prompt appears asking you to confirm that you'd like to ignore the update hit ok and you no longer have to worry about accidentally installing the wrong update and messing up your system. woo!

Apple have a knowledgebase article about this if you want a little more info. it can be found here

update: Incompatibility between OS X Java 10.5 updater 2 and CF 8 64-bit installer

noreply@blogger.com (Ciqala) — Wed, 22 Oct 2008 09:53:00 +0000

This is just a quick post to let anyone who might be following my previous post regarding the incompatibility between the latest 'Java for Mac OS 10.5 update 2' and the 64-bit Coldfusion 8 Installer.

Thanks to some help from the lovely Adobe support staff I have managed to figure out what is causing the apparent incompatibility and essentially it boils down to the supported version of Java required for 64-bit coldfusion on OS X and the Java update updating the installed version to a more recent but unsupported version.

If you take a look at http://www.adobe.com/products/coldfusion/systemreqs/ and scroll down to the Macintosh 64-bit section you'll see the supported JDK version for CF 8.01 specifically states Sun/Apple JDK 1.5.0_13

But if you look at the details for the Apple update http://support.apple.com/kb/HT2733 it shows that the latest update "updates Java SE 6 to version 1.6.0_07, J2SE 5.0 to version 1.5.0_16, and J2SE 1.4.2 to 1.4.2_18."

This essentially means that by installing the update you are moving to an unsupported Java version (even if it is just a patch level or two rather than a point release).

So based on that I would say until Adobe support a newer version of Java you cannot install the 'Java for Mac OS X 10.5 update 2' system update and if you do you'll no longer be able to install/re-install CF 8.01 without installing the older version of the JDK manually.

update: srmckee has correctly pointed out in his comment on this posting that it does not seem to be possible to install an older version of Java on OS X so I'll just re-iterate the main point of this post... DO NOT INSTALL THE UPDATE IF YOU WANT TO RUN 64-BIT COLDFUSION 8! you won't be able to install/re-install it

update2: a workaround for this problem has now been found. details here.

MSN Spam in Adium - wtf?

noreply@blogger.com (Ciqala) — Tue, 21 Oct 2008 15:40:00 +0000

My poor macbook has been through the wars lately with numerous re-formats whilst i figured out the problem with the latest Java update for OS X and the Coldfusion 8 installer so I've been missing a few of my regular apps that I use to interact with my friends/family. One such app is the fantastical Adium which is essentially a multi-protocol messenger client.

Well I finally got around to re-installing adium today and setup my msn messenger account only to be greeted within a few minutes by a message from someone who wasn't even on my msn contact list and of course it was a link to some spam site no doubt laden with virii and trojans and spartans and various other dodgy things. Not thinking much of it 'probably a glitch says I' I block the user and go about my business.

However sadly it doesn't stop there. oh no. Shortly after I receive another message from another non-contact, again trying to trick me into their dodgy trap. Begone spammers! I cry and leap into action to find out what the hell was going on.

So of I go a-googling to see if this is a known issue and it would appear that it is indeed. Seemingly this latest version of Adium (1.3.2) no longer worries too much about who you get messages from. Luckily it would appear there is a setting to restrict who can send you messages to specific accounts (although I have seen some people who believe this isn't being picked up correctly).

The fix (if you are a fellow Adium user experiencing the same problem) is to go to the Privacy Settings (Adium -> Privacy Settings or Option-Apple-P) and choosing the MSN messenger account set the privacy level dropdown to 'Allow only contacts on my contact list'.

Whether this resolves the issue or not remains to be seen but if it can help limit the number of interruptions received it can only be a good thing.

My Perfect OS X Coldfusion Dev Environment - Giving your mac a name

noreply@blogger.com (Ciqala) — Tue, 21 Oct 2008 14:06:00 +0000

Seeing as you'll probably be spending a lot of time with your mac it can't hurt to personalise it a little. changing the name of the machine is just one way you can do this but with the added benefit that it makes it easier to refer to on a network.

To change your macs name open System Preferences and click on the Sharing icon to open the sharing preference pane.

at the top is a field called Computer Name simply type your desired name into the Field (mines called BadApple) and close system preferences.

job done! you can test it by loading up your preferred browser and typing in machinename.local (e.g http://badapple.local). you should see the default apache website (assuming you have web sharing enabled in the sharing pane of system preferences).

