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Hidden files on Mac OSX

2008-06-23T13:31:00Z

When I first started delving into the world of web development I was stumped with the seemingly simplest of things - finding hidden files on my PowerBook (yes, I know it's old) running OSX Tiger. This hit me hard when, for example, I had to find a configuration file or directory in the deepest darkest region of my system. However, like anyone with at least one eighth of a brain, I consulted my friend Mr Google.

Answers? yes, I uncovered two approaches to uncovering and viewing your hidden files. Though today I only use one approach and that is the first that I am about to show you.

But before we look at the 'how', let's define the 'what'. What are invisible or hidden files and directories? Simply, they start with a full stop, or for those in America – a period. Here is an example:

Note: all lines starting with '#' are commented out. Don't type this line.

# Hidden file
.hidden

# Non-hidden file
hidden

Approach One: The command line

OK, If you are not familiar with the Terminal application on OSX, please don't be afraid. You won't break anything (I hope!). Open your Terminal application. This is usually located in the Applications/Utilities directory on your Mac.

So go ahead and open a new window in Terminal (or new shell!). Now let's enter the following commands:

# List the files and folders in current directory
# Lower case L and S
ls

## Now list all files and directories
ls -la

See the difference?

Approach Two: Get someone else to do the dirty work

If you don't want to get your hands dirty with the command line in Terminal there is an alternative. It's call MainMenu. Go ahead, download the application to your desktop and install.

Once you install MainMenu, just go to finder > show invisibles. That's it!

Helvetica the film

2008-06-20T04:31:00Z

I am a big fan of Helvetica. You will find that previous statement is evident in my graphic design work. I feel joy when working with a well thought out grid coupled with an appropriately set baseline, and if that grid and baseline has a friend called Helvetica, then that is a golden moment.

I am a big fan of Helvetica. You will find that previous statement is evident in my graphic design work. I feel joy when working with a well thought out grid with an appropriately set baseline, and if that grid and baseline has a friend called Helvetica, then that is a golden moment.

I first realized the power of locking type to a baseline while working with my friend Mark Gowing quite a few years back. (I have not seen Mark for a few years. So, hi Mark if your reading this, we'll talk soon). There is something so aesthetically pleasing about Helvetica, that even until this day, it is a quality I cannot find in any other typeface. Helvetica has the ability to polarize a room. The room is often divided into two absolute camps. Those who despise Helvetica and those, like myself, who adore Helvetica and hold it in near holy status.

Why the love for Helvetica? Because after working with Helvetica for a number of years, there will be a very good chance you will grow fond of the simple practical nature of the typeface. Helvetica has the ability to fade into the background, if say, the focus of the design is not the type, but perhaps on an image or graphic element instead, or it has the awesome ability to be the very focus of the design, to become the image on the page.

Helvetica – A documentary film by Gary Hustwit, is a must see. Even for non–designers, the documentary offers great insight and offers understanding and opinion from some of the worlds most influential Graphic Designers and Typographers.

Below is just one of the trailers for the Helvetica film. The trailer features Wim Crouwel the Dutch Graphic Designer and Typographer.

Part 2: Setting up Nginx with a Mongrel cluster

2008-06-20T00:19:00Z

In part one of setting up Nginx with a Mongrel cluster we set up the appropriate Nginx directories and configured our nginx.conf file.

Now that we have created our directories and we have our nginx.conf file sorted, let's get Nginx fired up using the configuration file we made.

nginx -c /home/username/nginx/nginx.conf

In most cases that command should fire up Nginx with the correct configuration for your Mongrels. If not and for reference, I have included some very handy commands to help you start, stop and kill Nginx.

## To kill Nginx
killall -u $USER -v -i nginx

## To start Nginx back up
nginx -c /home/username/nginx/nginx.conf

## Find the master Nginx process
ps -aef | egrep '(PID|nginx)'

## To kill the identified process
kill -15 'process-id'

Getting Mongrel cluster installed and configured

Assuming you have Rubygems already installed, we will go ahead and get Mongrel and Mongrel cluster via the 'gem' command. We will also drop the documentation when installing so we can save some system resources.

gem install mongrel mongrel_cluster --no-rdoc --no-ri

Now we need to create a mongrel_cluster.yml file that will live in our rails application. This file needs to go in the following directory:

myRailsApp/config/mongrel_cluster.yml

Your mongrel_cluster.yml will look similar to what I use. I say similar because what I use is a very simple 'bare bones' configuration. This works great for me, but you may find you need to alter the configuration to suit your requirements. Please note that 'myRailsApp' == 'mywebsite.com', it's the same directory. You can give them the same name, I do. But in this article I have used more descriptive naming.


---
port: '8000'
cwd: /home/username/myRailsApp
log_file: log/mongrel.log
environment: production
address: 127.0.0.1
pid_file: tmp/pids/mongrel.pid
servers: 3
docroot: public

Now we are ready to start our Mongrel cluster and hopefully they fire up. You will want to issue the following command as root user and from the root of your Rails application directory.

mongrel_rails cluster::start

So what happened? If you see the ports starting - well done!

starting port 8000
starting port 8001

Let's get the status of our Mongrel's

mongrel_rails cluster::status

You should hopefully get something similar to:

found pid_file: tmp/pids/mongrel.9000.pid
found mongrel_rails: port 8000, pid 2540

found pid_file: tmp/pids/mongrel.9001.pid
found mongrel_rails: port 8001, pid 2543

If you have issue's with stale PID files, just remove them and restart your Mongrel's.

cd tmp/pids
rm mongrel*

If you are still having trouble with missing Mongrel PID files, you might want to manually kill off each Mongrel process and then try to start your Mongrel cluster again.

