Mac OS X Lion first impressions

Posted by Patrick Vande Walle on 27 July 2011 None comments

I have been using Mac OS X Lion for two days now. This is fresh enough to remember the issues I encountered when installing.

Installation

It took me several tries to find an installation method that worked for me. In the end, the successful method was :

  1. Download the Lion image
  2. Open the image (right-click, Show Package Contents) and extract installESD.dmg
  3. With Disk Utility, burn installESD.dmg on a DVD disk. This makes it bootable.
  4. Restart the Mac, press Command, Option, P, R at boot time to reset the PRAM
  5. Boot from the Lion DVD. It takes 5 minutes to load.
  6. Go to the Disk Utility and Repair permissions
  7. Reboot again from DVD
  8. Install Lion from DVD and take a 35 minutes coffee break

I followed this guide to create the DVD. It could as well be put on a USB stick, but it needs to be one larger than 4Gb.

Usage experience

Quite strangely, it seems that the Java VM was not part of the standard installation. When I accessed a web site requring  Java, OS X kindly offered to download and install it. I restarted the browser and could continue.

Mail.app is an application which is central for me. On first launch, it took one hour to rebuild my (very large) mailboxes. The new three column display is most welcome. I used to use Widemail to achieve this same result in earlier versions. At first, the folder list was hidden. When restored (click “Show” on the second button bar), it was displayed with large characters, pretty inconvenient with a 13″ laptop screen. Quite strangely, this cannot be adjusted through the Mail.app preferences. You need to go to the System Preferences/General, and adjust the Sidebar icon size. This will also change the value for the Finder windows.

As I expected, GPGTools  does not work anymore with the new Mail.app. According to the developers, work is underway to restore the compatibility with the new Mail.app version.

Mission Control replaces the Spaces app for those virtual desktops. It works a bit differently, but it just requires getting used to.

The IPv6 stack has a new version number, dated 2009. The previous one was ten years old. I failed to notice any new feature, though. No DHCPv6, and no GUI option to set the IPv6 Privacy Extensions. By default, it is off. To turn it on requires editing a configuration file. Whether those privacy extensions are a good or bad idea is another debate.

The mouse or trackpad behaves in the opposite direction than it used to. Scrolling to the top requires to slide you fingers down on the trackpad. This can be changed in the System Prefererences/Trackpad, first option.

Other than that, I did not notice major differences. This may explain why the new OS X version still runs happily on a 5 year old MacBook, with 2 Gb of RAM. Apple continues its strategy to make you a captive consumer. FaceTime and Apple Store are linked to your AppleID.

In the end, was the upgrade worth it ? Frankly, the new features in Lion are not something the world has been waiting for anxiously. There is  no compelling reason to upgrade.

Update: after 2 weeks of use, I notice that Lion is slower on the average than Snow Leopard was. After adding 2Gb of RAM to my Macbook, I regained most of the lost speed.

Google Analytics for WordPress – IPv6 version

Posted by Patrick Vande Walle on 23 May 2011 None comments

Ahead of the World IPv6 day,  APNIC has launched an useful initiative to collect statistics regarding IPv6 connectivity. If you are interested in testing your clients’ IPv6 capabilities, you can use the APNIC Labs Google Analytics Tracking Code. This allows you to test your customers’ experiences connecting to your website via IPv4, IPv6, and dual-stack.

The APNIC code relies on Google Analytics. If you are using Google Analytics as a plugin in your WordPress blog, you might be interested in the versions I hacked together to integrate APNIC’s code into the following two popular plugins:

- Google Analytics Injector for WordPress Download the updated version here (version 1.0.1-ipv6)
- Google Analytics for WordPress Download the updated version here (version 4.2.4-ipv6)

You will need a tracking code that you can obtain at the APNIC labs web site.

Note this is not a discussion on  whether Google Analytics is Big Brotherian. Many web sites rely on it to collect statistics. I thought it might be helpful if a WordPress plugin existed that supports the APNIC feature.

Fritz!Box WLAN 7390 review

Posted by Patrick Vande Walle on 3 January 2011 105 comments

I finally got a AVM Fritz!Box WLAN 7390 modem/router to replace the Belgacom-provided BBOX-2, which gave me a few headaches and quite some frustration over the past year. I am happy to report that the Fritz works with Belgacom VDSL2, despite what Belgacom says about the mandatory use of their own broken modem.  Let’s get to the real meat. Some background first. » Read more…

GLD-NG, a greylisting daemon for Postfix

Posted by Patrick Vande Walle on 7 December 2010 4 comments

GLD-NG is a new project I started on Sourceforge.  My goal was to aggregate the features I found most interesting in other greylisting software. Greylisting is a very effective technique to fight spam, especially the one originating from zombie PCs controlled by spambots.

What is gld-ng ?

gld-ng stands for GreyList Daemon, new generation. gld-ng is a standalone policy delegation server for Postfix that implements greylisting. It is based on the GLD project, originated by Salim Gasmi.
» Read more…

Belgacom DNS resolvers lack EDNS support

Posted by Patrick Vande Walle on 15 August 2010 2 comments

The DNS resolvers used by default by Belgacom’s Internet customers lack EDNS support, according  to the test performed from OARC’s DNS Reply Size Test Server

hiram$ dig +short rs.dns-oarc.net txt @195.238.2.21
rst.x476.rs.dns-oarc.net.
rst.x485.x476.rs.dns-oarc.net.
rst.x490.x485.x476.rs.dns-oarc.net.
"195.238.24.113 DNS reply size limit is at least 490"
"195.238.24.113 lacks EDNS, defaults to 512"
"Tested at 2010-08-15 11:00:01 UTC"

hiram$ dig +short rs.dns-oarc.net txt @195.238.2.22
rst.x476.rs.dns-oarc.net.
rst.x485.x476.rs.dns-oarc.net.
rst.x490.x485.x476.rs.dns-oarc.net.
"195.238.25.113 DNS reply size limit is at least 490"
"195.238.25.113 lacks EDNS, defaults to 512"
"Tested at 2010-08-15 11:00:11 UTC

» Read more…