One way Netflix has tested their ability to survive failure is to constantly force failure within their system. They built a system component named ChaosMonkey that randomly kills part of their architecture to ensure that the rest of it can survive and continuing offering service to customers. I love this approach. Not only does it show a lot of maturity within the Netflix engineering team about what systems failure really means, but also shows that they understand the importance of constantly ensuring that failures are expected and recoverable; I still see too many enterprises today that have yet to learn that important lesson.

ChaosMonkey reminds me greatly of what I used to do, albeit manually, when I was in charge of systems architecture at a company in the early a part of my career. We had a wonderfully horizontally scalable system architecture, back in an era when most enterprises would only use mainframes for systems of such size and importance. It was a critical part of our ability to provide high levels of service and performance at a relatively low cost. We did a good job of giving our operations team plenty of opportunity to test system failure and ensure that we could survive catastrophic failure, but I found it was never quite enough as the system grew more complex.

About the time we began implementing RAID drive subsystems for our database nodes, I began a systematic approach to destroy parts of our architecture on a regular basis. At first, it was a way to make sure the RAID subsystem would act appropriately in a degraded state – and they did, but we had plenty of software modifications to make to allow our systems to perform better in such a state. My experiments quickly became a little more aggressive… a few times a week, I would randomly pull drives out of their carriers, or kill processes on production nodes, or even cause an entire system crash.

Remarkably, it was rare when any of this activity would even be noticed. Our architecture was so good at surviving single points of failure that the operations team would often not even notice that anything at all had happened. When they did, it was usually a sign of a weak-point in our architecture that needed to be fixed. Occasionally, hardware actually failed from my little experiments, and I always felt bad about that, but the reality is that same hardware would have failed at a much more inconvenient time.

Alas, once our company was purchased by a publicly-traded company, development was no longer allowed access to the data center. For the most part, this was a very positive thing, but it also prevented people like myself from twiddling with the system to make sure it would work well. Our operations staff was good however, and many of the lessons development learned over the years were picked up by them. Today’s trend of dev-ops is a welcome return to some of that way of thinking, as it really does show that you need developer mindsets when running your operations.

I can distill my experiences doing dev-ops work in the past into some key points:

1. Build your systems with the assumption that failure happens, and happens regularly.
2. You must test your ability to fail and recover, and do it constantly.
3. Hardware & software solutions for vertical scaling are inherently inflexible and likely much more expensive in the long run. This was true in the 1980s, and even more true today now that more shops understand the nature of horizontal scalability.
4. Beware of the mindset that wants high uptime for individual systems. It’s cool for your server at home, but in an operations scenario that system represents one that might not startup properly if it does fail. Inability for a system to startup properly was, and remains, a hugely common problem. Reboot all of your systems regularly.

Many times, however, Flash isn’t an appropriate technology to use. If you’re an open-source product like Zenoss, Flash presents a licensing issue. If you’re targeting mobile platforms like the iPhone, Flash isn’t available. And, sometimes, you may just not like Flash; it does have it’s own security problems and overhead, for example. What’s a web developer to do? Enter HTML5 to the rescue…

HTML5 is not yet an approved standard, but it’s well on its way and surprisingly well-supported by the browser community already. One of the nice new features provided in HTML5 is the canvas element which allows for two-dimensional drawing functionality. Between this new feature and JavaScript, we should be able to create a rich graph display.

Branch-Based Development

At Zenoss we do all development, including bug fixes and small maintenance tasks, in a private development branch within the subversion repository. This allows us to independently work-on changes, check-them into the repository for safe-keeping, and then perform code reviews with team members without having to share files or using pastebin style tools (even though we do both at times).

1. Create a branch within your user’s sandbox. In this example, I’ve decided to name the sandbox new-widget to identify what I’m working on. If I were fixing a defect, I’d use the defect number from the defect tracking system. Create the branch by copying the trunk folder to the sandbox branch. In Subversion this is a low-overhead operation and doesn’t actually copy files.
svn copy http://dev.zenoss.org/svn/trunk http://dev.zenoss.org/svn/sandboxen/cgibbons/new-widget -m " * Copying trunk to sandbox branch."

