OK… not very original, but the key point is that I want to be able to use the wireless networking, stick it anywhere, and not have to worry about peripherals. A very mobile server.

I already work with remote servers over public networks, and rarely use anything but the command line. For this project I wanted to be able to use the Mac desktop. This seemed the perfect excuse to play with VNC. Additionally, I frequently use SSH and PKI for encryption and authentication respectively, but not VNC.

The Plan.

It seemed to me that there were several parts to the problem, with only one of which I’m familiar.

1. Configure a VNC Client on the local machine.
2. Configure a VNC Server on the remote machine behind a firewall.
3. Enable SSH communication through the firewall.
4. Lock it all up using an SSH tunnel through the firewall so the Server and Client could talk.

Now to work!

The Client.

I settled on Chicken of the VNC (COTVNC), a open source project providing a VNC Client for Mac OS-X. Great, that’s just what I want and it gets good reviews, but I guess most other clients out there would work too.

Once installed COTVNC takes almost no configuration, that all comes later in the SSH and Server.

You might be able to see that I set up two connections; one for an unsecured connection, so that I could see if the security measures locked me out later; and this one for the secured connection, that’s why the host is the local machine.

The Server.

First I tried Apple Remote Desktop (ARD), but found it a little slow, but more importantly I couldn’t find a way to close the two ports in the firewall that the service automatically opened. While I’m diligently using SSH tunnelling to avoid compromising the security of my machine, these two ports are sitting there waiting for attack!

Time to try a different approach. I chose to disable the ARD service, closing the firewall again and installed a third party VNC server. The one I selected was Vine Server from Redstone Software. The reason? Nothing better that I’d read good things about it in blogs and on message boards, it’s available for Mac OS-X, and it’s free.

For Mac OS-X it downloads as a disk image containing the Server and a Viewer. I just wanted the Server as I’m using COTVNC, so a drag toward the Applications folder and a double click later I’m ready to configure things.

Vine server can be run in two different modes; as a System Server that starts automatically whenever the Mac starts up; or as a Desktop Server that can be run like any other application. Since I want to run my Mac mini as a remote headless — no keyboard, mouse or monitor — server, I only configured the System Server.

Not especially difficult, but the eagle‒eyed out there might have spotted that I didn’t enable the “Require Remote Login” option; in fact I did the first time and bang went any connection. I reasoned that I’m using SSH tunnelling, so the Server won’t realise that the connection IS via SSH and block it.

Set the System Server running, checking that it starts up again after a restart, and that’s the Server done.

The Secure Protocol.

Actually, this was pretty easy. Go to System Preferences > Sharing and enable the Remote Login service.

Make sure that the other services are disabled, unless you have a particular use for them; I’ll be enabling the Web Sharing service later. This should ensure that the firewall is closed on all ports except the one used for SSH — port 22.

The Tunnel.

The idea of the SSH tunnel was to forward any communications sent between port 5900 — the default VNC port — on the local machine and the remote machine, through an encrypted SSH connection.

Now there are lots of utilities to help you manage your SSH world, but I tend to use SSH-Agent and the command line. I primarily use SSH-Agent to manage authentication, but it does have the ability to construct tunnels.

If you’ve got PKI set up, you won’t even need to enter any passwords in order to establish the connection.

The Result.

Once your tunnel is connected, you can start up COTVNC, or equivalent, and log‒in!

Everything appears to work and I find Vine Server much more responsive than the Apple free offering.

By the way, I tried logging in with the unsecured connection and was kicked out.

I’ve always edited my online content remotely, I have a local copy and can work off–line. I use TextMate for most of my development work and I’ve been using it for blogging too.

OK… I was reluctant to change. I like having full control over mark–up and haven’t been impressed by a WYSIWYG editor yet, for Web use at least. Untried, I ranked MarsEdit amongst them.

I must apologise to the developers. It’s a great and flexible tool. Hope I’ll be doing a little more blogging!

On the Web.

