What is this Redmine you speak of?

For a bunch of small personal projects I need something to keep track of tasks and documentation. Redmine is a tool for issue tracking and project management I discovered recently.

I’ve been using Trac for a while and I like the idea of including a wiki and interacting with the source repository. I could have installed Trac again but Redmine offers the same features and more. Built-in support for multiple projects on a single database is my personal killer feature. And it’s written in Ruby. Figuring out why people are making such a big fuss about Ruby was still on my to-do list. So I decided to switch.

After checking out the latest version from the Subversion repository it was up and running in no time thanks to the built-in web server. Apparently that’s a Ruby on Rails feature.

A built-in web server is an advantage for quick deployment but because I was already running Apache on port 80 for Subversion, it became a problem. So I decided to put everything on a single server to make it easier to manage. Or so I thought. Making Rails play nice with Apache was a wee bit harder than expected.

What you need

There are a couple of things you need. The good news is that Leopard provides most of it out of the box.

• Ruby: version 1.8 is included with Leopard
• Ruby on Rails: version 1.2.3 is bundled with Leopard
• Subversion: Leopard has 1.4.4
• Apache 2: Leopard again, just enable it in the System Preferences. It also has all the necessary modules.
• MySQL: you can download 5.0.45 for Mac OS X here
• Redmine of course. I used the 0.6.3 release.
• Your favorite terminal and a root shell
• Time…

Getting Redmine

You should set up Redmine using the built-in server first. If something doesn’t work it’s probably not because of the web server. I recommend you get the latest (stable) release straight from Subversion instead of using an archive. I mention this because the archive has DOS line endings, which messes up things. The Redmine Subversion repository uses native line endings so it doesn’t matter. You’ll see what I mean in a minute.

Apache’s document root on Leopard is /Library/WebServer/Documents. To keep it simple we’re going to put Redmine in /Library/WebServer/redmine and link to it. You put it in any directory you want, just make sure Apache has access. I’ll use an SVN export which means there is no version information. If you want to update from SVN regularly you should check out the trunk.

First get the application:
# cd /Library/WebServer/
# svn export http://redmine.rubyforge.org/svn/tags/0.6.3 redmine

If you’re using a tarball and are wondering about the line endings, run the CGI script from the command line. Running a CGI script from the shell is a good trick to get better error messages than what you find in the server logs.

# redmine/public/dispatch.cgi.example
-sh: redmine/public/dispatch.cgi.example: /usr/bin/ruby^M: bad interpreter: No such file or directory

The ^M means the line endings are wrong. Don’t worry about other errors for now. If you skip this check and later see errors in the Apache logs like the one below it’s probably the same thing.
[error] [client 127.0.0.1] Premature end of script headers: dispatch.cgi, referer: http://localhost/redmine/

For the final step you need to create a link to direct Apache to the application. We’re not going to use a virtual host.

# ln -s /Library/WebServer/redmine/public /Library/WebServer/Documents/redmine

More information about using symlinks is available on this wiki page.

Once that’s settled you can set up your database and configure Redmine following these instructions. Or watch the video.

Apache configuration for CGI

Now Redmine works. Time to move it over to Apache. Let’s start with the CGI approach. It may not be the fastest way to run Rails but it’s very basic and the RoR wiki has bit of documentation on it. I have found this is a good way to weed out most of the problems.

Mac OS X stores the Apache configuration in /private/etc/apache2/. In httpd.conf make sure these lines are not commented out.

LoadModule env_module libexec/apache2/mod_env.so
LoadModule rewrite_module libexec/apache2/mod_rewrite.so
LoadModule cgi_module libexec/apache2/mod_cgi.so

Next, create a file redmine.conf in /private/etc/apache2/other. By default, anything in that directory is loaded as part of the configuration. This keeps the main httpd.conf clean and the Redmine stuff is easier to find. Note that I say Redmine, and not Ruby on Rails. For another RoR application you’ll need to add a new configuration file. This is what my file looks like:
SetEnv RAILS_ENV production
<Directory "/Library/WebServer/Documents/redmine">
AllowOverride all
Order allow,deny
Allow from all
</Directory>

Note that I refer to /Library/WebServer/Documents/redmine and not /Library/WebServer/redmine/. If you use the wrong directory the AllowOverride directive won’t work. It has to work because Redmine uses an .htaccess file. Some examples also include an AddHandler directive. I have found that it’s not necessary because it’s already taken care of in .htaccess.

Apache is now configured and has to be restarted:
# apachectl restart

Directory permissions

The web server is ready but it can’t do anything yet. First it needs a CGI script. In Redmine’s public directory rename the example script dispatch.cgi.example to dispatch.cgi.

In addition write access is required for the tmp and log directories under /Library/WebServer/redmine. Run chmod 666 on them.