2. Switch your working directory to use the new sandbox branch. You can do this either from the command-line or using Eclipse. From the command line, you’d do the following:
cd $HOME/zenoss/core
svn switch http://dev.zenoss.org/svn/sandboxen/cgibbons/new-widget
From within Eclipse, secondary-click on the core project and choose Switch to Another Branch/Tag/Revision… option from the Team menu. On the dialog that appears, enter in the sandbox URL. After switching, your Eclipse will show the new location next to the core project item.
   

Once your development environment has been switched, you can make changes and commit to the Subversion repository as desired. If you’re unsure if you are in the right branch, you can always use the svn info command to see which directory is being used.

Merging Branches

Once you have completed changes in a branch and have had them reviewed by a peer, it is time to merge them into trunk (or another branch, if using a maintenance release). Merging can be tricky, but a consistent process can make it much easier to handle.

1. Change your working directory to a checked-out and clean version of the branch you want to merge into. For example, I keep a $HOME/zenoss/clean-trunk directory that I never make changes to, except for merging.
2. Determine the base working revision of your working branch. There are a variety of ways to do this, but one of the best is to view the revision log graph within the Trac system directly. For example, for the branch discussed above we can browse to http://dev.zenoss.org/trac/log/sandboxen/cgibbons/new-widget/ and see that revision 15513 is the base.
3. Perform a dry-run on the merge to get a general idea of what the changes into the branch will be. You should see your expected changes, plus any conflicts from changes to the other branch while you have been working in the sandbox branch.
svn merge --dry-run --revision 15513:HEAD http://dev.zenoss.org/svn/sandboxen/cgibbons/new-widget .

4. If the merge results look satisfactory, rerun the command without the dry-run argument.
5. Look at the final merge results using svn status and svn diff, and once you’re ready, issue an svn commit.

Multiple Branches and Zenoss Configuration

As you switch between branches you will often render your Zenoss configuration useless.  Resetting your database after each branch switch is usually a good practice, and being able to quickly recreate any test data you may need makes this process less painful.

After switching a branch, my process is usually the following:

1. Shutdown zenoss and restart only zeo.
zenoss stop
zeoctl start
2. Run the zenwipe script from the inst source directory.
$HOME/zenoss/inst/zenwipe.sh --no-prompt
3. Run zenmigrate to install any database changes available within the current branch.

Depending upon the task at hand, I may install additional ZenPacks and add new devices through the command-line if those are needed. Helper scripts, such as install-windows.sh to install of the Windows ZenPacks and create several local test devices in the instance, are useful tools to have for your typical configurations.

Mac OS X Prerequisites

1. Install Eclipse Classic 3.5.x Mac Cocoa 32-bit.

Ubuntu Prerequisites

1. Install the Sun Java JDK. Why? Eclipse is a Java application and requires a full-fledged Java environment to run properly.
sudo apt-get -y install sun-java6-jdk

2. Install Eclipse Classic 3.5.x Linux 32-bit.

Eclipse Configuration

1. In part one, we created a Zenoss root project directory of $HOME/zenoss – use that directory, or the one you created, for the rest of these steps.
2. Launch Eclipse and configure it to use the Zenoss root project directory. Why? Eclipse needs a workspace directory to keep track of configuration settings for a group of related projects. By placing the workspace directory inside of the Zenoss root workspace, we can separate the requirements for a Zenoss workspace from other projects you may be using.
3. Install the PyDev plug-in for Eclipse. Why? PyDev provides Python language support to Eclipse.
   1. Go to the Help Menu and choose Install New Software.
   2. In the Available Software dialog, choose Add and enter in http://pydev.org/updates/ as the Location and close the dialog. Eclipse will return to the Available Software dialog.
   3. Software matching PyDev will appear in the dialog; pick the PyDev option but do not pick PyDev Mylyn Integration. Click Next and install the plug-in.

