If you go here: http://www.apple.com/opensource/, it provides a complete list of opensource projects that Apple uses.

In this list is of course Perl. From this we can see which version of Perl was compiled on Mac OS X. We can also see what options, patches, fixes & extra modules were included.

So I’ve been able to glean these Perl versions that Apple have used with Mac OS X:

• 5.10.0 & 5.8.9 (perl-63)
• 5.8.8 (perl-51 patches: perl-51.1.1, perl-51.1.4)
• 5.8.6 (perl-38 patch: perl-38.1)
• 5.8.6 (perl-35 patch: perl-35.1.1)
• 5.8.4 (perl-28.2)
• 5.8.1-RC3 (perl-25.2)
• 5.8.1 (perl-24.1) “Maintenance release working toward v5.8.1″
• 5.6.0 (perl-21)
• 5.6.0 (perl-17)

Now which one(s) are tied to which Mac OS X is still in the air a bit! This is my best stab at it:

  10.6    5.10.0 & 5.8.9      perl-63
  10.5    5.8.8               perl-51
  10.4    5.8.6               perl-38 or perl-35
  10.3    5.8.4 or 5.8.1 ?
  10.2    5.8.1 ?
  10.1    5.6.0               ? perl-21 and/or perl-17
  10.0    5.6.0 ?

Hopefully this information is useful to someone

/I3az/

refs:

• Mac OS X “Snow Leopard” (10.6) and Perl
• Apple Open Source (Hacker News)

• 5.10.0 (64 bit)
• 5.10.0 (32 bit)
• 5.8.9 (32 bit)

The default Perl is 5.10.0 (64 bit). However you can change this to 32-bit Perl by setting the following ENV shell variable:

export VERSIONER_PERL_PREFER_32_BIT=yes

And to switch to 5.8.9 all you need is this ENV variable set:

export VERSIONER_PERL_VERSION=5.8.9

Instead of setting these ENV variables in your Terminal sessions you can also make the change to the systems defaults:

• defaults write com.apple.versioner.perl Prefer-32-Bit -bool yes
• defaults write com.apple.versioner.perl Version 5.8.9

This is a interesting move by Apple and something which may come in very handy in the future.

As it stands at this moment though you probably want 5.10.1 (and beyond) because of issues with 5.10.0. So you will probably be looking down the compiling route anyway. Still it does give the future option of a local::lib possibility with the pre-installed Perl provided by Apple.

NB. I always recommend that you avoid installing modules with CPAN (shell) on OS provided Perl. Always stick to the OS provided package installer to update Perl & modules (which unfortunately for Mac’s means “zilch” Apple “Software Updater” may update Perl itself but no extra modules are provided above what Apple provides on top of core Perl)

/I3az/

References:

• README.macosx – Perl under Mac OS X
• Mac-Carbon Modules and Mac OS X 10.6
• Snow Leopard Compatibility Tweaks for That Thing I Wrote in January About Writing AppleScripts That Dynamically Target Either Safari or WebKit
• How can I find out which Perl version was available on older Mac OS X versions?

It’s a Perl script called smate and you will need to install IO::KQueue from CPAN for it to work.

BTW… Fugu can be found here

I have the battery icon on my menu bar as part of the “Energy Saver” system preference which I use to control my UPS. Pulling and re-inserting the the USB cable to my UPS would make the battery icon magically re-appear.

However strangely (and annoyingly!) this would normally only survive about two reboots and then would disappear again ;-(

The solution which worked for me was to follow the usual first step advice when troubleshooting Mac problems….

1. Repair disk permissions
2. Download & install latest combo update package

This is the first time I’ve ever had to follow this procedure but it does seem to work!

I probably didn’t select it when I installed Xcode. U can find the individual package on the install disk 1…. go into folder “Xcode Tools” and then “Packages” and double click on X11SDK.pkg.

A good place to start is an article on Apple’s developers site…. Postgres on Mac OS X

However I’ll be using DarwinPorts (or MacPorts as its now known) instead of fink. In fact you may ask why don’t I just install the Darwin port of Postgres? When it comes to critical apps which are important to me I always prefer to use the source and therefore can apply any compilation settings that I may need.

Here’s the steps I went thru (via Terminal session). DarwinPorts being installed is a prerequisite….

First off u must become root. You can do this from an admin account with just “sudo -s“.

Next we must install some ports that Postgres will need….

    port install readline
    port install gmake
    port install bison


Then we need to create a /usr/local directory (mkdir /usr/local). Within this we need a “src” directory where we can download the Postgres source code to (cd /usr/local ; mkdir src ; cd src).

Download the latest stable PostgreSQL source from www.postgresql.org and unpack it…. gzcat postgres-source.tar.gz | tar xvf -

Now you in a position to compile the source code. Go into the Postgres directory that was unpacked and do the following steps….

    ./configure --with-includes=/opt/local/include/ --with-libraries=/opt/local/lib --with-bonjour
    gmake
    gmake install


PostgreSQL as now been compiled and installed. Next step is to initiate the database storage area. For this you will need to create a “postgres” account on your Mac. (If unclear then read instructions in the article on how to do this). Then do this…..

    mkdir /usr/local/pgsql/data
    chown postgres /usr/local/pgsql/data
    su -l postgres
    /usr/local/pgsql/bin/initdb -D /usr/local/pgsql/data


We now have a fully working PostgreSQL RDBMS on your Mac.

Next you want to put the following in your login .profile (for the postgres account)….


    export PGDATA=/usr/local/pgsql/data
    export PATH=$PATH:/usr/local/pgsql/bin


If you now source this profile with you now have the Postgres commands in your $PATH ( . .profile ).

To start the Postgres DB server (postmaster) in the background….


    pg_ctl -l logfile start


and to stop it…..


    pg_ctl stop


You can now go ahead and create a database in PostgreSQL.

That’s it for now but will touch on security & auto launching at later date.

Well if u…..

1. insert the first install disc
2. scroll down to u see the “Optional Installs” PKG icon & double click on it
3. Follow through options (answering the obvious!) till u get to “Installation Type”
4. Click on “Applications” in the Package window

And u should see this…..

Just check on X11 and install

Now all I do now is “ssh -Y username@server” and I can open an X-window app on the server (on Panther you needed “ssh -X username@server”).

However I prefer to work in iTerm and not the xterm app that came with X11. For this to work you need to set the DISPLAY variable correctly. I groked this from http://xanana.ucsc.edu/xtal/sample.bashrc

# Set the DISPLAY variable -- works for Apple X11 with Fast User Switching

if [[ -z $DISPLAY && -z $SSH_CONNECTION ]]; then
    disp_no=($( ps -awx | grep -F X11.app | awk '{print $NF}'
                     | grep -e ":[0-9]"  ))
    if [[ -n $disp_no ]];then
        export DISPLAY=${disp_no}.0
    else
        export DISPLAY=:0.0
    fi
    echo "DISPLAY has been set to $DISPLAY"
fi

There r ways of getting X11 up headless from iTerm… but my usage of X11 is just occasional so I’ll leave that to another day.

I’ve always stuck with APC when it comes to an UPS and they’ve never let me down. Needed one with a USB connection so went with a Back UPS ES 500.

I was expecting to continue to use PowerChute to manage the controlled shutdowns. However I noticed some chatter and such which mentioned that MacOSX Tiger had UPS functionality already embedded.

So plugged in the UPS and switched on the iMac and hey presto the battery icon automagically appeared!….

So no need to have Tiger server and no need to muck around with core services. A dropdown appeared under “Energy Saver” providing a UPS option….

And only did a few changes to the defaults……

And we were good to go….