Mac Essentials Part 1
Andre got his new MacBook yesterday, so before he can even think of asking me a bunch of questions, I decided to write a bit about my favourite/essential Macintosh applications. I will write three blog posts in this series, starting today. In the first part I will cover the essential applications for every System Administrator. Tomorrow I will cover my favourite applications for the typical day-to-day usage of my Mac. And finally on Sunday I will write about my essential tools as a Web Developer.
Lets start with 10 essentials tools every Sysadmin should know (in no particular order):
iTerm
Show me a Sysadmin, who don't uses the command line and I would say he's not really a Sysadmin. So you want a shell, sure OS X has one, and there's even Terminal.app, which is great, but I prefer iTerm. I tried a lot of different Terminal applications for the Mac, but iTerm provides the best user experience. Just think of Terminal.app plus tabs.
ZTerm
Do you administrate Network Gear like Routers and Switches? I do. Today most of these fancy maschines have nice Web-GUIs, but the initial configuration sometimes has to be done via a serial console. And everyone, who has played with Cisco equipment, knows that you need the serial console. Together with my USB-to-Serial adaptor (I covered the installation process here) I prefer using ZTerm for everything wich works over a serial console connection.
Chicken of the VNC
I do not use this tool very often, because I mostly use ssh for administrating remote systems. But VNC is such a widley implemented protocol (even apples remote desktop uses vnc) that it is handy to have a good VNC-Client on your harddisk. Chicken of the VNC is my favourite VNC-Client on the Mac - and it just works.
Remotedesktop Client
Did you ever tried to administrate a remote Windows box using ssh? While VNC may be a suitable solutions, I prefer to use Windows' built-in remote desktop protocol (rdp). Third-party clients are available for this protocoll, but who can know it better than the creators themselves? I simply use Microsofts remotedesktop client, which is available as a free download.
MySQL Administrator
If you are responsible for one or more MySQL servers, than this tool might be for you. It's from MySQL AB and it makes your live as a MySQL Administrator a bit easier. Managing Databases, scheduling backups, configuring users - you can do it on the commandline, but sometimes it's just faster to use a GUI.
SirAdmin
I'm using Cyrus Imapd on some mailservers and administrating mailboxes and
ACLs with the commandline tool cyradm can be a pain in the ass. SirAdmin
makes your life a lot easier - go figure it out!
ldap Browser/Editor
Using ActiveDirectory as directory-service in a heterogenous network (windows, linux, solaris, macintosh) I really felt in love with this tool. You need to browse LDAP-trees? You need to test LDAP queries? Then this tool is for you! And the best thing is, it's written in Java, once you are comfortable with it, you can use it on every machine you use, no matter which OS you are running.
SubnetCalc
As a sysadmin you should be able to calculates subnets manually but it's a tendious task. SubnetCalc can do it for you - and it can do it faster than you can. So I really like this tool. It's so simpel but so great and it saves your valueable time.
Cyberduck
I haven't tried many FTP applications. Transmit and Fetch weren't an option, because I wanted a free one. Cyberduck seemed a good solutions and I am now a loyal user for about 2 years. I moslty use it for STFP stuff and remote editing of files (you can edit the files in your favourite editor, e.g. TextMate). You need a good, fast and stable FTP and SFTP client? Try Cyberduck.
TextMate
The best tool at last. Do I have to say anything about this uber text editor? It's simply the best, and it's worth every dollar I paid for it. TextMate is one of the reasons why I got stuck to Mac OS X.
nice blog man...
very useful, if you are a mac-newbie and a sysadmin...thx Arne
Geschrieben von Andre 6 Stunden nach Veröffentlichung des Blog-Eintrags am 9. März 2007, 17:39. Antworten
hi arne
a friend of mine bought a mac yesterday (a first for him :) and he asked me about apps i can recommend. i've sent him a list and he sent me the link to your page in return with the comment about how much the list looks the same. :)
your compilation of must-have apps really is damn good. it almost hits the nails head of my dail-used-set of apps as a network- and sysadmin (with a mac for a little more than three years now). altough i have some hints/suggestions:
- i use minicom instead of zterm. it's a unix-tool available on most *nix-plaforms and it's commandline which makes it more sysadmin-style ;)
- forget the m$ rdp-client. it's simply trash. crashes all the time and without rdcmenu (http://www.xutils.com/rdcmenu/) you can only have one remote-desktop open which is quite a pita as a sysadmin. i recommend CoRD (http://cord.sf.net) instead. it's not that feature-rich but more stable, multisession capable (tabbed as well as free-floating) and it's opensource
- it might be me, but having such a nice gui and destorying the appearance with x-chat is just bad. i recommend using http://colloquy.info/ instead. with the last version it's very stable and with some twaking to the bland-style it is imo the best-looking irc-client ever
- ssh-agent a must-have for sysadmins with a lot of ssh-keys (http://www.phil.uu.nl/~xges/ssh/)
- VPNTracker: from my point of view the only vpn-client which is able to connect to virtually any brand of vpn-termination equipment. yes, it's costy, but in a heterogeneous environment simply a must (vpntracker.com)
- apropos heterogeneous: parallels is also needed to back-check user problems on their windows-boxes. unfortunatly also a commercial app... (parallels.com)
and furthermore some small but useful helpers:
- Simple Battery Monitor is just looking nicer that the system-default (http://www.orange-carb.org/SBM/)
- MenuMeters. all you need to know about what's going on inside your mac (http://www.ragingmenace.com/software/menumeters/)
- InstantShot! you certainly need to make some screenshots over the time (http://projects.digitalwaters.net/index.php?q=instantshot)
- QuickSilver. almost everybodys favorite app if you read along on the web altough i never truly got friends with it (quicksilver.blacktree.com but that site is down at the moment).
best regards and greets from switzerland
roman
Geschrieben von Roman Hochuli 7 Monate, 3 Wochen nach Veröffentlichung des Blog-Eintrags am 28. Okt. 2007, 13:04. Antworten
well, that friend mentioned was me ,-)
thanks to you two for your help - my first day & night with a mac was already successful.
i've did a maintenance within our core network only with the mac ,-)
Geschrieben von Steven 7 Monate, 3 Wochen nach Veröffentlichung des Blog-Eintrags am 28. Okt. 2007, 13:50. Antworten