   

4. Install the Subclipse plug-in. Why? Subclipse allows you to work with the Subversion version control system directly from within Eclipse.
   1. In the Available Software dialog add the Subclipse plug-in update site:

      http://subclipse.tigris.org/update_1.6.x

   2. In the Available Software dialog, choose the Subclipse, Subversion Client Adapter, Subversion JavaHL Native Library Adapter and the Subversion Revision Graph items.
5. Go to the Window menu, choose Open Perspective and then SVN Repository Exploring (you may have to choose Other… to see this option).
6. Choose the New Repository Location button in the SVN Repositories panel. Add the Zenoss SVN site at http://dev.zenoss.org/svn
7. Open the SVN repository and select the trunk folder. Secondary-click the folder and choose the Checkout… option. Be sure to change the Depth option to be Only this item so that we don’t check out any of the sub-folders of trunk just yet (many of the folders within trunk are not needed for development, but we want to keep the directory structure). In the next dialog you will be asked to choose a Project Wizard. Open the Pydev tree item and select the Pydev Project option.
8. Create the project in the Pydev Project dialog:
   1. Use core as the project name and use the default location. This should create a core project at $HOME/zenoss/core.
   2. Make sure the Python project type is selected.
   3. Select 2.4 as the Python Grammar version.
   4. Uncheck the Create default ‘src’ folder... option.
   5. Click the Click here to configure an interpreter not listed… option in order to add the python interpreter built by the Zenoss installation scripts.
      1. In the Preferences Dialog, choose the Interpreter – Python item underneath Pydev and select the New… button to add a new Python interpreter.
      2. Browse to the $ZENHOME/bin directory and choose the python2.4 executable from that directory.
      3. Name the interpreter python-2.4, zenoss-python or some other variant.

      After the new Python interpreter has been added, return to the Pydev Project dialog and choose that interpreter from the list and then click Finish to create the project.

   6. Update the core folder from the command-line SVN client so you can selectively pull the sub-folders of the core project and not all of them:
cd $HOME/zenoss/core
svn update Products

   7. Move the Products directory the installation checked out and create a symbolic link to the one updated above. Why? This allows the Products source tree to be worked on from Eclipse and then also used by the Zenoss run-time.
cd $ZENHOME
mv Products Products.old
ln -s $HOME/zenoss/core/Products Products
   8. Return to Eclipse and choose the Refresh option from the File menu so that Eclipse notices the updated directory and builds necessary dependencies.
   9. Secondary-click on the core project folder in Eclipse and choose Properties. Choose the PyDev – PYTHONPATH item and add source folders so PyDev can reference the project from within itself.
      1. In the Source Folders tab choose the Add source folder button and pick the root core folder from the provided list.
      2. In the External Libraries tab choose the Add source folder button and choose the $ZENHOME/lib/python directory.

   At this point, your Eclipse project should allow you to navigate between dependencies within the Zenoss project. You can also simultaneously switch between using the Team feature within Eclipse to update and manage Subversion or do so using the command-line svn client.

   Next…

   In Part 3 of this series, we’ll discuss how to manage day-to-day activities such as creating sandbox branches for changes and dealing with multiple versions are done from within the same environment.

I develop Zenoss primarily on Mac OS X, with some work done on Ubuntu when necessary. I normally use Eclipse as my development editor, although I’ll often just use vim when doing quick changes or bug fixes. In either case, careful setup of the Zenoss environment is key to being able to productively work with both the new development version and with the shipping versions that require maintenance.

The environment you get by default when you check out the source version of Zenoss from the source repository, or from a source tarball, is not necessarily setup in the best way to develop productively using tools like Eclipse.

The rest of this post will document how both my Mac OS X and Ubuntu environments are initially configured so that a working source Zenoss installation is realized.

Mac OS X Prerequisites

These prerequisite instructions assume Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard; 10.6 Snow Leopard will not be able to compile Zenoss’s third-party dependencies, so an additional work-around is required for that platform until Zenoss moves to Python 2.6.

1. Install Xcode. Why? Installs the GNU C/C++ compiler and other command-line development tools needed to build dependencies used by Zenoss.
2. Install Universal Subversion 1.6.x from CollabNet Community.Why? Leopard only comes with Subversion 1.4.x. This version is not compatible with the Subclipse plug-in for Eclipse that will be used later. In order to be able to use both the command-line and Eclipse Subversion versions simultaneously on the same checked our source, the release of subversion should match. This installation will place the Subversion binaries in /opt/subversion and should automatically add it to your PATH.
3. Install MySQL Community Edition 5.1 32-bit. Why? Zenoss needs MySQL for storage of event data.

Ubuntu Prerequisites

These prerequisite instructions assume Ubuntu 9.04 32-bit Desktop Edition. Installing the server edition or one with different options may require additional prerequisites to be installed.

