Category: Computers

Mac OS X and Windows

Build mod_jk for centos

I reduced it to a script:

#!/bin/bash
# Build the mod_jk apache tomcat connector from src tarball and install it
#
set -x
srcball=$1
if [ -z "$srcball" ]; then
echo The source tarball was not given - expected something like \"tomcat-connectors-versionxxx-src\" to be passed as parameter
exit 1
fi

pushd /tmp
curl http://mirror.rmg.io/apache//tomcat/tomcat-connectors/jk/$srcball.tar.gz -O

if [ ! -f /tmp/$srcball.tar.gz ]
then
echo $srcball.tar.gz not found in /tmp/. Couldn\'t build mod_jk
exit 2
fi

tar xvf $srcball.tar.gz
cd $srcball/native
./configure --with-apxs=/usr/sbin/apxs
make
cp ./apache-2.0/mod_jk.so /etc/httpd/modules/
popd

Sadly, the page whence I got my info has shuffled off its mortal coil and departed this interweb.

Make OS X Spaces work properly

For years I have shunned Apple's OS X Spaces as useless. I was excited about them for a good 2 minutes, which is how long it took to find out that if I had 2 spaces open, and I opened a browser in the 2nd space, then it flipped back to the 1st space. Completely not the point of having Spaces.
Until today. I found this setting in Mission Control:
OS X Mission Control when switching to an application switch Space setting
So I un-ticked it. Perfect. Now I can have a space for work, a space for homework, with browser and mail and other windows open in each space, and it no longer flips between them except I want it to.

MacBook Pro doesn’t go to sleep properly / Spotlight takes ages at start up – NTFS

I've had this problem on and off for years, with 2 MacBooks, that they took as much as a minute to fall asleep or failed to do so at all. At the moment my current theory is that Tuxera NTFS / NTFS-3G have been the culprits: it would sometimes use 30% CPU to do nothing and killing it let the machine sleep. And I think it's responsible for the problem I have that SpotLight doesn't work properly for several minutes after first starting up the machine and logging in - it seems to be indexing the BootCamp partition.
I've recently install the current version, 2012.3.4 and it was fine for a while – sleep and spotlight problem resolved. But they still came back and at the moment I'm working with NTFS not mounting the BootCamp partition.

Which is fine until I want to copy something onto it for use in Windows... Grrr. So at the moment my workaround is to use the Tuxera System Preferences Pane to manually switch it on and off when needed.

There are other solutions for NTFS support in OS X, but the Apple unreleased one isn't recommended which leaves you with the paid ones, Tuxera or Paragon, or the free Tuxera one, NTFS-3G.