Setting up Leopard
Some interesting things that I have found in converting to Mac OSX 10.5 Leopard:
ssh
Leopard now had a built-in ssh-agent facility that allows you to use .ssh/id_rsa.pub and .ssh/id_dsa.pub with passphrases, so long as things are in their normal places. You do not need to run sshkeychain (a handy application in its day) unless you want to configure special tunnels and things that can not be done with simple ssh authentication. Since I don't do these -- or even know what this is all about, I am talking through my hat and parroting things I saw on the net.
But I can now just ssh to any server where I have uploaded a key.
The way to do this on a fresh install is to be sure that you have used ssh-keygen to create a key and have a strong passphrase. The first time you try to ssh to some host, OSX will ask you if you want to store the passphrase in the keychain. If you check the appropriate "yes" box, then you are done!
Issue: be sure that your keychain is protected with a good password in the first place!!! duh!
http://www.ormset.no/wordpress/2007/10/28/leopard-finally-supporting-ssh-agent-at-login/
X11
OSX 10.5 comes with X11 built in. There are a number of confusing issues, because previously, you had to customize the install and add X11 but now it is built in. Beware of /Applications/Utilities/X11.app.
The best description of this is at
http://homepage.mac.com/sao1/X11/index.html
I am quoting that page, in case it goes away:
Before Leopard you could control X11 with a series of customizations in your configuration files to make sure everything worked automatically. And now you're shocked because the first time you use a vanilla X11 in Leopard nothing seems to work.
Starting X11.app from the dock will get you two icons, setting it to auto-launch is also a no-no, and if you have set DISPLAY in any of your configuration files you get a disaster.
And, you also realize that they changed the location of the system xinitrc (to match other X.org distributions on other platforms), and they removed xterm from that file. The reason is because in Leopard, the X11.app in /Applications/Utilities is just a little wrapper around the command "/usr/bin/login -fp $USER /usr/X11/bin/xterm". So it's a "launcher" that launches xterm by default. And the starting of xterm then triggers the startup of the real server, which is now located at /usr/X11/X11.app.
Take a deep breath and relax... there's light at the end of the tunnel...
Biggest user-visible change in Leopard X11 is a new launch-on-demand support, courtesy of launchd. If you start a program that tries to open your X $DISPLAY, launchd will check to see if X11.app is running. If not, it will automatically start it for you. So on Leopard, just run a command like xterm or start an application that needs X11, and X11 will start up automatically. This means that now you can just run X apps like you would any other app. But this launch-on-demand functionality only works correctly if X11.app is launched on demand.
So don't run X11.app from the Dock. Or, at all, manually. Ensure that you are not explicitly setting $DISPLAY in any configuration files as it will throw away the location of the launchd socket that X clients need to know how to use, verify that 'echo $DISPLAY' in Terminal.app reports something that starts with '/tmp/launchd', and then just run 'xterm &' from Terminal. This will work with any X11 client application that links with the standard libX11.dylib.
In a few words, you no longer start /Applications/Utilities/X11.app at login or launch the X11.app. You make sure the DISPLAY environment variable is NOT set, and then you simply issue the command, or click on the icon, or whatever, and the rest happens automatically.
Xterm and Terminal
Forget xterms, use Terminal.app. Of course this takes some getting used to, especially now that Apple has changed how preferences get set for Terminal.app. Look into customizing the background color, font, transparency, etc. by using the Preferences... menu.
You now find that there are multiple "Settings" which can be saved, and can be set to default, etc. What is not so clear is that a setting includes the "Shell" pane, so that you can save a particular terminal setting to come up with yellow characters on a black semi-transparent backbround that opens with an ssh session to some particular remote server. By exporting the setting, you can even add it to the dock.
PhP
Leopard comes with its own apache2 server and php5. It is relatively easy to set up. Apache is active if "Web Sharing" is turned on in the Sharing Preferences. php5 is made active once you edit /etc/apache2/httpd.conf and un-comment the LoadModule php5_module line.
mysql
Installing mysql is relatively simple. Download the package from
http://dev.mysql.com/downloads/mysql/5.0.html#macosx-dmg
I am using the Mac OSX 10.4 package format download.
MacFuse, MacFusion, and sshfs
The File System in User Space (FUSE) is a great concept, and the ssh file system is a great help, but MacFuse and MacFusion are the things you need to make things hum on Leopard.