Now you should see Redmine’s home page when you open http://localhost/redmine in your browser.

Route problems

At this point the front page works but you’re could be getting errors when you click on a link.

no route found to match "/account/login" with {:method=>:get}

If, like me, you don’t know Ruby this is very confusing. If you check the Apache error log, you see that there is something wrong with the paths in the Ruby application. Thanks to this blog entry there is a solution. In config/boot.rb replace
root_path = Pathname.new(root_path).cleanpath(true).to_s
with
root_path = Pathname.new(root_path).cleanpath(true).realpath().to_s

Can you make this thing go faster?

Redmine works now but it’s very slow. This is where FastCGI comes in. First disable mod_cgi in httpd.conf and enable mod_fastcgi. FastCGI also needs a temporary directory with full access.

# mkdir /tmp/fcgi_ipc
# chmod 777 /tmp/fcgi_ipc

And then add this to httpd.conf:

<IfModule mod_fastcgi.c>
FastCgiIpcDir /tmp/fcgi_ipc/
</IfModule>

Apache will need a restart again.

You also need to enable
ENV['RAILS_ENV'] ||= 'production'
in redmine/config/environment.rb. For some reason I couldn’t pass the environment variable to FastCGI so it has to be fixed in Ruby.

Browse to your Redmine URL and enjoy the quick response time.

It’s not very hard to set up but it requires an extra package. There are some basic instructions on the Growl site. I used Fink to install Irssi which already has Perl support so I could skip the first step.

Get the SDK here if you don’t have the Perl bindings for Growl yet. If Mac-Growl is already installed on your system you can skip this. Load the disk image and go to Bindings/perl/Mac-Growl. To install the module run these commands:
perl Makefile.PL
sudo make
make test
sudo make install
When running the make test line you should get a few test notifications. If that works you can execute the install command. You should read the README file for more information.

Once you have the Perl bindings you need to install the script. Finding it was the hardest part. It’s supposed to come with Growl but it wasn’t clear in which directory it is. Eventually I found it and I’m keeping a copy here for future reference. Put it in ~/.irssi/scripts (or ~/.irssi/scripts/autorun) and load the script in Irssi with /load script growl.pl.

Now you can set up the notification the way you want in Growl. I added a little ping sound to get my attention.

Update: I fixed the link to the script.  Make sure you rename it to growl.pl after downloading.  I had to strip the extension because Apache wants to execute the script.

You may need to use Safari to download it. When I used Firefox the widget was corrupt and couldn’t be installed.

I was pleased to find out that I didn’t need any special software to synchronize my Mac and my phone. After I configured the device via System preferences > Bluetooth > Add device, iSync started, recognized my phone and copied my contacts and calendar to Address Book and iCal. That was easy. This probably doesn’t work with every phone, but I don’t care. Mine (Sony Ericsson T630) is supported

If I could find a way to send SMS messages from my laptop it would be perfect. Any ideas?

Unfortunately it doesn’t support backing up to network drives. This feature was present in early versions but dropped before release. However, it is possible to enable network support again. It’s not officially supported so if anything goes wrong you’re out of luck. I ‘m going to take the risk and see what happens.

On the Infrant Netgear forums I found a thread telling me how to make Time Machine use my ReadyNAS as a backup destination. If you don’t want to read the whole thread, here’s what I did.

1. Create a new share on the NAS and enable AFP
2. Execute this command in a terminal (all on 1 line): defaults write com.apple.systempreferences TMShowUnsupportedNetworkVolumes 1
3. Run the above command again but this time without typos (hint: copy/paste).
4. Browse to the share in Finder (Command-K, afp://server/share)
5. Start Time Machine and choose the backup drive. The NAS share should be in the list.
6. Let Time Machine do whatver it needs to do. It may look like it hangs at first but it’s preparing the first backup. After a while a progress window will appear.

That’s it. Right now Time Machine is making the first backup of my MacBook. That’s going to take a while because it’s copying 72 GB over a wireless connection. The incremental backups should be a lot smaller. For the next couple of days I’m going to keep a close eye on Time Machine and test its restore abilities. I hope it works as well as it looks good.

It takes a while to build the index the first time but once that’s done I find it’s lightning fast. Since Leopard it also supports complex queries. Trying to find a mail you received yesterday from someone in Apple Mail? Try this query: kind:mail date:yesterday from:someone. Good stuff.

This weekend I had some free time and decided to do the upgrade. I put the disc in and wondered how well it would go. First the installer performed an integrity check on the DVD. Which is good idea even if it takes a while. I don’t want the upgrade to crash because of a faulty disc and end up with an unusable system.  I can’t remember other operating systems doing that.

