No pain no gain

I just wanted to connect to my subversion repository with svnX via the https protocol. Guess what, svnX did not want to connect because it did not trust my selfsigned certificate. The only way to continue was to dismiss the error message with no way to import the certificate.

Turns out that svnX is using the command line svn client to communicate with repositories. So you need to mark the SSL certificate as trusted in the command line client and then svnX will work automatically. To do that, fire up a terminal window and just list the contents of your repository:

svn list https://whatever.server.com/repository/

Now svn will print a certificate validation error and ask whether you want to dismiss or accept the cerificate. Accept it permanently to get rid of that warning. Now you can access the repository via svnX.

Ok, so here it comes, my first Cocoa posting. I am pretty new to Cocoa and therefore this might be something you are more than familiar with, but for me it is handy to have a quick reference written down where I can look up things. So today I would like to talk about memory management. My coding background lies about 70% in Java, 20% in PHP and 10% in C/C++. So in the past mostly I did not have to worry about memory management topics, although I am familiar with the low level C/C++ way of allocating and releasing memory. Cocoa uses an approach somehow in the middle between automatic garbage collection and manual management. Once you get used to it, it is a very powerful tool and you have a much better control over the memory consumption in your applications than in Java while being less error prone than the C/C++ mechanism.

If you want to dive into the details of Cocoa memory management, I recommend you read the Memory management Programming Guide For Cocoa from Apple. For me it was the main source of information about this topic.

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Now that the basic Apache configuration is working, let’s take some time to harden the installation. The module mod_security is really handy for this task. It is an application level firewall meaning that it will inspect incoming requests to the webserver and try to identify possible attacks like code injection, SQL injection and cross-site-scripting. As handy as this tool might be, it is not meant as a substitute for a secure PHP or Apache configuration, so you still need to take care not to open potential security holes there. If you followed my basic Apache and PHP setup you should be on the safe side, as the most exploited security holes have already been closed.

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After setting up the mail system, I continued today with the basic webserver setup. This setup includes a basic Apache2 configuration with SSL and name based virtual hosts. PHP5 and MySQL5 are also needed for serving dynamic content.

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I am currently in the process of upgrading my webserver to Debian Etch. In the past I have been using Debian Sarge with Plesk as an administration desktop. Plesk is very convenient, but it is also a memory hog and a performance killer, so I decided to go on without a web based administration tool and configure every service manually. This has the advantage that the system will be more secure and easier to update. The downside is a little bit more work in the beginning. During the next couple of postings I will document the configuration of the various services I have running on that server.

In this first post I will start with the mail service for which I choose the Postfix daemon together with policyd-weight for spam filtering and Dovecot as an IMAP and POP3 server. Authentication will be done with the SASL daemon against the standard user database. This is not really suited for large mail installations with a lot of users, but if you have to deal with only a couple of mail users, it is really easy to administrate.

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After working more and more with my Macbook instead of my desktop PC, I have found a couple of really nice tools for mostly all of my daily tasks. So here is a small list of tools and utilities which I basically use daily:

• Camino – This is basically the Firefox browser as a native OSX application. It has support for drag and drop, integrates the OSX keychain and spell checker and best of all, it’s completely free. The only downside is that you can not run the Firefox plugins.
• Textmate – Simply put: if you need a text editor there is absolutely no way around textmate. As a software developer you spend most of your time in a text editor and this is the most powerful editor I have ever worked with on any platform.
• Vienna – A very nice feedreader. Highly customizable and open source. As long as you do not read more than 200 feeds, this is a really good application.
• Quicksilver – To say Quicksilver is just an alternative program launcher is understatement par excellence. This is a completely new way working with OSX. It will save you a great deal of time. Also freeware.
• AdiumX – The multi protocol chat client for OSX. It has very nice theming support and it is open source.
• svnX – A GUI subversion client. Being used to TortoiseSVN on Windows, it is like a step back, but it is way better than using the command line tool.
• XAMPP – Apache, MySQL, PHP and Perl preconfigured in one easy to install package. If you do web development, there is no way around this.
• Cyberduck – A great FTP/SFTP client. Easy to use and open source.
• iShowU – A great tool for recording screencasts. I prefer recording a screencast instead of writing long turorials. This tool is easy to use and produces great results.
• NeoOffice – This is the native OSX port of open office. I guess I will transition to iWork once the Numbers application is really stable, but in the meantime NeoOffice is working really great.
• Gimp - A powerful graphics application. It hase more functions and filters than an amateur will ever need.
• WhatSize – A really small but handy utility to find out which folders on your hard drive contains the largest files. Can be very useful when cleaning up your hard drive.

Well, I guess that’s basically it. I will keep you updated when I find great new tools.

Everyone has been expecting the iMac upgrade for the last couple of months and today was the day that the upgrade finally was presented at the summer Mac product press conference.

The design of the new iMac is really breathtaking. It got considerably thinner than the white model and the aluminum material marks it clearly as a model targeted at the pro market.

The internal upgrades feature a faster processor, more RAM and a bigger hard disk. But the important part for becoming an all purpose computer for work and gaming is the graphics card and I feel that Apple did not completely make their homework. The entry-level model for 1200,- EUR will come with a Radeon HD 2400 XT which is an absolutely low end graphics card that you can buy for around 60,- EUR. I mean come on Apple, you build a really great system except this graphics card which is really a bummer considering the overall price tag.

Let’s take a look at the 20″ iMac for 1500,- EUR. It will come with Intel Core2Duo 2.4GHz, 1GB RAM, 320GB harddrive and the Radeon HD 2600 Pro. Ok, this card is about twice as fast as the 2400XT and a little bit faster than the Radeon 1600 which you find in the current iMac. But when you buy this card for your PC you will find that it is still targeted towards the lower mid end market with a price tag of around 100,- EUR.

In my opinion this is really a bummer and I was definitely expecting a little bit more, let’s say something in the area of a Radeon 1950 Pro. Especially since ID software committed themselves to deliver their new titles in parallel for PCs and Mac. But hey, maybe Apple did some great things with their drivers and these cards will perform better than expected, so let’s wait for the first true reviews.