JUST RELEASED: Visit the Incredible PBX WikiWell, it’s that time of the year again. The Nerd Vittles staff will be taking a breather for a bit to recharge our batteries. But, in the finest college tradition, we’re leaving you lots of homework. Here’s a listing of what we’ve built thus far in our Mac mini ISP-In-A-Box project. So, while we’re taking it easy, pick out a few projects you haven’t tried and knock yourself out. Any Mac running at least Mac OS X v10.3 aka Panther is a suitable candidate for these projects. Many also have been tested with Tiger. Visit Tiger Vittles for the Tiger update notes to many of these tutorials. Also be sure to check out our WHERE-TO Bonanza: 50 Great Summertime Web Sites for You & Your Mac mini.
And here are some of our other tutorials to keep you and your Mac mini busy:
And finally we and our friends at MacSurfer and Engadget and Gizmodo and MacOSXhints and MacDevCenter and Entropy. Give ’em a whirl!
Last but not least, for PC users thinking about making the Switch to a Mac, read our article and this one. Then buy David Pogue’s book, and you’ll have everything you need. It really is a No Brainer!
We’ve gotten lots of terrific feedback and some great tips from many of you since we first began putting this list together in early spring, but we’d love to hear from the shy types as well. What did you like? What can we improve? What can we cover which would be of interest to you in the coming months? If you have a favorite open source application or a must-have tool that we’ve overlooked thus far, don’t be timid. Drop us a note or just leave a comment below. We do this for fun, not as a business fortunately, but we strongly believe that Apple should be doing something similar as part of their business plan. We, their loyal customers, deserve nothing less. Thanks for visiting NerdVittles.com. And do tell your friends about us. Finally, take a look at our Tiger Vittles site for the latest happenings with Mac OS X Tiger.
Who Is This Guy? Ward Mundy, the author of the ISP-In-A-Box series, is a retired attorney who spent more than 30 years providing legal and technology assistance to the federal courts in the United States.
Thanks guys,
This is one of the most informative and useful sites I’ve ever had the pleasure of visiting
Got a lot of this running on a 350 G3 B&W … and it works! Thanks tons.
Thanks, I’m going to be setting up a host for our school web site over the summer on a mini and this info will prove invaluable. You’ve already given me some heads-up about our ISP and some questions I should be asking.
[WM: You’re more than welcome. You’ll probably want to check out our new Tiger Vittles web site. We’ll be updating all of the Nerd Vittles articles to show how to do the same thing using Mac OS X Tiger over the next couple months.]
I must say, I’ve been looking over the varied pieces in the series, and I can only say it one way… YOU GUYS RULE!! 😉 I got to playing with *BSD back when Rhapsody was first announced and have been running my own unix systems, and I really wish I had access to these documents then. Because the nice part of working with OS X is that underneath it all it is BSD based. I can take the info here and apply it to Net, Free or OpenBSD with little or no changes… again.. You rule!
Ed.
mac mini stuff to do. thanks for coming out [tom]
MacMini News link.
iTheater is also another Mac Media Center Project. I think there address is http://www.itheaterproject.com
I would be interested in seeing some performance metrics showing how far you can push the Mini as a web server, as a database server, etc. We know what it can do, but how much is another question.
[WM: Here’s the best info I’ve found on Mac servers generally. Just divide by about 2 for the Mac mini. Not pretty, but it won’t crash either.]
Hi – Thanks for the useful tutorials. One problem, though – the "Web Sites 101″ link doesn’t take you anywhere but this page. Just FYI.
[WM: You just need to scroll down the page. There are a number of articles.]
Can anyone help me learn how to use my powerbook G4 plus a cellphone to connect to the internet? I did have an aircard with Verizon but they stopped supporting it. After a hassle over the cancellation charge I am looking for a solution such as PCs have. Thanks in advance – great site!
[WM: Sprint has a great unlimited Internet plan called PCS Vision that’s about $10 a month on top of your cell phone service which is dirt cheap if you make a lot of calls. Everything works great. I’ve used it for over 2 years. Speed is about twice that of a 56K modem so it’s bearable. Next you need a Treo 650 which Sprint now officially supports with free Bluetooth DUN. Here’s a link that’ll tell you everything you need to know about configuring your Mac and Treo 650 to work together. If you sign up with Sprint, send me your phone number and we both get some sort of credit on our phone bills. I love credits!]
Wonderful series on asterisk@home! This actually helped get it working for me (unlike the sourceforge site).
Please keep the series going.
Thanks to your Asterisk article my girlfriend’s daughter will be wakened for school at O530 hours by a phone call followed by really bad ’70s music (Captain & Tenille’s "Muskrat Love", 10CC’s "The Things We Do For Love", Maria Muldaur’s "Midnight at the Oasis" or The Starlight Band’s "Afternoon Delight"). Yes, phone systems can be used for evil.
So, I guess I came in in the middle of all this…you’re September 15 2005 page talks about where you are in your "ISP-in-a-box" project, but be darned if I can find a link to the "start" of this project so I can follow along from the beginning. Or am I just being obtuse?
[WM: The project began with setup of the Apache web server.]
Amazing site.
Amazing information.
Amazing inspiration for the rest of us.
I noticed that you mentioned that you preferred that folks not contact you for Asterisk support … well, I would like to throw my hat in the ring for those readers who need someone to lend a hand. Find us at http://www.sjobeck.com/.
Peace. Love. Linux.
Jason
Awesome! I have been looking for clear and Mac oriented guides for many of the things listed here but had no luck until now. I found this site by accident while looking for pureftpd manager instructions and have now have most of what I need to set up my Mac webserver. Very cool. Thanks.
I will donate! Please keep it up.
I really like the article’s posted here on running a webserver on Mac. I’ve written some article’s (in Dutch) on running a webserver on Mac OS X.
I was wondering if there were any good, simple, article’s about the ‘mod_rewrite’ module for Apache. I can’t get it to rewrite my URL’s … tried dozen of tutorials but no go … Greeting from The Netherlands.
Great stuff here, though I am challenged by accessing my new apached server which sits behind an Airport Express. There is such a stew of information out there, that after days of trying I find myself back where I started, nowhere. Can it be done? Internet -> my airport extreme -> my mac mini/apache based web page????