On Tiger

Previously I described my usual reluctance to be first out of the gate to do an operating system update, so until this afternoon I was still running Jaguar / Mac OSX 10.3. To be honest and repetitive, an operating system is really not something I like to focus on- a good OS should be as transparent and efficient as possible, like I would guess (having no experience) your typical Hollywood British butler is portrayed.

I’ve got too much to do than fiddle with the OS- so if it is working and I am working, we are all okay.

True to form, I do not upgrade until there is something compelling that requires the upgraded system. The push over the line for me to upgrade to Tiger (10.4) was GoogleTalk… The fact that Apple iChat (10.4 only) would be compatible with audio chat via GoogleTalk/Jabber pushed me over the upgrade edge.

I am anxious to try GoogleTalk out and do some testing from Mac to PC and back for audio chat.

And if I was really upgrade anal, I would have backed up all files, wiped the disk clean, and done a clean install… but I run a moderately lean system, and I loathe re-installing and re-configuring software, so I ran the update. It took about 40 minutes, and when it was done, the new OS was not all that dramatically different. I’m letting Spotlight index over night, and I only flicked Dashboard on once. I’m sure there is more to explore, but most of the stuff looks it is functioning.

One annoyance of Apple upgrade is that it ends up over-writing some of the underlying unix settings, most notable my customized settings for the web server (filed in /etc/httpd/httpd.conf). My edits are what allow me to run a mirror copy of all my web server apps on my laptop, so the changes I need to make sure get checked or redone are:

activating PHP
a few cgi script aliases (for running UseMod locally)
my virtual domains, I run specific folders in my local web directory as copies of my online site, so only on my desktop:
- http://www.mcli.loc/ is a copy of http://www.mcli.dist.maricopa.edu/
- http://zircon.mcli.loc/ is a copy of http://zircon.mcli.dist.maricopa.edu/
- http://jade.mcli.loc/ is a copy of http://jade.mcli.dist.maricopa.edu/
This involves some edits to httpd.conf as well as setting up some things in NetInfo Manager, but it was nicely explained in a mezzoblue posting and helped by the link form there to the evolt article on Virtual Hosts in Mac OSX (evolt is a spectacular user community for coders, a long timer out there- the museum of old web browsers is a niche of a gold mine).

I cannot underscore how valuable this is for me as I can test all my web apps on my laptop before popping them on the server.
I expect I may have to run my local copy of mySQL.