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Far Away Mac is a weblog by Macminicolo.net about using your Mac as a server. We offer tips, application reviews and tutorials on setup. Let us know if we can be of any help.

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I know we have a lot of customers who setup a VPN on their Mac mini so they can connect to the internet thru it while on the road.

If you use your Mac regularly with a VPN, Shimo will be worth a look. “Shimo supports almost every VPN protocol that is currently used. Next to the widely used CiscoVPN, Shimo easily handles OpenVPN and standard compliant IPSec connections. PPTP and L2TP are no problem at all either. With Cisco’s new AnyConnect protocol and the zero-configuration protocol Hamachi the list of supported connection types becomes even longer.”

Macworld did a nice post on Shimo recently so you can read all about it there. Or, just head over to the developer’s site to download a trial or purchase a license. (€12.95)

Recently, Apple has offered trial version of Leopard Server. I think this is a great move since so many people come away impressed when they see how simple and affordable Leopard Server is to users.

Apple asks that you fill out a form located here and then they’ll send you the evaluation software via FedEx ground.

On a similar note, there is something new with the most recent Mac minis when it comes to installing Leopard Server. It seems that the machines can no longer boot from a Leopard Server DVD. Instead, when you place the Leopard Server DVD in the machine, it allows you to install the Server components without a restart. Then, when you run Software Update, it will download the latest Leopard Server combo update, install it on the Mac mini, and then have you restart.

Once restarted, it walks thru the usual configuration pages of what kind of install (Standard, Workgroup, or Advanced) and the other settings like users, services, etc.

Now that the Mac minis can run with 4GB of RAM, I know we’ll see quite a few more people looking at Leopard Server. I think it’s one of the greatest deals in the tech world.

Update: The package arrived from Apple today, just short of two weeks after I requested a copy. They have sent a short letter talking about the benefits of Leopard Server and a serial number that will expire in about three month. They’ve also send both retail DVD’s of the Leopard Install and the Admin Tools.

If a server is setup correctly, you can hopefully walk away and it will run fine without interaction for a long time. Digital Sentry will help you get a little closer to that goal.

“Digital Sentry monitors your system for specific events, and then can perform a vast array of unique actions in response. Watch for such system events as waking from sleep, program launches, closes, or switches, file modifications, incorrect password attempts, mouse and keyboard input, and many more. Then, perform any number of tasks like sending an e-mail, shutting down the computer, starting a simulated self-destruct, pinging a web URL, taking a web cam shot, taking a screenshot, playing a multimedia file, speaking some text, executing a shell script… the list goes on!”

The interface is nice and easy to setup. The cost is $19.95 and comes with a free trial. Download it here.

The shareware and freeware scene of Mac OS X is second to none. There are so many great apps out there to try.

Each time I download an app, I’m impressed when the developer takes the time to make the disk image display nicely. Improvements come with a nice background, a shortcut to the Applications Folder, and a nice view of the icon. SimplyDisk makes it real simple to do all these things and more.

SimplyDisk is €12.95 and can be downloaded from the developer’s site.

For those of you who read the last post about iStat and were disappointed to find that it wasn’t available at the time, you’re in luck! Just last night, the Apple gatekeepers approved and listed iStat on the App Store. It’s a beautiful app for the iPhone.

For more on the app, see the official page at Bjango.com. Or, just head straight to iTunes to buy the iStat app. (iTunes link)

iStat Menus and iStat Pro is very popular Mac software to watch the inner workings of your Mac. These applications keep an eye on things like CPU and RAM usage.

Just recently, the same company that develops these apps has announced iStat for the iPhone. It’s an incredibly good looking app that will let you watch the resources on your Mac. It includes views of RAM, CPU, network, uptime, temps, etc. It also offers great implementations of pinging and traceroutes to servers. Incredibly useful if you are running a remote Mac server.

This app will also let you take a look of the stats of your iPhone like memory usage, disk space, etc.

This app has been submitted to Apple for review and should be on the App Store soon.

And it gets even better for Macminicolo customers. In an exclusive deal with Bjango, all Macminicolo customers can receive free copies of the application. See here for more details and screenshots.

I had a friend write today asking how he could setup a Mac to share it’s Bonjour services over the internet. He had tried a VPN, but it was not very reliable. I recommended ShareTool.

With ShareTool, it’s as easy as starting up the application and pressing Share. From there, the service is configured. On other Macs, you’ll open the app and click “Connect” then enter the ip and port number of the sharing Mac. Now you can access like iTunes folders, Screen Sharing, etc. It couldn’t be more simple.

In addition, there are other benefits. All transfers are encrypted. If the file is large, it is compressed on the fly.

ShareTool costs $20 and can be downloaded from the YazSoft site.

We’re expecting a really good week for Mac mini users at Macworld next week. In honor of the annual Mac mecca, we are offering a Macworld Promo Package. Basically, this is our best package discounted at 15% and also with no setup charges. The offer is good thru the end of next week. (Jan 10, 2009)

With the mac mini becoming more and more a way for people to have their own server, we’re getting more people who would like the performance of a colocated machine, but may not know all they need to know. We’ll often have people sign up for a new account and ask for our recommendation on consultants who may be able to help with their setup and maintenance. This could include simple file serving, managing things like Daylite or Filemaker.

I’d love to have a nice database of consultants who could do these things. I know a lot of our customers and other smart folks read this blog, so I thought I’d put out a call here. If you work in consulting or have knowledge in an area that might be useful to server customers, please send me a note and I’ll add you to my list. We’d love to refer some work out.

We got this email from a new customer recently. Made us feel good about what we do here:

Macminicolo-

Thanks for getting our machine up so quickly.

We were sure glad to find your service. Our company was really trying to shave costs to stay afloat. When we found your company, we knew you guys could help.

Moving our two Xserves to Mac minis has saved us a bundle. We were able to sell our old G5 Xserves, buy two brand new Intel minis, and still have cash left over. These new minis actually perform better thanks to the Intel inside. Also, we’ve cut our colocation costs from $385 for two XServes to $110 for two minis. This is a monthly savings for us that will really come in handy.

In short, we really appreciate what you guys offer. Thanks for “saving the farm.”

That was a nice note to see. We are glad we could help.

We hope all of our FAM readers have a great 2009.

We often get asked how to host multiple websites on one Mac. This is done using virtual hosting.

Until this point, this included opening hidden files and entering the vhosts by hand. This isn’t hard, but can be intimidating for a new developer and Mac user.

I was happy to find VirtualHostX. This application helps to add a new virtual host with just a few clicks. (They also offer a pretty nice tutorial on setting up vhosts while using MAMP.

The application runs $9 and can be downloaded here.

If you’re a consultant with an ever growing list of clients, you’ll see the benefit of this software.

Web Help Desk is a web help desk software packaging that will allow you to track support tickets from clients. It’s server software installs fine on a Mac and has a lot of great options. (Email to ticket conversion, Knowledge Base, etc.)

The best part about it is if you are doing your consulting solo, you can run a single license copy of Web Help Desk free of charge. It’s when you have more than one tech support engineer that the licenses start costing money.

If you’d like a copy of the software (and instructions on installing) you can get it here.

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