Mac OS X software installation and setup

Internet connection

A machine plugged into an ethernet drop in our building will be assigned a dynamic IP address automatically.

If you want to connect using 802.xx wireless, turn on AirPort and select the network named HowToConnectToWireless. If you now open your browser, you'll be taken to an instruction page explaining how to set up your machine to use the UWS network. You'll need to log in with your University of Alberta CCID.

Email

You will want to set up your mail client to work with your userID@ualberta.ca account. Note that addresses of the form userID@phys.ualberta.ca have been discontinued. Moreover, the email backend in transitioning to Google Gmail with the changeover to be completed by October 2011. To get the old setup, follow the instructions here.

For AICT's old ualberta.ca, the relevant IMAP servers are

The webmail interface is available via https://webmail.ualberta.ca.

If your ualberta.ca account has been switched over to Gmail, you should use the following.

In this case, the webmail interface is part of the full Google Apps for Education suite: http://apps.ualberta.ca.

LDAP directory services

To enable University-wide email look-up within Apple's Address Book application, add an LDAP entry in the Preferences pane.

Developer tools

The Mac OS X install disk 2 contains the developer tools. Just double click on XCode package in the Optional Installs folder. Otherwise, you can download the latest version from http://connect.apple.com. You'll need to register for an Apple Developer Connection account. Once you've registered, login and click Download Software and then Developer Tools. Find the link to the latest version of Xcode Tools.

To install the gcc compiler, run the .dmg file (currently xcode314_2809_developerdvd.dmg for OS 10.5 systems, and xcode321_10m2003_developerdvd.dmg for 10.6). Double clicking it will mount the disk image. Double clicking XcodeTools.mpkg will run the installer. gcc and a host of other development applications. gcc will be located at /usr/bin/gcc.

Software update

Run /Applications/System Preferences. Click on Software Update and apply all updates. Reboot. Repeat until no updates are found.

Readers and plugins

The Perian QuickTime plugin supports most media formats. If you find there are still Windows Media files that you can't view, you might also have to install the flip4mac plugin.

Apple's Preview application can handle almost all .pdf files, but some U of A forms will only work with Acrobat reader.

I do not recommend that you install Stuffit Expander. It was once necessary to decompress .sit and .hqx files. The The Unarchiver is much more versatile and has the benefit of being free.

Fugu is a graphical frontend to the Secure File Transfer Protocol (SFTP), on which the scp command is based on. SFTP is similar to FTP, but unlike FTP, the entire session is encrypted.

LaTeX

Obtain the MacTex-2010 distribution from http://www.tug.org/mactex/ by downloading the file MacTeX.mpkg.zip. This will unpack as MacTex-2010.mpkg; double-click on this file to launch the installer. I also suggest that you get MacTeXtras.zip, which contains the following useful TeX-related software:

Install additional Mac software

Install Unix tools

It's best to use Fink to manage all Unix installations. Fink stores everything in /sw rather than in /usr/local. Installation and removal of software is handled using the debian package manager.

Follow the Quick Start instructions at http://www.finkproject.org/download to download the binary distribution—if one is available. Generally, though, the Fink people are slow at keeping up with Mac OS updates, and you probably have to install from the source. Follow the instructions here to set up your local environment.

> tar -xvzf fink-0.29.21.tar.gz
> cd fink-0.29.21
> ./bootstrap
> fink selfupdate
Make sure that line is added to your .profile 
. test -r /sw/bin/init.sh && . /sw/bin/init.sh
This should be done automatically by /sw/bin/pathsetup.sh. More detailed instructions here

Fink Commander is a nice graphical interface for managing package installation. (It is included in the .dmg file of the binary distribution.) To install it, just drop it into /Applications. Unfortunately, FinkCommand has a small conflict with the latest version of Perl. If you're running Mac OS 10.6, you'll have to enter the value /usr/bin/perl5.8.9 in the text box available from Preferences/Path/Path to Perl.

I suggest installing at least the following:

For gnuplot, you'll want to create a .gnuplot file that configures aqua rather than X11 as the window manager: 

echo "set terminal aqua" >> .gnuplot

If you performed a custom install of TeXLive-2009 only, you'll want to install ghostscript and imagemagick via Fink. You'll also have to set the following paths in TexShop/Preferences.../Engine.

(pdf)TeX: leave as /usr/texbin

Distiller (ghostscript): change /usr/local/bin to /sw/bin

Install web tools

A nice system for creating documentation is Sphinx, which is based on Python's docutils. It converts source files written in reStructuredText to html or to pdf via latex. It has full support for mathematical expressions. 

$ sudo easy_install -U Sphinx