olpa, OSS developer

Many OSes have port systems, Mac OS X has too. Macports provides a lot of useful software, but not all. If a software can’t be in the macports for some reason (for example, the software isn’t intended for public), one has to setup a local macports repository.

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I purchased “Fritz und Fertig: Schach lernen und trainieren (”Fritz and Chesster: learn to play chess“, other languages also available). My opinion is simple: it’s a masterpiece and the best ever computer game for children.

Unfortunately, I got technical problems. Fortunately, solved them.

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Upgrading a macports (darwinports) package is not as easy as

$ sudo port upgrade something

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For development purposes, I’d like to run a rsync server on a Mac.

People in forums recommend to avoid the default system rsync, which is accused of being buggy. Instead, they recommend RSyncX.

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It’s quite easy to create a local MacPorts repository. Unfortunately, the documentation doesn’t say how to share the repository with others. After trials, errors and reading the source code, I’ve found the answer: the only way is rsync.

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Update from 10.4 to 10.5 introduced a pain. After sleep and wake up, Mac losts connection to the wireless network. To reconnect, I have to specify SID and the WEP key manually. I hate it.

As a temporary solution, I found how to re-connect from a command line, thanks to the blog article “airport - the Little Known Command Line Wireless Utility”. I’ve created the file reconnect.sh and run it when required:

sudo airport -ASID –password=’$WEP_key‘

For historical reasons, my home wifi router uses a WEP 128-bit HEX key. It caused troubles while installing a Mac. The setup program accepted only 40-bit keys. Fortunately, the workaround is simple. Specify to use WEP with password, and as the password set “$0123…012345” — the character $ (dollar) followed by the key.