I published a pointer to this program earlier, but it was buried with some other mySQL information, and I felt it was worth its own article.
If you use mySQL databases on OS X, phpmyadmin is one of the better database administration programs I've run across. It's free, and it gives you browser-based access to all your databases. You can add and delete tables, databases, and records, create queries, change data, etc., all from your favorite web browser.
Until recently, phpmyadmin did not get along nicely with OmniWeb (the database names wouldn't show up, making it tough to use the program!). However, there's a release candidate of phpmyadmin 2.2 on the site, and it works very nicely with OmniWeb. There may be a couple of bugs, but I didn't find anything major in 30 minutes of working with it at lunch today. If you're working with version 4 of PHP, make sure you download the version for .PHP files (not .PHP3 files).
After trying out all the suggestions for running scripts (Perl, bash, tcsh, etc.) in the GUI and finding them less than satisfying, I decided to write my own app to do it the right way. I'm looking for a few folks to help give it a once-over prior to releasing it for general availability.
If you're interested in giving it a try and willing to give me a thorough critique, you can download it from my mac.com homepage. The code has been tested thoroughly on my own TiBook, but I'd like some "thumbs up" from independent third parties before I release it.
[Editor's note: I downloaded and ran Charles' program, and it seems to do exactly what he claims - it puts a nice GUI (and basic editor!) around your UNIX scripts. I have not extensively tested it, but it ran the three simple scripts I threw at it without any problems. Definitely worth a look, and Charles is looking for feedback if you give the program a trial run...]
Those of you who lust after the good old days of the text adventure may find this tip useful. The default installation of Mac OS X includes Emacs 20.7.1. Emacs is a very powerful tool, and includes the ability to retrieve/post news or mail, act as a calendar/diary application and has powerful text editing features. It also includes a few amusing games, most of which need to be executed within Emacs itself, except for one... dunnet. Using the following command at the shell will execute the game without opening up Emacs directly:
emacs -batch -l dunnet
For anyone familiar with text-based adventure games you will find most of the usual commands work (north, east, south, west, get, look, help, quit...). The following two commands allow you to save and restore your game to or from a specific file:
Demos Commander is a great shell utility for directory browsing and file management including viewing, copying, editing, and moving. This is a Unix app similar to Norton Commander for DOS. You can find the source for it at: ftp://ftp.cronyx.ru/cronyx/deco/deco383.tgz.
Mike Stolove
Toronto, Canada
[Editor's note: I downloaded and installed this package, and it does exactly what Mike claims - it brought back instant memories of working in the the Norton DOS Commander back in the early 1980's! If you dislike typing 'mv' and 'cp' commands in the shell, this is a great utility! Read the rest of the article for full installation instructions. You'll need to have the dev tools installed.]
[UPDATE: I've made a pre-compiled binary version available on my mac.com home page for those that don't have the dev tools or don't want to muck around with compiling. Read the rest of the article for the brief instructions to get the pre-compiled binary working.]
[Editor's note: Submitted by bobdavis on July 6th.]
I'm a web developer using MacOS-X for all of my development. I wrote a quick instructional article detailing the steps for creating Name-Based Virtual Hosts on a MacOS-X machine to aid in the development of multiple sites.
[Editor's note: Submitted by Crusty on July 5th. This question has been asked numerous times in the last month, so I figured I would see if one of the Apache wizards out there can provide the answer for the interested readers...I have an idea of what needs to be done, but not all the details.]
Hello all,
I've recently installed OS X on my Powerbook and love it. The main reason I purchased OS X was so I could work on Web pages that use SSI, Perl, PHP and MySQL without always having to connect to the Internet. I've followed some tutorials on this site about installing Apache, PHP and MySQL, and have them all running properly from my user directory called "Sites"!! I love it. But... I can't get any CGI/Perl scripts or SSI to work properly. I've used the terminal to go into the config file and altered the following lines:
Neither CGI or SSI work in my users "Sites" folder, but PHP and MySQL do. What have I missed? How can I get CGI/SSI to work in my personal site? Any help would be greatly appreciated.
[Editor's note: Submitted by Tony Williams on July 5th. I have not personally tested this script yet, so use at your own risk.]
Hi,
I did some hacking and testing of robh's Perl script to auto change the desktop picture. Step one was to fix the way it killed the Desktop rather than the Finder (much safer). The other was to fix the handling of the file URL so that it worked with all Mac file names, including ones with spaces or other characters.
Read the rest of this article if you'd like the new and improved script.
I find the default pager (more) for the 'man' info pages to be buggy. Pressing F forwards 3 pages instead of one, it always exits at the last page, and the formatting can be improved. I prefer the program less. To change it, add this line to your ~/.login file:
setenv PAGER /usr/bin/less
This should help because, as we all know, man is dogs best friend.
If you're looking for some of the more common GNU software programs pre-compiled in easy-to-use package installers, check out osxgnu.org for things such as Pine, Bash, Lynx, etc. If you don't have the developer tools installed, or simply want an easier way to get at some of the more common GNU packages, osxgnu.org seems like a good source.
[Editor: If you run a webserver on your OS X box, you might want to take a look at Analog, one of the better and more widely used weblog analyzers. Read the rest of this article if you'd like the detailed step-by-step instructions needed to get it running on OS X. You'll need to have the developer tools installed, and should be comfortable working in the terminal window before you try this install (it's not overly complicated, but it does involve editing and compiling UNIX source files).
Thanks to Commet for contributing this how-to. -rob.]
