If you're trying to use a Sierra AirCard 597E on OS X 10.5 Leopard via the bundled Sierra Wireless Watcher Lite software, then you're probably frustrated like me.

Since my original review, Sierra did release a new version 1.1.3 of the beleaguered PowerPC binary (no it's not Universal/Intel-native). While the new version starts less slowly than 1.1.1, it still mysteriously crashes, sometimes taking the connection with it.

The fix? Simply use Apple's built-in modem dialer, leaving Watcher Lite dormant unless its device provisioning or activation functions are required.

Step 1: In the Network Preferences Panel, check "Show modem status in menu bar"

Step 2: Enjoy the nicely integrated, crash-free EV-DO connectivity

Sierra Wireless Watcher 1.1.1 hangs in Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard,

Despite Sierra Wireless' knowledge-base statement that AirCard 597E can be used with Leopard:

Yes. Aircard 597E support TRU-Install with Mac OS 10.5 Leopard. When the Aircard 597E is inserted, it will show the following window. Please double-click on SierraWirelessWactherlite.mpkg to begin the installation.

My AirCard does not provide it's own software, even after clearing all the previously-installed Sierra software (kernal extensions & app) from the system.

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Say for instance you just applied a software update to your Mac OS X Server and rebooted.

Suddenly a Rails app that was running fine spits out an error when ActionPack does a redirect_to. In the Rails production.log:

SystemStackError (stack level too deep)

Well my friend, before you set off to debugging the Ruby install on your OS X machine, try clearing the Rails sessions. At the command line:

rake tmp:sessions:clear RAILS_ENV=production

Everyone must login again, but alas the problem is solved! [for me]

Is it because we're using Apple's built-in Apache 1.3 web server with source-compiled FastCGI support? Hmmm.

Update 18 May 2007: While this article may still be useful, the original purpose of this prose was to explain how to implement extensionless URL's with lighttpd, which is now updated & improved, no LFS necessary.

URL rewriting is a serious tool for the web developer; a little known world of regular expressions, domain specific languages, HTTP protocol manipulation, and web server mechanics.

I've been using an Apache mod_rewrite sequence that enables extension-less URL's to HTML files at almost every site I've produced over the past five years. This (and many other) Apache-specific mod_rewrite functionality has not been so easy to move to lighttpd, whose mod_rewrite really just does simple regular expression search & replace on URL's.

Until now, as of lighttpd 1.4.12, we finally have mod_magnet, a Lua-language execution environment running in lighttpd's core for lightning-fast, complex URL manipulations. With the LuaFileSystem [lfs] module, it's possible to check for existence of files & directories inside a Lua script.

LuaFileSystem for on OS X

Lua is a bit difficult to get working on OS X, and LuaFileSystem even more so. Follow along to lighttpd URL-rewriting heaven.

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Are you attracted by lighttpd 1.4.12's new mod_magnet?

mod_magnet is a solution to the long-standing quandary of complex URL rewriting without Apache's mod_rewrite. Don't be confused by lighttpd's mod_rewrite; that module should really be called mod_url_find_and_replace.

The gotcha: mod_magnet requires Lua, an embedded programming language created in Brazil. This is the same language that lighttpd's mod_cml uses for Cache Meta Language.

I tried installing Lua via DarwinPorts, but it didn't work. Lighttpd would just complain if I tried enabling mod_magnet:

%  /usr/local/sbin/lighttpd -f ~/etc/lighttpd.conf -D
2006-09-24 22:18:05: (plugin.c.213) mod_magnet plugin init failed
2006-09-24 22:18:05: (server.c.577) loading plugins finally failed

After much tinkering, here's how I got mod_magnet working.

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Do you get header not found errors when installing a Ruby Gem? (In my case, it's the FastCGI bindings.)

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