Sam Pierson's Blog » System Administration

Completely uninstall mysql from Mac OS X

sam — Thu, 14 May 2009 23:54:42 +0000

Remove mysql, prefpane item, startup item.
then:

sudo rm -rf /Library/Receipts/mysql*

There is a good complete explanation of this here.

Mac OS X command-line launchd control of mysql

sam — Thu, 14 May 2009 23:45:57 +0000

To start, stop and disable mysql server from the command line:

# start
sudo launchctl start com.mysql.mysqld
# stop
sudo launchctl stop com.mysql.mysqld
# Unload
sudo launchctl unload /Library/LaunchDaemons/com.mysql.mysqld.plist

Terminal.app custom tab names

sam — Tue, 28 Apr 2009 05:07:24 +0000

So it turns out you can have the best of both worlds. I have been using ITerm for a while because it allows me to rename its tabs. Chad just turned me on to a hack that makes the same thing possible with Terminal.app:

1. Install SIMBL: http://www.culater.net/software/SIMBL/SIMBL.php

2. Install TabNamer.Bundle: http://ericanderson.us/2008/03/02/terminalapp-tab-namer-v01-alpha/
a. download & unzip
b. move TabNamer.Bundle to ~/Library/Application Support/SIMBL/Plugins

MacOS Leopard bash echo not interpreting escape sequences

sam — Thu, 16 Apr 2009 22:58:56 +0000

I just hit this incredibly retarded irritating gotcha in Mac OS Leopard. Luckily, unlike this poor bastard, it only cost me an hour.

Bash echo is supposed to interpret \ escape sequences (e.g. \n) if you supply it a -e flag. This works from the command line. It works in shell scripts. It works in ’system’ commands inside rake scripts. Unless of course you ssh into the very same system and run the same rake script; then it stops working.

I tracked this down to the COMMAND_MODE=legacy environment variable, which if missing (and it is missing if I ssh in) makes Leopard do all sorts of stupid Single UNIX Specification Version 3 (SUSv3) compatibility crap. As Stephen points out, this even breaks GNU autoconf scripts! Way to go, Apple – talk about missing the point completely.

Apache server redirects using MacOS Server Admin

sam — Mon, 16 Feb 2009 20:16:09 +0000

Note to self before I delete this entry.
This will redirect an entire site:

Server Admin -> Your server -> Web -> Your site -> Aliases -> Url Aliases and Redirects

Type = RedirectMatch
Pattern = .*
Path = http://example.com

iStat menus

sam — Tue, 23 Dec 2008 22:57:59 +0000

There appear to be a couple of different iStat applications. You want this one.

Google Analytics for Wordpress

sam — Fri, 07 Nov 2008 15:32:46 +0000

I tried installing the google-analytics-for-wordpress plugin for wordpress. It did not work. It’s admin page appears, so it is being read in, but it does not insert any content into the page. Not sure whether this is a problem with the plugin, with Wordpress or with the theme I am using. The theme looks to be coded correctly, so I said screw it and added the GA code by hand to the end of the wp-content/plugins/themes//footer.php file.

Installing Ruby MySQL gem on Mac OS X Leopard

sam — Wed, 01 Oct 2008 13:24:30 +0000

Thanks to this post, I discovered how to install the MySQL ruby gem on Mac OS X:

You must be using the x86 variant of MySQL, not x86_64, apparently. Then:

sudo env ARCHFLAGS="-arch i386" gem install mysql -- \
--with-mysql-dir=/usr/local/mysql --with-mysql-lib=/usr/local/mysql/lib \
--with-mysql-include=/usr/local/mysql/include

Mac os x screenshots

sam — Fri, 19 Sep 2008 13:27:47 +0000

As described here, Command-Shift-4 will capture a dragged area of the screen and save it to a file.

Command-Shift-3 will capture the entire screen, or if you have SnapProX running, it activates it.

ServerAdmin wipes changes to apache2/site/* files

sam — Thu, 18 Sep 2008 21:49:37 +0000

If you change the configuration for any site using the Mac OS X Server Admin tool, it will rewrite every single site file in the /etc/apache2/site/ folder. Do not change these by hand if you use this tool.

This is somewhat braindead as for example to use pretty permalinks in Wordpress you need AllowOverride FileInfo for that . However the only choice that Server Admin gives you is AllowOverride All.