Installing PostgreSQL server using MacPorts used to be a simple matter. For some reason, using the latest MacPorts 2.0.3 on Snow Leopard seems to break the relatively simple install process.
The main problem is the install process doesn’t create the postgres user and group. This is done during the destroot phase of the install process, which doesn’t seem to be run automatically anymore.
Luckily, you can manually run the destroot phase. The following example shows you how to install PostgreSQL 8.4 server:
sudo port install postgresql84-server
sudo port destroot postgresql84-server
sudo port clean postgresql84-server
Now you can happily create the defaultdb and assign the proper user and group ownership.
Note that the problem only seems to happen on Snow Leopard, and not on Lion.
I use MacPorts for my Python installations. With the latest Xcode 4.2, MacPorts uses clang as the default compiler. This causes all sorts of fun with decimal arithmetics, such as:
$ python
Python 2.6.7 (r267:88850, Oct 28 2011, 17:33:57)
[GCC 4.2.1 Compatible Apple Clang 3.0] on darwin
>>> from decimal import Decimal
>>> Decimal(10)/Decimal(5)
Decimal('8.955976040786690048E-10')
Note that Python is compiled with Clang 3.0.
The fix is to compile Python with GCC. The easiest way to accomplish this is to edit the Portfile and for MacPorts to use a specific compiler.
MacPorts keeps a local version of available Python ports at:
I add it in the # ensure that correct compiler is used section, before configure.cc is used, like so:
# ensure that correct compiler is used
configure.compiler gcc-4.2
build.args-append MAKE="${build.cmd} CC=${configure.cc}"
destroot.args-append MAKE="${destroot.cmd} CC=${configure.cc}"
Now recompile python:
sudo port -n upgrade --force python26
After waiting for a while everything will be OK again:
$ python
Python 2.6.7 (r267:88850, Oct 29 2011, 21:09:34)
[GCC 4.2.1 (Apple Inc. build 5666) (dot 3)] on darwin
>>> from decimal import Decimal
>>> Decimal(10)/Decimal(5)
Decimal('2')
Note that Python is now compiled with GCC 4.2.1.
The steps I described is a hack and the next time you perform port selfupdate your changes will be wiped out. But I imagine this bug will be fixed before you have to update Python again. If you want to do things properly by setting up your own local repository, see the MacPorts guide.
You should obviously recompile all versions of MacPorts Python you use, as this bug isn’t isolated to 2.6.
One of the features I want with my laptop is to be able to put it to sleep and be ready to go. Ideally I can accomplish this by simply closing the lid.
There are two issues that prevent me from doing this currently on OS X Lion:
If I’m using an external monitor, instead of going to sleep, Lion moves all the windows to the external monitor1.
When I’m at home, I always have external drives connected to my laptop. I have to consciously unmount the drives or else I get the dreaded “disk not ejected properly” message when I wake up the laptop.
Currently there doesn’t appear to be a way to affect the lid closing behavior so I just have to manually put the laptop to sleep. However, there is a way to automatically unmount external drives on sleep.2
The primary tool I’m using is SleepWatcher, a daemon which monitors sleep and wakeup events of a Mac. I’ll walk through the installation of SleepWatcher and the creation of associated scripts to unmount external drives on sleep and mount them on wakeup.
sudo port install sleepwatcher to install the binary, man page, launchd configuration file, and system-wide sleep and wake up scripts.
sudo port load sleepwatcher to load the launchd configuration.
If you don’t use MacPorts, download the latest version of SleepWatcher from http://www.bernhard-baehr.de/ and follow the instructions in the ReadMe.rtf.
Create the .sleep script
The system-wide sleep script iterates through each user’s home directory looking for a .sleep script and executes the script as the user3. Follow these steps to create the script:
cat > $HOME/.sleep
Paste the following into your terminal:
#!/bin/sh
osascript -e 'tell application "Finder" to eject disks'
⌃D (Ctrl-D) to terminate the input stream.
chmod +x $HOME/.sleep
At this point you can test to see if your script is working properly by running $HOME/.sleep. Your external hard drives should be unmounted.
Create the .wakeup script
This script is used to mount any HFS volumes that the laptop knows about upon waking up. Follow these steps to create the script:
cat > $HOME/.wakeup
Paste the following into your terminal:
#!/bin/sh
/usr/sbin/diskutil list | \
awk '/Apple_HFS/ {print $NF}' | \
xargs -I{} /usr/sbin/diskutil mount {}
⌃D (Ctrl-D) to terminate the input stream.
chmod +x $HOME/.wakeup
Test the script by running $HOME/.wakeup. Your external drives should be mounted.
That’s it. Now when you sleep your computer, any external drives should automatically be unmounted4. Upon wakeup, any HFS volumes should automatically be mounted.
Basically, with more than one monitor hooked up to the laptop, the lid acts as an on/off switch for the laptop monitor. ↩
I’m only dealing with external USB/Firewire HFS drives. The one test I ran with a USB key fob and Samba network share worked fine. Test everything out in your own environment! ↩
Since I’m always logged in as an admin user, I created my .sleep and .wakeup scripts in my home directory. If you log in as a user that can’t mount/unmount drives, then you should modify the system-wide rc.sleep and rc.wakeup scripts, or create your .sleep and .wakeup scripts in the admin user’s home directory. ↩
There is still a chance that this may not work if a process has a file lock on a specific volume. In my testing this has worked fine with Time Machine, which will stop the backup properly. ↩
I use MacPorts to install add-ons for my Mac in an isolated way from the core OS. This is the routine I go through to keep my ports up to date and as lean as possible.
I typically run updates once a month, and this is the procedure I use.
The first thing is to update MacPorts itself:
sudo port selfupdate
I keep older versions of ports around for one update revision in case I need to roll back, so let’s remove those inactive ports.
http://guide.macports.org/#using.common-tasks. You can mark certain ports as requested, preventing them from being reported as leaves, i.e.: sudo port -d setrequested autoconf help2man p5-locale-gettext m4 automake libtool pkgconfig↩