1. Install Subversion. Why? Working with the Zenoss product in source form requires Subversion to access the source repositories (it is also possible to build directly from a source tarball, but this is not discussed here).
   sudo apt-get -y install subversion

2. Install MySQL. Why? Zenoss needs MySQL for storage of event data.
   sudo apt-get -y install mysql-client mysql-server libmysqlclient15-dev

3. Install additional development environment tools. Why? Zenoss third-party dependencies require several binaries to be built from source.
   sudo apt-get -y install patch make vim gcc g++ autoconf
4. Install SNMP support. Why? Zenoss requires SNMP libraries for monitoring, and having a local SNMP agent is useful for testing.
sudo apt-get -y install libsnmp-base snmp snmpd
5. Install Liberation TrueType fonts. Why? Graphs generated by RRDtool will not contain the correct glyphs without this font package.
sudo apt-get -y install ttf-liberation

Environment Configuration

Configuring Eclipse will require determining where you want to work with your Zenoss installation, and installing Eclipse plug-ins to provide the features required for Python and Subversion support.

1. Create your Zenoss root directory:
mkdir $HOME/zenoss

2. Create and run a setup.sh script that will configure needed environment variables for zenoss. This script can be started from your log in profile if desired.
cd $HOME/zenoss
cat > zenoss-config.sh <<EOF
ZENHOME=$HOME/zenoss/zenhome
PYTHONPATH=$ZENHOME/lib/python
PATH=\$ZENHOME/bin:\$PATH
export ZENHOME PYTHONPATH PATH
EOF
chmod +x zenoss-config.sh
. zenoss-config.sh
mkdir $ZENHOME

3. Checkout the Zenoss source installation tree. Why? This tree is used to bootstrap the installation from the source repository and create a running Zenoss installation. We’ll need this before we modify it to fit the needs of our development environment.
svn co http://dev.zenoss.org/svn/trunk/inst inst

4. Run the installation script to checkout, compile, and configure a zenoss environment. If you need to customize your MySQL configuration at all do not use the --no-prompt argument.
cd inst
./install.sh --no-prompt

5. Modify the zensocket file to be setuid root. Why? Some of the Zenoss daemons use a privileged port and making the file owned by root and accessible by the Zenoss user allows the daemons to be run as a non-priviledged user but still use the privileged port.
sudo chown root:`id -g` $ZENHOME/bin/zensocket
sudo chmod 04750 $ZENHOME/bin/zensocket


At this point, you should have running zeo and zope processes and be able to log on to the local Zenoss instance. Your Zenoss root directory should look similar to the following:

Next…

In Part 2 of this series, we’ll download and configure the Eclipse IDE.

I’m looking for a maintainer that will take the reins of the project from me and give the project some much needed love as time and platforms march on. If interested, drop a comment on this post and we can discuss the possibility.

As an application developer, you are responsible for two pieces to make this new notification service work: the actual application that runs on the iPhone OS, and a provider service that both communicates with the device and directly to Apple’s cloud.

In a typical flow, the application on an iPhone device issues an API call to request notifications for the identifier that the developer has assigned to the application. In response to that API call, Apple’s servers provide the device with a binary token value that uniquely identifies the device & installation combination (for security reasons, the device token is reset if the device is reset, so it is not a one-to-one mapping to the actual hardware). Next, the application must connect to the developer’s provider servers and provide it with the device token it has received from apple. The provider can now use the device token when communicating back to the Apple Push Notification Service (APNS) cloud.

A provider implementation has very little work to do to inform APNS of a device update. Most of the effort in a provider will be in the actual framework of the application itself, and managing what information should be sent to a device. A common implementation will be for a provider to both communicate with the APNS server cloud and also to the application’s own network services and effectively become a protocol translator. Such a heavily network based application like that is a perfect match for the Python language and the Twisted framework.

A provider to APNS link is very simple: a secure-socket connection (SSL) is made to a APNS server and then simple messages are sent by the provider whenever a notification needs to be sent to the device. The APNS server does not respond or acknowledge the message. Every so often (Apple recommends once an hour), the provider server should connect to a web server that will dump a list of device tokens that are no longer valid (as in the device has uninstalled the application). This is the provider’s only feedback mechanism outside of communicating directly with a device.

The first step is to setup an SSL connection to the APNS servers. By following the directions on Apple’s developer portal, you can create a certificate and private key that are assigned to your application identifier. This certificate & private key must then be used when connecting to the APNS servers as an authentication mechanism.