Once the DVD was approved the actual upgrade began. Everything went very well although I whould have liked a bit more information. Progress was indicated by a simple progress bar and an estimated time remaining. With no idea what was happening, seeing it would last 3 hours, then 2, then 3 again wasn’t much fun.  I guess I could have let it run unattended but I was curious how system upgrades of Mac OS X work.

After rebooting almost everything worked. The new Dock is nice although I was getting used to the one in Tiger. A cool detail is that you can see the reflection of windows that are close to the dock.

Since I don’t know much about Tiger I don’t really know what’s new and what not. A few abvious things I have noticed are the virtual desktops (spaces) and folders in the right part of the dock. I like those.

The upgrade broke one thing though: Irssi. Actually it broke Fink and that in turn broke the IRC client. It was more my own fault than a glitch in the upgrade. I neglected to check if Fink would work in Leopard. As it turns out there is no binary distribution available yet so I had to resort to the source distribution. For me this was relatively easy but still a minor annoyance.

All in all I’m quite satisfied with the upgrade.  I have heard and read about people who have had very bad luck and others who didn’t encounter any problems.  I’m glad to be part of the latter group.

To be honest, after using Irssi for so long I have tweaked my setup to perfection for myself. Any client worth doing that again would have to be very impressive right away from the first time I use it. Now you may wonder why I even bother if I’m so heavily biased. For one thing, there’s no installer for Irssi. I also want to have an idea what kind of applications are available in the Mac universe. It’s all still very new to me.

This is by no means a comprehensive review of IRC clients. Like a lot of people I’m simply downloading the latest releases of a few of programs I can find and deciding if I like it after a couple of minutes.

Snak

Snak is very user friendly by running a setup wizard the first time you start it. It sets up your nickname and favorite servers. This works fine. Unfortunately there was a problem connecting to the IRC network and I couldn’t find the error message. All it said was Not connected. I think he folks who made Snak want to shield regular users from cryptic error messages. After a couple of retries it worked. I still don’t know if what the problem was. Joining channels and other networks all worked fine. However, I don’t like the way those buttons at the top of the screen are arranged. Contacts, profiles, actions, … what’s up with that? Considering that Snak costs $29 it has to be very good before I make the switch. I decided to call it quits and move on to the next one.

Linkinus

Just like Snak, Linkinus is shareware and costs $20. When reading about the features on the site I was quite eager to try it. After a 10 minute trial I prefer this over Snak. The interface is less confusing to me and it has an icon in the menu bar that allows you to jump to new messages in inactive channels or private conversations. The general look and feel is more pleasing to me. It can be extended with plugins written in Objective C. I may have to rewrite the few scripts I really want. Apart from that Linkinus could be the client I’m looking for. I still have some other clients to try.

Ircle

I’ll keep it short. I removed Ircle after 10 seconds. It took forever to start, but maybe that’s just the first time. What annoyed me immensely was the way it took over my screen. Four separate windows, 2 in the corners on the left and 2 near the top right corner. Because of this messy GUI it wasn’t immediately obvious how to proceed. That was the end of my Ircle experience. Not worth my time and certainly not worth the registration fee. Someone told me Ircle is good and very popular. I wonder what he’s been smoking.

Babbel

Babbel isn’t too bad. Its interface resembles Linkinus a bit, but it’s a lot less polished. Keeping track of private messages is harder because they don’t go to new window. Perhaps this can be changed in the configuration but I couldn’t find it right away. It works, it’s free but it’s a little too rough around the edges for my taste. It’s not as bad as Ircle but if I’m going to switch to another client I want an intuitive and smooth experience.

Colloquy

This is probably a pretty good client but I didn’t test it very long. Colloquy’s interface is not my kind of thing. I don’t like the way servers, channels and private conversations are organized. Others may love this. Under the hood it appears to be quite solid. It also supports other protocols, such as Jabber. I removed it quickly but if you’re looking for an IRC client give this one a shot.

Conclusion

In the end I still decided to stick to Irssi. At first I didn’t feel like compiling it myself and solve whatever issues came up due to dependencies on libraries. That was until I found the Fink project. It’s a package management system similar to what Debian has. They even use the same tools. Combined with Fink Commander installing Irssi was a piece of cake. Once it was installed I could copy the configuration files from my old machine. Instant IRC.

If it weren’t for my Irssi history and Fink I would probably have bought a copy of Linkinus. It’s the only client that has an interface I actually like and that has enough bells and whistles to make me feel in control.

I also installed the Last.fm Mac client.  It starts up together with iTunes and automatically scrobbles my songs.

That wasn’t the worst though. The killer blow was the lack of support for Ogg. Because of potential legal issues with the MP3 format I switched to Ogg when ripping new additions to my CD collection. I also prefer to buy from online stores that offer Ogg, like Magnatune.

There is hope though. The ReadyNAS has a built-in streaming server, based on Firefly. It looks like it supports Ogg. I’ll give that a try and see how well it works.