Mac@Work : The Ultimate Business Machine

I've managed to get Dovecot and Postfix working again on Lion. This is version 2.0.12 of Dovecot. There were so many changes to Dovecot especially, and to Postfix, and also, most importantly, to the underlying operating system, that I despaired of ever being able to figure them all out again, at one stage.

But these are just the basics. There are still a whole lot of issues ahead - Fetchmail, SMTP authentication, POP and IMAP, SSL, spam filtering, user account creation, etc…

Running Lion on the Thunderbolt MacBook Pro

I'm now able to run the OS X Lion Developer Preview on my new 2011 Thunderbolt MacBook Pro (15 inch). Besides finding the MBP unable to wake from sleep a couple of times, plus a corruption of the screen when I tried to run the iPhone simulator (for some reason Spaces was triggered and the video output froze beween the two screens I had set up for Spaces), I'm enjoying the Lion experience. It feels somewhat zippier than Snow Leopard, plus there are many nice touches, though aesthetically, I miss the colourful exuberance of Aqua. Lion is unremittingly grey.

By now I've got DNS Enabler, DNS Agent, WebMon and Liya running again on Lion, so that settles the basics - DNS (because the DNS admin tool in Lion Server still looks wanting), the web server (so I know my PHP scripts still run and I can get at least get my web site up on Lion), and my access to MySQL and PostgreSQL databases.

I'm using my own tool, which I'm tentatively calling DuoMo, to update my web site and weblog, and not a moment too soon because there is no FTP in Lion (or at least a GUI for starting FTP). It's all AFP now.

As usual there are changes under the hood for all three servers that I work with - the web, dns and mail servers. I've fixed the stuff for web and dns, and now I move on to mail. Only after I've made MailServe work again for Lion, can I come back to the question, what new stuff do I build for Lion?

Especially the question - what do I do with Lion Server? How do the servers I set up coexist with it, and augment it - to take advantage of Lion Server's ability to set up a Calendar and Contacts server, etc...? These are things I've always wanted to do and so I'm looking forward to the challenge.

DuoMo

This my GoLive/Dreamweaver replacement. It's tentatively called DuoMo, as in the Duomo, a cathedral. I was reading Ken Follett's Pillars of the Earth, when I started work on it and felt that building a website, or an OS X/iPhone/iPad app, for that matter, is a lot like building a cathedral.

I was using BBEdit to write my weblog entries but I've always wanted a wysiwyg (do people still say wysiwyg? what you see is what you get?) editor, that'll look exactly like my weblog entry on my actual web page, and where I don't have to enter HTML markups like <b>bold</b> for bold text, or to set the paragraph style, like :

Or where I can simply drag an image into the blog entry and the app would bring the image over to the right folder (and possibly scale it to fit the weblog page). And where I can create a web link just by control-clicking on a text range and entring the link address.

That's why I've been hoping for an editable WebKit for the iPhone or iPad from Apple. That'll allow me to build something like this to update my weblog while on the move, which, strangely, is when I've often felt like I've got something to say. So far, WebKit is still not editable on iOS.

So far I've managed to make DuoMo workable even over a very slow web connection, as when you're using the iPhone 4's Personal HotSpot feature to share your 3G connection with your MacBook. In such a case, GoLIve won't even work, with the spinning beach ball going on and on forever and you have to Force-Quit GoLive when you try to connect back to your web server.

Doing a sync with the home site is still rather slow with DuoMo (if via the iPhone's shared 3G connection, but it'll simply fly over WiFi because I've spent hours figuring out where the app spends its network connection time) but that's the great thing about writing your own code and building your own tools. I feel that I should be able to fix that also somehow, given time.

Some preliminary thoughts on OS X Lion Development

I've prepared one machine to run OS X Lion on one partition and Lion Server on another, so I should be all set to go to move all my apps over to Lion.

First, all Lion development is done on the new version 4 of Xcode, which brings about significant changes to the way things used to be done. So far, I'm loving the new software development workflow in Xcode 4. After one month of work, I believe I'm really more productive on it than on Xcode 3.

But it's not all good, of course. Things inevitably break - e.g., my database access frameworks for MySQL, Postgres and SQLite. I needed some time to get used to the new Xcode build settings before I could figure out how to get them working again, including building for iPhone and iPad which are, of course, on another platform architecture altogether (i.e., Arm 6 and 7, as opposed to Intel x386, 32 or 64 bit). There are all these variations to build fat binaries for, and every time Apple changes something major like this, I go through this sinking feeling that I may never get things to work again.