Pimp your Mac - Trendy Terminal

noreply@blogger.com (Ciqala) — Tue, 21 Oct 2008 13:39:00 +0000

Working with command lines is always a bit marmite people either love it or hate it. myself i'm a bit of a deviant and actually love using the command line.

Given my love of the one line wonder I was pleasantly surprised the first time I used OS X to find that it comes with a nice little utility called Terminal and I just want to say it now I LOVE TERMINAL! it's the app that lets me at the heart of my mac and for anyone who does serious development or wishes they had more control over their mac than the basic configuration options exposed in the System Preferences.

The one thing I never liked about the terminal is the way it looks 'out of the box' so to speak but luckily this is easily remedied with a few tweaks to it's preferences so today I'm going to show you how to pimp up your terminal and get it looking as sexy as the rest of the mac interface.

So lets start by opening up the terminal app (it's in /Applications/Utilities/ or you can hit +space to open spotlight and type terminal it should be the first result).

Open terminal's preferences (Terminal -> Preferences or hit +,) and in the text tab change the text colours for Text and Bold Text by clicking on the coloured squares. You can choose whatever colour you like but I like to go with a lightish grey for my main text with a slightly lighter shade for bold (to make it stand out).

next we want to get rid of that bright white background so we select the window tab in the preferences window and change the background setting to black but this is where the mac adds a cool touch we're going to set the opacity setting on the colour chooser to 70%. and we're done so close the preferences window.

this gives us a nice semi transparent terminal window where text is clearly visible but allows you to see whats going on behind.

this comes in extremely handy if you are copying from another application into the terminal and window space is limited (as on my 12" macbook).

Also if like me you like to multitask whilst coding you can play some tv in your favourite media player and simply overlay the terminal window to allow you to work and play at the same time.

that's about it this is obviously just my preferred setup but hopefully this has given you some ideas of your own for pimping your terminal.

Incompatibility between OS X Java 10.5 updater 2 and CF 8 64-bit installer

noreply@blogger.com (Ciqala) — Tue, 14 Oct 2008 12:39:00 +0000

As you will know if you've been following the start of my new blog series 'My Perfect OS X Coldfusion Dev Environment' I have been trying to setup a coldfusion development environment on my Macbook. However I ran into a problem with a pretty major step in the process when the Coldfusion 8 installer refused to run on my machine giving the following error immediately after
I accepted the license terms...

In essence it refused to acknowledge the machine as 64-bit. Which confused me greatly as prior to wiping the machine to start the fresh install it was running 64-bit coldfusion 8 just fine.

Following some googling I found out there is an app bundled with OS X that allows you to change the default JVM called 'Java Preferences' in the Utilities folder within Applications. I tried to change the jvm to available 64-bit jvm, I tested the default version was in fact being changed but to no avail.

In desperation I decided to wipe the machine and try again in case something got screwed up along the way. So I re-installed from scratch applied all updates and got the exact same thing. By now I'm tearing my hair out (well, what little I have).

A few days go by of me desperately trying to find a solution with no luck and in the end decide that giving the re-install another go is probably worth a try. Only this time I'll run the installer before/after applying each system update individually so that's exactly what I did.

Starting from my retail DVD version of leopard (10.5.4) I make a fresh install and immediately download the cf 8 64 bit installer for os x. Lo and behold the JVM check works and I'm prompted for my serial number (the next step in the installer).

I install the small non-critical updates (itunes, quicktime, remote desktop client, frontrow). All still ticketty-boo. go-figure.

I install the Mac OS X Update to 10.5.5, still working. Whoop-de-doo.

I install Security Update 2008-007, any problems? no sirree all quiet on the western front.

Finally I come to the last currently available update 'Java For Mac OS X 10.5 Update 2' I install and does it work?

Does it heck! Having tried the installer with versions Java SE 6 (64-bit), J2SE 5.0 (64-bit) and J2SE 5.0 (32-bit) All showed the same error but the settings shown in the cfinstall_err file created by the Coldfusion installer correctly mirror the settings you would expect to see for the selected version of Java (i.e 64-bit!).

I will now have to re-install OS X again so I can avoid installing the update until I can notify Apple/Adobe about this problem and see if a solution can be found.

My advice to anyone running a 64-bit mac wanting to use the 64-bit version of Coldfusion 8 then I would avoid installing 'Java For Mac OS X 10.5 Update 2' for the time being.

If anyone else with a 64-bit mac they can easily test this on it would be appreciated if you could confirm my findings.