One caveat  - the Mac OS X Keychain Access application does not directly export certificates and private keys in Private Enhanced Mail (.pem)  format, which is what the OpenSSL implementation we use with Twisted will want, but luckily there’s an easy mechanism to convert if you export the files as Personal Information Exchange (.p12) format. The following two commands can be used to convert the .p12 files into .pem files using the built-in openssl command on Mac OS X or most Linux distributions:

openssl pkcs12 -in cred.p12 -out certkey.pem -nodes -clcerts
openssl pkcs12 -in pkey.p12 -out pkey.pem -nodes -clcerts

Now that we have our SSL files in the proper format, we can build our ClientContextFactory object that will be used by Twisted to initiate a connection to the APNS servers:

class APNSClientContextFactory(ClientContextFactory):
    def __init__(self):
        self.ctx = SSL.Context(SSL.SSLv3_METHOD)
        self.ctx.use_certificate_file(APNS_SSL_CERTIFICATE_FILE)
        self.ctx.use_privatekey_file(APNS_SSL_PRIVATE_KEY_FILE)
 
def getContext(self):
    return self.ctx

We’ll also need a ClientFactory object that will be used to build the Protocol object whenever a connection is established to a server:

class APNSClientFactory(ClientFactory):
    def buildProtocol(self, addr):
        print "Connected to APNS Server %s:%u" % (addr.host, addr.port)
        return APNSProtocol()
 
    def clientConnectionLost(self, connector, reason):
        print "Lost connection. Reason: %s" % reason
 
    def clientConnectionFailed(self, connector, reason):
        print "Connection failed. Reason: %s" % reason

Next, we’ll need the actual Protocol object that will format messages and queue them to the server. For APNS, we don’t receive any responses so that half of the protocol goes unused.

class APNSProtocol(Protocol):
    def sendMessage(self, deviceToken, payload):
        # notification messages are binary messages in network order
        # using the following format:
        # <1 byte command> <2 bytes length> <2 bytes length>
 
        fmt = "!cH32sH%ds" % len(payload)
        command = '\x00'
        msg = struct.pack(fmt, command, 32, deviceToken,
                          len(payload), payload)
        self.transport.write(msg)

And finally, we’ll need the main code to kick everything off for the test:

if __name__ == '__main__':
    reactor.connectSSL(APNS_SERVER_HOSTNAME,
                       APNS_SERVER_PORT,
                       APNSClientFactory(),
                       APNSClientContextFactory())
    reactor.run()

From here, the Python and Twisted combination can be easily extended to handle multiple protocols and convert between them as needed. For example, one of the commonly expected use cases of the new push feature will be instant messaging (IM) clients that will need to provide a proxy between the device and the IM servers and the APNS servers in order to notify a device of outstanding messages.

The full Python script containing the above excerpts can be downloaded here:

test-apns-blog

I found the Zenoss product itself to be more mature than I had expected. While it still has plenty of rough edges, especially in the user interface, it is a rather feature-rich application with a very large user base in both the free community and paid enterprise versions. There is a tremendous amount of work left to do on the application, but with each version we see a significant step forward and an expanded user interest because of the changes.

When I came to Zenoss, my new co-workers and I brought with us a culture of using agile development methodologies and processes to the company. We expected, and were asked by company management, to implement those processes at Zenoss. Over the past year, we have seen the right things happen from this shift in engineering culture:

• development time has become more predictable
• planning and priority selection take a much more important role than ever before, and not just in engineering (in fact, most importantly not in engineering, but at the executive level)
• quality assurance is now a fundamental part of the engineering process, not a luxury for later
• code and design quality has improved dramatically as the engineering team begins to understand how much control they really do have over the process

There still remain many challenges, but these are the same ones I have seen with all teams that struggle with the discipline needed for agile methodologies. Effectively breaking down large development tasks into two-week iterations remains a hurdle; I suspect at a fundamental level many of the developers do not fully believe this is possible, which is a long, long discussion. There was also a reluctance, until recently, to fully engage with teammates on performing effective code and design reviews. These will both improve over time as the team matures.