Then there's this thing about FTP not being supported in Lion, i.e., you can't seem to be able to ftp onto a Lion server. There's no obvious way to turn it on - not in Sharing Preferences or even in Lion Server (I think).

I've been using this decade-old Adobe GoLive technology to manage my web site's static web pages, so this seems like the end of the road for it. I don't want to use any Adobe stuff when I move to Lion (or Microsoft stuff, for that matter).

So I've been building this GoLive/DreamWeaver replacement for myself, that I'm now using to write this weblog on (among the things I've made it able to do), and that'll be my key web site creation/management tool in Lion.

More on all these developmen later. But, in summary, I've got the piececs I need to move on to Lion development in earnest now. Hope I won't be too late for its launch.

Downloading Xcode 4.0.1

There's a new Xcode version 4.0.1 for download from Apple Developer Connection. Just in time to try my new download speed.

Everything is working well so far with my new broadband plan. Except for one thing. I don't seem to be able to connect my Mac directly to the broadband modem anymore via PPPoE, bypassing the Airport Extreme Base Station.

I think I've tried everything - like switching off the modem completely to drain it of all power and to clear out any "memory" problems with the previous connection - but the Mac refuses to connect.

Just to make sure it's not just a Mac-only problem, I tried it also with the Singnet technician's Windows laptop. Was perversely happy to see that that didn't work either.

Maybe I need to reset the modem. Hadn't tried that yet. But that would mean bringing the site down again. Didn't want to do that.

Will try again when maybe I get a parallel duplicate broadband line that I can devote to doing such testing. I do have a Mio TV connection that could have its Internet connection activated - maybe with the new 200 Mbps optic fibre connection (that comes with a 100 Mbps upload path, so downloads from my site go that much faster). That may look like quite attractive but I don't think I can afford that yet.

P.S.: In the time I took to write this, Xcode 4.0.1 is already halfway downloaded, at my new 15 Mbps download speed. That's a 4.3 GB download. If I have a 200 Mbps line, that would all have come down in a jiffy. Whatever speed you have, you will always want more.

Our Site is Up Again

OK, our broadband connection is up again and I do get 50% better line speed. The site was down for the last two hours. So if you've been trying to get in to download something a short while ago, that was the reason why.

Upgrading my Broadband Line

I'm going to be upgrading my broadband line speed. I'm not sure exactly when but it should be done sometime from now till tomorrow.

So if you find the site down, it'll come right back up after my ISP has done the upgrade. Hope to get 50% more speed by then and make all this disruption worthwhile.

Why our server apps are not in The Mac App Store

I've been asked, why are our apps like MailServe and DNS Enabler not in the Mac App Store?

There's this small matter of rule 2.27 in Apple's Mac App Store Review Guidelines:

It says, "Apps that request escalation to root privileges or use setuid attributes will be rejected". And that's that.

In order to configure the mail, web, or DNS server, my apps need to be granted superuser status by the user. There's no other way around it. Or is there? But I can't quite think how. At least for the moment.

Of course, there are the other apps that should probably be OK with the Apple Thought Police. Luca, Liya, etc. But one thing at a time. There's always so much to do and so little time.

Live Server is now on 10.6.7

I've updated the cutedgesystems.com live server to 10.6.7. All the mail services, including Fetchmail and Dovecot, and DNS, web and the SSL stuff continue to work. So it's probably safe for all the people who're users of all our apps to update, too.

Narra

Here's the other tech update I have. I've finished a first, usable version of something I'm calling Narra - a tool for creating and editing iBooks. My friend, Hai Hwee, is already using it to create notes that her tuition kids can review on their iPhones or iPads.

You can use it to create a new .epub iBook, drag and drop images into it, design the cover layout, and add and re-arrange pages. Right now, it only supports the placement of images (I haven't yet added tables or support for the other HTML elements), but it has support for drag and drop and unlimited undos. That should be enough to create a basic, yet good-looking .epub iBook.

To get the epub into the iPad or iPhone, just look for the saved .epub file, drag it into the Books section in iTunes and then sync the iPhone or iPad. The epub will appear in the iBooks app. It's that simple.