If I get any updates I'll be sure to blog about them here.

update: I think I have found the reason for this see my follow up post

update2: a workaround for this problem has now been found. details here.

My Perfect OS X Coldfusion Dev Environment - They call me the Seeker

noreply@blogger.com (Ciqala) — Wed, 08 Oct 2008 23:55:00 +0000

This is just a quick one but it's something that I always have to do every time I start with a fresh OS X install and thats to secure the locate command and create the locate database.

Locate is a command line tool for *nix based systems that very quickly allows you to find files throughout the file system (in a similiar way to spotlight but the big difference being that this will look through all the system folders as well which is ridiculously handy when you forget the location of a config file or just want to see how many copies of the file exist and where on the system they are.

Because of the way we will be indexing the locate database we have to be careful as you could potentially expose all of the systems filenames and locations to all users (something a hacker might find incredibly useful if trying to crack your box). so all we'll do is secure it so only the root account can use it and then when you want to run the locate command you just prefix it with sudo and authenticate with your administrator password.

We'll start by securing the locate command by opening up Terminal (it's located in applications -> utilities if you haven't had a chance to use it yet).

With the terminal window open type the following commands at the $ prompt...

$ sudo chmod o-x /usr/bin/locate

and what that basically does is remove execute permissions for anyone not in the group to which the file belongs.

Now we need to create our locate database file which we do with the following command...

$ sudo /usr/libexec/locate.updatedb

You will be presented with a warning that looks like this

>>> WARNING
>>> Executing updatedb as root. This WILL reveal all filenames
>>> on your machine to all login users, which is a security risk.

As we are going to secure the database file from unauthorised access this is not a real concern for us.

The script will do it's thing and after a few minutes the $ prompt will return, when it does run the following command to secure the database file by removing all non group users read permissions.

$ sudo chmod o-r /var/db/locate.database

Now you can whizz around your file system locating files like a command line based sherlock holmes using the following command for example...

$ locate php.ini
/private/etc/php.ini.default
$

For more information about locate you can read it's manual by running this command in the terminal

$ man locate

I would talk about scheduling the update regularly (it should run weekly but there are some reasons why it may not always do so) but I intend to cover ensuring that certain maintenance tasks are ran regularly in a future post in this series. Until then you can run the 'sudo /usr/libexec/locate.updatedb' command manually to update the index of files in the database.

Happy [file] hunting!

My Perfect OS X Coldfusion Dev Environment - In the beginning there was Xcode

noreply@blogger.com (Ciqala) — Wed, 08 Oct 2008 13:46:00 +0000

As with most things I think it is always a good idea to start from the beginning (well unless you're Quentin Tarantino in which case we'd start about 2/3rds of the way through and hop back and forwards through the story a lot) so starting from the beginning is exactly what I am going to do.

Sitting in front of me is my freshly formatted and re-installed macbook. A lovely blank canvas for us to start working on our masterpiece.

It was installed using a retail dvd version of OS X that installed itself as 10.5.4 and so far the only thing I have done to the machine is run the system updater tool to install every available update that was available. The only update of note is one that upgraded me to 10.5.5. Point releases may not be massively relevant to our cause but just in case they do make some changes that affect some of the bits we'll be working on I am mentioning them here so if you are trying to follow along on a slightly different version of Leopard it may explain if you see something different to me.

I would also like to take this moment to recommend that if you are intending on following this guide that you do a fresh install from a Leopard install disc as I have read reports elsewhere that the upgrade process from Tiger to Leopard leaves some important files in their old position so in theory an upgraded system could differ slightly to a freshly installed one. Just a little caveat there.

Now without further ado let us begin on the journey to turn my diminutive portable pal into a heavyweight CFML development workhorse.

First up on the agenda is to 'finish' the install of leopard by installing the Xcode tools that come bundled on the install disc.

note: if you haven't got an install disc with the xcode tools on you can download the Xcode install dvd image from the apple site http://developer.apple.com/technology/xcode.html [free adc registration required] but be warned they are pretty hefty (1009mb!).

To install from the DVD simply pop the disc into your dvd drive, browse to the disc in the finder (or it may autorun and pop up a new finder window by itself).

You should see a folder called 'optional installs' double click on the folder icon to open it up.

Inside the optional installs folder is another folder called Xcode Tools. Open this one too.