When I first started at Zenoss there were 5 developers in Annapolis, 2 developers in Austin and me , usually working remote in Houston. Since then, the team dynamics have changed so that I and one other developer are remote most of the time, 3 developers are full-time in Austin and 1 in Annapolis. This team dynamic change has made the infrastructure needed to support remote development much more important, but at the same time it has made the remote developers somewhat more isolated since a bit more now happens only in one location. Since I travel to Austin frequently I can avoid the worst of this unavoidable trend, but it will likely always remain a challenge as long as we have remote employees.

On a personal level, working remotely full-time for this long has been much more difficult than I expected. I last did this much remote work in the mid-90s, and it was difficult to do then, as well. On the surface, I spend all of my work hours focused on some problem on the computer, but in reality much of my job is very social and without face time it starts to wear on me very quickly. Frequent visits to Austin help tremendously, but in reality this will likely always be an issue until I relocate.

I’ve encountered almost all of the traditional problems people have while working at home, but especially keeping focus and balancing the time spent between work and home life. Focus is purely a self-discipline issue, but it is remarkable how much of this is provided by the routine of commuting to an office. Maintaining a good work-life balance is also tremendously hard when working at home, unless you dedicate a specific place in the house for work. It took a few months to really learn this lesson but eventually I bought a second desk and made myself an office separate from my normal home office. Before then, I found it way too easy to bring my laptop into the living room and I’d continue to check e-mail and work on problems throughout the evening. Sometimes, I still do, but not at least it is not a mindless occurrence.

Zenoss is a very small company, and naturally we have very limited resources. Of course, today’s economic environment makes this true for almost every single company. But more specifically, I find ourselves working around what effectively is a lack of resources in our IT department. I often have to build my own virtual machines at home, or buy little widgets to help productivity because I am remote. At some level, I don’t mind this, since it’s nice being able to actually work somewhere you can do this, rather than being told you can’t.

After a year, I’m still not a huge fan of the Python programming language, but I’ve come to accept it and I can be productive with it. Working with it feels a whole lot like I stepped back in time 15 years, and saying that is a great way to start an argument, so I’ll just leave it at that.

One great surprise from the past year is that I became the guru for Zenoss’s Windows monitoring technology. We have a custom implementation of MS-RPC that is based upon the Samba 4 source tree. On top of this layer, we have provided our own implementations of the DCOM, WMI, and Windows registry interfaces so we can call these services directly on any Windows device. This is a great feature, as it allows us to communicate directly to Windows devices from our Linux based product, without requiring a Windows device to be running our software just to provide Windows-based connectivity, unlike some other systems management products.

Over the next few months I will be taking on more and more of the implementation of the new Zenoss user interface, which is a great project that should dramatically improve the user acceptance of quality of the application. It also gives me more time to work on user interfaces, which is always an area of software development I enjoy but rarely get a chance to do.

In Zenoss Core, the status of Windows services and the Windows Event Log are monitored using Windows Management Instrumentation (WMI) queries over the DCOM/MS-RPC protocol. In the implementation of MS-RPC that Zenoss is based upon, authentication credentials are sent to the remote server using the Windows Challenge / Response (NTLM) mechanism. Using this authentication mechanism, the actual password is never sent across the network, but rather the server produces a “challenge” value that the client must calculate using the password rather than sending it across the network.

NTLM authentication is the same mechanism that Windows devices themselves use for client/server communications, such as file sharing and remote administration.

Starting with version 2.3.x, Zenoss Enterprise gathers Perfmon data using the remote Windows registry API over the MS-RPC protocol. This technique is both more efficient and secure than the previous one. The same authentication mechanism used by Zenoss’s WMI library is used here, providing the same level of security.

Prior to version 2.3.x, Zenoss Enterprise used a different mechanism to collect Perfmon data from Windows devices. This mechanism used a utility known as winexe to remotely execute commands on the Windows device (in this case, the typeperf.exe Windows utility). Unfortunately, the winexe utility sends the username and password used for authentication across the network in clear text, providing a less than ideal configuration for security.

Zenoss users monitoring Windows devices should be running version 2.3.3 or newer for the best possible security when communicating with those devices.

I had a 2.0 GHz 13-inch MacBook a couple of years ago when the first Intel-based models came out and I do remember the screen resolution, while not abundant, was more than adequate for browsing, e-mail and even development. And, the unibody model is only 4.5 lbs, so 2 lbs lighter will be a lot nicer to carry around. I also sprung for a spare battery to try and help get a little closer to the awesome battery life of the 17-inch model.

