Rogue Wolves

I bit the bullet and installed OSX 10.5 "Leopard" on Friday. I first did a full backup, then did a clean install and used the Migration Assistant to transfer my user folder, settings and applications from the backup. So far it seems to have worked well, with the exception of several applications (all of which were Mail.app extensions such as MailTags, GPGMail, GrowlMail, etc.)

I did have one annoying issue that I just recently have resolved. I noticed that a process ATSServer was continually eating up lots of my CPU cycles. I eventually tried killing it but it would respawn and resume eating up CPU cycles doing whatever it was doing. After a bit of searching I found that this process is related to Apple Type Services and the problem is typically due to corrupt fonts or a damaged cache file. Long story short, this wasn't the issue and none of the provided fixes helped.

After reading through my log files I found a mention of a permission error, so I decided to run Disk Utility and repair the file permissions on my volume. Then I reboot and the problem seems to be gone.

Hopefully this will help anyone else having this problem.

Recently I've had to do some SOA development using Java and Tomcat. I've never dipped my toes into Java web service development so it's a new world to me. Compared to ASP.NET it seems very convoluted with many different frameworks and conflicting/incomplete/outdated tutorials. I ended up using Axis2 as the framework but wanting to develop on OS X I had to install a servlet container to host my web services. I also wanted to integrate this into Apache for various reasons. After some research and searching here is a process I came up with to install Tomcat on OS X using Apache.

These instructions are for OS X 10.4 (Tiger) with JDK 1.5 and Tomcat 5.5:

Step 1: Download Tomcat and JK source

You can download Tomcat from this link

In order to integrate Tomcat with Apache you need to use the JK Apache module. I downloaded the source for the module and compiled it. You can download the JK Apache module source from this link

Step 2: Install Apache Tomcat

First unpack apache tomcat (double click the file in the Finder) then move folder to /usr/local (or optionally /Library)


sudo mv apache-tomcat-5.5.20 /usr/local


Next create a symbolic link in /usr/local for tomcat. I do this to make it easier to update tomcat versions later.


sudo ln -s apache-tomcat-5.5.20 tomcat


Step 3: Build and install the JK module for Apache

Unpack JK module (double click the file in the Finder) and then open a Terminal and change to the directory that contains the JK source code native directory. You need to build the module from source code to do this issue these commands:

Somehow I missed this but I noticed ZigVersion mentioned in an Apple Developer Connection email recently and that it is now 1.0! Congrats!

I did a quick review of ZigVersion a while back and I have been using the beta version off and on for my own personal projects ever since. It's a great simple to use graphical Subversion client for OS X.

From the website:

ZigVersion is a Version Control interface for Mac developers that works with Subversion servers. Instead of simply reproducing the command line concepts as a graphical interface, we looked at the typical workflows of professional programmers and designed an interface around them.

Note that it isn't open source and requires a valid license. However, you can use it for a trial period to see how you like it first. I'd recommend they lower the commercial license cost as it's a bit high and might chase off potential customers (particularly small independent developers). They have promised to offer a free non-commercial license in the future.

You can see ZigVersion profiled on the Apple Development Tools Download page.

Okay I'll let the cat out of the bag: I bought a MacBook. I've had it for a month and it's awesome. I'll leave the review of it for another day (I've been working on a post but can never find the time to finish it).

When I first got the MacBook my plan was to install Boot Camp on it so I could boot into Windows XP every now and then for some Windows Mobile development I've been working on. Boot Camp worked really well but has a major problem: You own a mac to run OS X and all your OS X applications. I have all my productivity applications and data setup in OS X. I don't want to have to install windows equivalents and set them up so I can have access to my mail, IM, word processor, etc. I'd rather use those applications in OS X and be able to work in Windows....enter Parallels.

Parallels is a virtual machine that runs on OS X that will let you virtualize your x86 hardware. This allows you to run other operating systems at the same time as your main operating system at near native speed (provided you have LOTS of RAM). This type of technology is amazing for software testers and application developers who work in one environment but test/develop for another. No rebooting madness or computer switching. Plus if your buggy software pulls down the operating system...just kill the virtual machine and restart it all while still being able to work on your machine (great time to check your email).

Note: To date I believe Parallels is the only virtualization software that takes advantage of Intel Virtualization technology

So back on point. I started with Boot Camp and it worked well but rebooting all the time was annoying and not having access to my data and applications was even more annoying. Parallels was the way BUT I spent a bit of time installing Boot Camp and getting it all configured for my work. I didn't want to waste lots of time starting from scratch and rebuilding yet another work environment. Wouldn't it be cool if you could take your Boot Camp install and transform it into a Parallels install?

That's exactly what I did, but I can't take credit for this amazing feat. I give big props to Colddiver (whoever he is) for posting this set of instructions to migrate Boot Camp to Parallels. Well done.

How did it work out? Really well. The speed of Parallels is really great. I'm running Windows XP in a virtual machine and then running an Pocket PC emulator inside that and it's not slowed to a crawl. I do have 2 gig of RAM though which helps greatly. The only major snag I found was that the switch over invalidated my Windows XP install and I had to call Microsoft to get a new activation key. No biggie. It takes all of 5 minutes to get a new one.

If you are in a similar situation my advice would be to start from scratch and install Windows fresh in the virtual machine if it's reasonable to do so but if you don't have the time these instructions work pretty well. Also note you will need a good amount of hard drive space to perform these steps. I had an external firewire drive that did the trick.

Good Luck!

Oh and if you use Parallels go and use it along with Virtue Desktop. I'll let this video speak for itself. Heck use Virtue Desktop even if you don't use Parallels. It's wicked cool. Amaze your friends.