## Find the Mongrel process/s
top
## Then hit
shift m

Look for the process number, now we will kill it or them.

kill -15 'process-id'

Now try starting up your Mongrel's. Good luck!

Part 1: Setting up Nginx with a Mongrel cluster

2008-06-20T00:13:00Z

In this article, part one of setting up Nginx with a Mongrel cluster, I will walk through how I install and set up a basic Nginx configuration on my web servers.

Please note that for this article I will be working with Ubuntu Gutsy Gibbon on my Slice and Mac OSX Tiger on my localhost. The article also assumes that you have Rubygems installed.

In this article, part one of setting up Nginx with a Mongrel cluster, I will walk through how I install and set up a basic Nginx configuration on my web servers.

Please note that for this article I will be working with Ubuntu Gutsy Gibbon on my Slice and Mac OSX Tiger on my localhost. The article also assumes that you have Rubygems installed.

First, if you want to find out what release of Ubuntu you are using, issue the command:

sudo lsb_release -a

Let's now switch to our sudo account.

sudo -s

Enter your root user account password and then we will move on to the next step.

We are now going to install Nginx via Ubuntu's package manager 'aptitude'. Before I had a working version of Nginx via aptitide I would compile it manually, but found that for my needs installing Nginx via the Ubuntu package manager was sufficient. So let's do it now.

apt-get install nginx

Now to find out the what version of Nginx we have just installed (you will see something similar if not the same), we give the following command

nginx -v

You should see somethings similar to the following.

nginx version: nginx/0.5.26

OK, so that was easy enough (I hope you made it). Now let's get on to the actual configuration of Nginx.

Firstly we need to get into your user directory and make a new directory ready for our Nginx configuration and log files.

cd /home/username/
mkdir nginx

We also want to create some subdirectories as follows:

cd /home/username/nginx/
mkdir tmp logs

Next, and probably one of the most important steps, is your Nginx configuration file. I often put this file in the Nginx directory in my user account, such as:

/home/username/nginx/nginx.conf

Here is a sample nginx.conf file. I use this basic setup. It uses 3 mongrels and 6 worker process'. This may not be appropriate for your applications needs. You should experiment for optimal settings. Just be sure to make all paths correct for your environment and setup.

worker_processes  6;

pid /home/username/nginx/tmp/nginx.pid;

# Valid error reporting levels are debug, notice and info
error_log  /home/username/nginx/logs/error.log info;

events {
    worker_connections  1024;
}

http {
  access_log /home/username/nginx/logs/access.log;
  fastcgi_temp_path /home/username/nginx/tmp/fcgi_temp;
  client_body_temp_path  /home/username/nginx/tmp/client_body 1 2;
  proxy_temp_path /home/username/nginx/tmp/proxy_temp;

  include       /etc/nginx/mime.types;
  default_type  application/octet-stream;

  sendfile              on;
  tcp_nopush            on;
  keepalive_timeout     65;
  tcp_nodelay           off;
  gzip                  on;
  gzip_min_length       1100;
  gzip_buffers          4 8k;
  gzip_types            text/plain text/html text/xhtml text/css text/js;


#-------------------------------------------------#
# www.yourwebsite.com                             #
#-------------------------------------------------#  

 upstream yourwebsitename {
    #### Replace these with the ports for your mongrel cluster:
    server 127.0.0.1:8000;
    server 127.0.0.1:8001;
    server 127.0.0.1:8002;
  }

#-------------------------------------------------#
# Settings for www.yourwebsite.com                #
#-------------------------------------------------#

  server {
    #### Replace with your nginx port and domain name:
    listen       80;
    server_name  yourwebsite.com www.yourwebsite.com;
    #### Replace with the full path to your rails app's public directory:
    root /home/username/yourwebsite.com/current/public;
    index  index.html index.htm;

    ### maintenance page
    if (-f $document_root/system/maintenance.html) {
      rewrite  ^(.*)$  /system/maintenance.html last;
      break;
    }

    location / {
      proxy_set_header  X-Real-IP  $remote_addr;
      proxy_set_header  X-Forwarded-For $proxy_add_x_forwarded_for;
      proxy_set_header Host $http_host;
      proxy_set_header  X-Forwarded-For $proxy_add_x_forwarded_for;
      proxy_set_header Host $http_host;
      proxy_redirect false;
      if (-f $request_filename/index.html) {
        rewrite (.*) $1/index.html break;
      }

      if (-f $request_filename.html) {
        rewrite (.*) $1.html break;
      }

      if (!-f $request_filename) {
        ## This is your mongrel upstream name
        proxy_pass http://yourwebsitename;
        break;
      }
    }

    error_page   500 502 503 504  /50x.html;
    location = /50x.html {
        root   /home/username/yourwebsitename/current/public;
    }
  }

# end of config file
}

We'll that's about all we can do until we get our Mongrel cluster configured and ready to roll, in part 2 of Setting up Nginx with a Mongrel cluster.