Of course, the obvious question is why buy another laptop when I’ve already got a nice 15-inch MacBook Pro that work provides? The answer there is easy: I don’t want to do anything personal, even development, on the work provided machine.

Now, on to the actual system setup, documented here for posterity.

1. After account creation, run software update and get all the latest updates installed first.
2. Create an applecare account with an easy, but secure, password. This way the Apple store geeks can have that account should there need to be any repair work done.
3. Change the battery lifetime display with Show -> Time.
4. Secure the screensaver by using System Preferences -> Security -> General and checking the Require password to wake this computer from sleep or screen saver option.
5. Disable the Front Row remote by using System Preferences -> Security -> General and checking the Disable remote control infrared receiver option.
6. Disable the Front Row keyboard shortcut by using System Preferences -> Keyboard & Mouse -> Keyboard Shortcuts and disabling the Hide and show Front Row shortcut.
7. Enable full keyboard shortcuts by checking the All controls option in the bottom of the same Keyboard Shortcuts screen.
8. Enable the Use secure virtual memory option in System Preferences -> Security -> General.
9. Encrypt my home directory with System Preferences -> Security -> FileVault.
10. Install Growl 1.1.4 from http://growl.info/
    1. Install the GrowlSafari extra package.
    2. Install the HardwareGrowler extra package.
       1. Drag HardwareGrowler.app to /Applications
       2. Disable the HardwareGrowler dock icon by following the instructions at http://growl.info/documentation/hardwaregrowler.php
       3. Add HardwareGrowler to the start at login list by using System Preferences -> Accounts -> Login Items and dragging HardwareGrowler to the list.
    3. Enable Growl starting at login with System Preferences -> Growl and enabling the Start Growl at login option.
11. Remove unused printer drivers by deleting the appropriate folders in /Library/Printers folder (everything but Brother, hp and PPDs in my case).
12. Install the XcodeTools package from the Installation DVD’s Optional Installs directory.
13. Drag Xcode to the dock by going to /Developer/Applications and dragging the icon to the dock.
14. Add Activity Monitor to the dock by going to /Applications/Utilities and dragging the icon to the dock. Seondary-click on the icon and enable Open at Login.
15. Add Terminal to the dock by going to /Applications/Utilities and dragging the icon to the dock.
    1. Change the default Terminal settings by starting Terminal.app, selecting Preferences (Cmd-,) and then changing the “new window with settings” to Pro.
    2. Select the Pro scheme in the Settings tab and click default.
    3. Choose the Window tab with the Pro scheme selected, click the Background color chooser and set the opacity level to 90%.
    4. Change the window size to 80 columns and 36 rows.
16. Customize vim by creating ~/.vimrc with the following content:
    
:color elflord
:syntax enable
:set shiftwidth=4
:set expandtab
:set autoindent
:set cindent
:set enc=utf-8
:set nu
:set showmatch
:set laststatus=2
:set nocompatible
:set gfn=Monaco:h15:a

17. Enable color highlighting for ls by adding the following lines to /etc/bashrc:
    
alias ls='ls -CFG'
alias dir='ls -FGlas'

18. Install the Safari 4 beta from http://www.apple.com/safari/download
19. Install Firefox 3 from http://getfirefox.com/ and drag it to the dock.
20. Install iStat pro from http://www.islayer.com/apps/istatpro/
21. Install MySQL 5.1 x86 community edition from http://dev.mysql.com/downloads/mysql/5.1.html be sure to install the StartupItem package as well as the preference pane.
22. Add MySQL to the shell profile by appending the following to /etc/bashrc:
    
export PATH=/usr/local/mysql/bin:$PATH
23. Install EverNote from http://www.evernote.com/
24. Install DropBox from http://www.getdropbox.com/
25. Install the Windows Media Components for QuickTime from http://www.microsoft.com/windows/windowsmedia/player/wmcomponents.mspx
26. Install Twitterrific from http://iconfactory.com/software/twitterrific
27. Disable automatic synchronization for iPhones and iPods since this won’t be the primary iTunes machine by going to iTunes Preferences and enabling Disable automatic syncing for iPhones and iPods on the Devices tab.
28. Install the iPhone SDK from http://developer.apple.com/
29. Party! Or maybe just nap.