You should now see a number of installers in this folder, we want to install the XCode Tools so double click it.

The installation wizard that appears couldn't be simpler to use, accept the licence agreement, choose the default installation location and away you go. There's quite a lot of bits it needs to install so take this opportunity to grab yourself a lovely cup of tea and a nice bourbon biscuit to help you pass the time, a word of warning though, when dunking in the tea careful not to oversaturate the bourbon or you could end up dropping half of it into the cup and no one likes that do they.

When it's finished you'll get a nice big green tick to tell you everything went a-ok. hit close to exit the installer and you're done.

Now you are probably saying 'why the heck are we even doing this Ciq? what's in it for us?' well you bunch of untrusting so and so's asides from providing a whole raft of pretty damn good development tools for building applications for OS X (something we may explore as this series progresses when we start looking at automation) the Xcode Tools also make sure that you have all those fiddly libraries you might possibly need to compile applications from source and as we progress through the rest of this series you'll soon come to realise when you are compiling something for the umpteenth time that I had your best interests at heart the entire time and then you'll get a lovely warm rush of emotion as you know that someone out there truly cares. how nice of me.

That's all for now if you would like to find out more about the capabilities of Xcode you can do some reading up on it at http://developer.apple.com/technology/tools.html

Until next time chaps... toodle-pip.

My Perfect OS X Coldfusion Dev Environment - Introduction

noreply@blogger.com (Ciqala) — Wed, 08 Oct 2008 12:20:00 +0000

Like my old nan used to say "A well organised developer is a productive developer".

Actually she didn't say that at all she isn't quite sure what a developer is, but if she did know what a developer was and was asked a question regarding the impact of organisation on their productivity she possibly might say something to that effect.

For most developers time IS money (or at the very least time that could be better spent elsewhere, like the pub) and regardless of if you work for a fortune-500 company, you're a freelancer or you just enjoy building sites for your own personal enjoyment time and effort used for a task that could have been avoided with a bit of advanced thinking is essentially wasted. You'll never get that time back. Ever!

It can be avoided however, by making sure that the platform you are working upon is capable of meeting any needs that may crop up in the course of a development project you can start to put into place working practises that will save you time and reduce the amount of effort spent doing things that don't directly contribute to the success of said project. For example would you rather spend an hour trying to configure a development site each time you take on a new project or spend an hour or two creating a script that will take 5 minutes to configure and then generate that environment for you? if your answer is A what the hell are you thinking, I didn't letter the options, stop making up quizzes in your head. this won't be on the mid-term.

It is my intention with this series of upcoming blog posts to take you through the setup of my personal development machine with all the tools you could possibly need to develop web applications centered around the use of CFML (note: that does not exclusively mean just coldfusion) on the OS X operating system (because we all know macs rawk!). Once we have a nice solid dev environment to work in we'll then go on to explore how we can automate and eliminate some of the more tedious and wasteful tasks that could potentially get in the way of us getting to the pub on time.

That concludes this brief introduction to this series of posts. the first proper installment in the series of guides will be posted shortly after this one.

Please subscribe to my rss feed if you are interested in following my progress.

meme(me)

noreply@blogger.com (Ciqala) — Mon, 22 Sep 2008 16:39:00 +0000

Take a picture of yourself right now.
Don't change your clothes, don't fix your hair... just take a picture.
Post that picture with NO editing.
Post these instructions with your picture.

...gangsta :)

FAO: Apple marketing... Seriously?

noreply@blogger.com (Ciqala) — Wed, 17 Sep 2008 14:42:00 +0000

This is the heading that I was presented with when opening a marketing email I received just now...No you're not imagining things it really does say 'the funnest iPod ever'.

*facepalm*

Justifying Coldfusion? Help is at hand...

noreply@blogger.com (Ciqala) — Tue, 16 Sep 2008 09:22:00 +0000

Ok a lot of people reading this are probably already using Coldfusion but if you are ever put in a position where you need to justify the usage of Coldfusion for a project then the downloadable Coldfusion evangelism kit included in Kristen Schofield (Adobe's Senior Product Marketing Manager) latest blog posting could be for you.

According to the post the kit includes:

- C-level Exec quote

- Key stats

- Customers by vertical

- Recent Awards

- Press highlights

- Product Roadmap

- CF / other Adobe product integration messaging

- CF Integation HUB

- Measured results of CF usage

All of which should help rail against the onward march of open source "free" solutions that target the same markets.