Lion 10.7 Archives – Remons TechNotes

Downgrade (or upgrade) PHP on OSX

OSX Yosemite comes with PHP 5.5. OSX Mountain Lion comes with PHP 5.3. What if you wanted to run PHP 5.4 on both? Well, you can, with a dead simple installation;

Shell commandcurl -s http://php-osx.liip.ch/install.sh | bash -s 5.4

will install PHP 5.4.

Thanks to The coolest guide on the planet.

[EDIT: nov 6 2017: fixed dead link, added troubleshooting steps below]

Still not seeing the new version?

The command above should install the old PHP 5 in /usr/local/php5 (which should be user-writable) and also write a new config file in /etc/apache2/other/+php-osx.conf, so please check and see if both exist.
If you installed PHP 7.x, the folder is /usr/local/php7, of course.
Run apachectl -t -D DUMP_INCLUDES and check if the new config file is loaded (should be /etc/apache2/other/+php-osx.conf)
Try apachectl configtest and see if any errors occurred

If you can’t get it to work, try alternate methods, like using the even older series of posts on How to set-up and maintain a development environment on osx, OR (even better!) use Local by Flywheel.

Multiple Dropbox accounts – at once – no user switching

Tired of moving back and forth between user accounts just because you need a file from a second or third dropbox account? Sure you can use the web version but with three or more accounts, even that becomes tiresome.

Enter; MultiDropbox

Yeah, I could not think of a better name, but hey, it’s the thought that counts.

Do you want to know how to get more than one Dropbox account in sync on the same user, no switching, no web-apps, just functional? then read on.

Continue reading “Multiple Dropbox accounts – at once – no user switching”

Sending an email upon SVN-commit

Deprecated: pathinfo(): Passing null to parameter #1 ($path) of type string is deprecated in /data/sites/web/remonpelnl/www/wp-content/plugins/crayon-syntax-highlighter/crayon_langs.class.php on line 84

When you work with a group of people on the same projects, the larger the group gets, the more difficult the task of keeping everybody informed. So why not do this automatically? Send an e-mail upon an SVN commit. Here’s how I do it. Continue reading “Sending an email upon SVN-commit”

Development WebServer on OSX Lion – HomeBrew/MariaDB/PECL

Apache2 is already installed on any Mac and most setups (like MAMP or MacPorts) just ignore the built in Apache and install their own version. Shame. You wouldn’t ignore your own car just and get another one to pull a trailer while your own car can do the job perfectly.

Continue reading “Development WebServer on OSX Lion – HomeBrew/MariaDB/PECL”

MemCache – In-memory-caching in PHP

When building API-like applications in PHP, one issue will always remain; a high load will eventually slow down everything. To prevent over-loading, anyone will come to the conclusion a cache is needed. The most access calls should be served without recalculating anything to free up CPU-time.

Caching can be done on Disk, in a database (indirectly also Disk-caching), or directly in memory.

To setup MemCache and use this memory-caching-system, read on :)

Continue reading “MemCache – In-memory-caching in PHP”

Digitally sign and optionally encrypt your e-mail – also on your iPhone/iPad!

About ten years ago I was very into PGP-ing my mail. This was when I was in my Windows stage using The Bat! mail client. This stage luckily passed about 6 years ago, you can read about it here, in case you’re interested. After switching to Mac I went searching for an alternative and found a PGPmail plugin for Apple Mail, but I also found a better, Mail-native, way to sign and optionally encrypt e-mail using nothing more that Apple Mail and an S/MIME certificate. This is not very difficult and certainly not new, but for all intents and purposes, I will list the steps to take to generate, install and distribute your certificate. Furthermore, since the iOS 6, S/MIME is supported on your iPhone and iPad (and possibly iPod Touch, I cannot tell, I don’t own one), and I’ll tell you how to install the certificates on those devices as well.

Continue reading “Digitally sign and optionally encrypt your e-mail – also on your iPhone/iPad!”

Use BIND (named) to create a multi-VirtualHost configuration – no more VirtualHostX

[Deprecated: for OSX 10.9 and up, please use rba.sh.]

It has been a while since I posted my guides for setting up a local development environment and how to add SSL to this set-up. This setup, among other things, required the use of a hostname-to-ip-management type of software. My choice was VirtualHostX.

Recent events have brought a new temporary colleague to our workforce and he brought in some fresh blood – so to speak (post in Dutch).

Today I have successfully eliminated the need for VirtualHostX – at least, in my development environment.

Continue reading “Use BIND (named) to create a multi-VirtualHost configuration – no more VirtualHostX”

SSL (HTTPS) on your Development WebServer

It took me a while and finally found a working, but a bit ugly, solution. Not to bore you with the details, here are the step by step instruction on how to get HTTPS working on your development web server. Please note, this is not a good setup for live web servers, you will have to take security into account if you use this on a publicly available web server. Continue reading “SSL (HTTPS) on your Development WebServer”

Set-up an OpenVPN Client on your Mac

With an OpenVPN server available or created on your own Mac it’s time to setup your OpenVPN client. Sure you can do this with command lines but for a user, which a client usually is for, you should use a nice GUI. Continue reading “Set-up an OpenVPN Client on your Mac”

Set-up an OpenVPN Server on your Mac

[22/05/2015: The content of this post is very very very out of date.]
[17/08/2020: Kext-deprecation note and comment added]

Due to deprecation of kernel extensions in MacOS (10.12 and newer) OpenVPN seems to be defunct on macOS (at least for private servers), please see my comment. I sincerely hope the TunnelBlick development team will take the time and effort to rebuild the client to use the new KPIs in macOS Big Sur, but latest response suggest they have no interest to do so :(

An OpenVPN Client is easy, just download Tunnelblick. But to connect to your own Mac or maybe a server you own or are the maintainer for at work, you will need an OpenVPN Server set-up. This is how you do it. Continue reading “Set-up an OpenVPN Server on your Mac”