I haven't yet created a web page for Narra, but you can download Narra.zip from here. (I've only built it for Snow Leopard). Just use it and send me feedback. It was fun building this and there are even more things that I'm planning to do with it.

More Wireless Speed

While I'm waiting for the Macs to all get up to 10.6.7, a couple of tech updates that might help some people.

Here's one about getting the best speed out of your Airport Extreme wireless network.

All my Macs are now capable of operating at 802.11n speeds and so I should be able to switch my Airport Extreme Base Station to work exlusively on the less crowded and much faster 802.11n 5 GHz space, right? And get 300 Mbit/s Link Speed for all my Macs instead of the anaemic 120 Mbit/s at 802.11b/g/n mode. Right?

In practice, it's not so simple. It should be and one day it'll be but now it's not.

That's because, if you switch the Airport Extreme Base Station to the 802.11n 5 GHz range, you will find that some of the Macs will mysteriously lose contact with the base station's network when they come out of sleep or when they restart. All my Macs do that except, fortunately, the new Thunderbolt early 2011 MacBook Pro.

I spent a few days tracing this and found that it coincides with the Airport cards in the Macs thinking that they have a different country code from what they should be, e.g., DE or TW instead of SG in my case. When this happens, they can't find the Airport Base Station.

So this makes some sense, because my Airport Extreme Base Station's country is set to Singapore and this probably determines the range of frequencies or channels the base station would use. If the Airport card on the client Mac thinks it's operating in a different country, that will set that airport card's operating frequencies and these two - the range carried by the station and the one listened to by the client - may not coincide and that would explain why the client Mac can't find an obviously operating Airport base station.

So the question really boils down to, why does the Airport card randomly think it's operating in a different country (from what it should most obviously be) when the Mac comes out of sleep or when it's been rebooted?

The answer is, if you'll search the web, it's not random but it's definitely a bug. It's not random because the wireless cards of the world, and not just the Airport cards, determine the country code from the first operating beacon that they encounter and not just the base station that they're supposed to tune in to. So among the 2Wires and Linksys in my neighbourhood, there are many that still think that they're operating in Germany (DE) or Taiwan (TW), because their owners neglected to set the operatng country parameter correctly.

This is what happens when you give people too many buttons than they know how to press or too many options than they know how to fill in. This is the PC-everything-and-the-kitchen-sink mentality that is the blight in the neighbourhood.

The new MacBook Pro seems to have that bug fixed because it always (or maybe, mostly) gets the country code right when it comes out of sleep. But the other Macs need some help. I've determined empirically that the country most of the Airport cards think they are operating from, when they come out of sleep, is DE, probably because of the preponderance of PC-type wireless routers that have their operating country left as Germany in my neighbourhood.

In the Aiport Extreme Base Station, you can select a specifc channel to use in 802.11n 5 GHz mode, overriding the default choice ("Automatic"), if you hold down the option key while clicking on the pop-up menu. I've set the channel to 36, which is one that is used both by DE and SG.

And this has solved the problem. So I get all my Macs now operating at 300 Mbit/s over our Airport network. And things like file transfers feel that much zippier.

End of a happy story? Mostly. But occasionally, a rogue router that thinks it's in Taiwan will pipe in with TW please, before the DE's could respond and the Mac that is so stupid to listen to it will lose contact with the Airport base station (because TW doesn't operate with the channel 36, that DE and SG do). Usually for me, that Mac is an old MacBook that my kid uses and I've taught him to turn off and on Airport to get that out of the way because DE usually prevails here.

It's definitely a bug. It seems to have gone away with the new MacBook Pros. Apple should provide a firmware update to fix this for the older cards. Otherwise people will be operating far below the Nirvana they have the right to attain, just by being smart enough to use a Mac, or an iPhone or an iPad.

Mac OS X 10.6.7

The Mac OS X Snow Leopard 10.6.7 Software Update is out and I'm applying it to all my Macs. So far I've updated my iMac and the new Thunderbolt MacBook Pro, and they're both OK.

Doing the update now for two other MacBooks and, after that, it'll be the iMac that is the cutedgesystems.com live server. So you may see some minutes of downtime later on. If you do, don't worry. This site will come right back up after it.

P.S.: And I'll know if there are any problems with the mail, dns, web servers, etc., and if there is anything that will need to be fixed because of that software update.

Postfix and Dovecot on Lion