My production server environment is virtualized by the Xen hypervisor; providing a more flexible and cost effective solution.

I like the freedom of complete root access but, given my relatively low traffic volumes, the cost of a dedicated server would be prohibitive. However, Xen provides me with my own little chunk of hardware resources that no other user’s going to break for me.

The great thing is that these resources can be altered very quickly to respond to changes in my requirements; great scalability in a changeable world.

On the Desktop.

I’m also making extensive use of virtualization on my desktop using VMWare Fusion. I’m a Mac user, but one of the attractions of the VMWare product is the interchangeability of any virtual machine (VM) between platforms.

VMWare Fusion.

VMWare have been in the business of Virtualization of a while now, and have a powerful range of products. Whilst many of these are targeted at the enterprise environment, Fusion is definitely a consumer product; in a good way; and the benefits to me so far…

• Surprisingly seamless Windows XP including Office, in my experience a much better product than the sadly neglected Mac version. Fusion has a ‘Unity’ mode, which places these applications, running in a Windows environment, right on my Mac desktop.
• I’ve tried different Linux flavours for the desktop and server, and I haven’t needed multiple machines. A great asset when you like to dabble but don’t have much free space; small house you see; and want to keep the bills down.
• I’ve tried a whole range of software products without the usual worry of messing up my regular working platform, if it all goes wrong I just delete the VM and start again. If I might want to return to this set‒up again, I can take a snapshot of the current installation, or copy the VM file to a backup location so I don’t have to start from scratch each time.
• Finally, I’ve build VMs of the production server for deployment testing. I know that they’re not identical, but they’ve been good enough to iron out problems in build and deployment scripts before unleashing them on the production server itself.

A virtual network.

Fusion has a built‒in DHCP server to provide IP addresses, or they can be assigned by an external network using the bridged network option.

After exploring these options I discovered that I could build a virtual development network right on my laptop and make it as private as I want. Oh, yes, you can fix the IPs the server hands out, making it much easier to edit that hosts file.

The NAT option can access the outside world, to install updates for example, by sharing the host connection. However it’s protected from external access. My physical home network uses NAT via an ADSL router, but this is a great option if you’re likely to take your laptop network out on the road and I use it for the majority of my installations.

If you’re even more worried about unauthorised access to your latest development project, you can use the host‒only option; access only from the host machine or other local VMs using this network set‒up.

With all the VMs using the same network option, they can all see and access one another. So now I can write my code on the host Mac, test deployment to a virtual CentOS Linux server, and check how it looks on Windows. It’s self contained, I can flip between machines and it’s all totally mobile.

I can’t fault the service I received from the Apple Centre, but the quality of Apple’s online and telephone support is appalling.

I went round and round the automated telephone system chasing the status of my repair until I felt like I was about the have a brain haemorrhage. I’d already tried the online service only to find that it had no more idea about the status of my laptop than I did! Fortunately, I got a call from Solihull to tell me the laptop was ready just as a was beginning to wonder if I’d ever see it again.

It turns out that is was a failure of the new LED display, and to their credit Apple duly replaced the whole clamshell unit containing the screen. The fix seems to have worked, but my confidence in the design’s longevity has definitely been shaken. This blow is particularly keen due to the fact that the repair would’ve cost nearly £400 if the laptop wasn’t under warranty.

The long term question is now whether I should consider taking out the AppleCare extended warranty. It’s a lot of money, £279 for two extra years, but if the equipment is this unreliable…?

My first Apple was back in the days of System 6 and a the Mac Plus, a combination that comprehensively beat the pants off the Windows offering of the day. Apple hardware was better build and more reliable that the generic PC equivalent and the software was more polished and usable. But that Apple was never any good at mass marketing, and the resulting niche market lead to lower volumes with higher costs.

Apple have always had a knack for well executed, innovative design. Their hardware and operating system software has always been inseparable, making their developers jobs a little easier and leading to more complete products; a deliberate move.

In addition, the Apple of today is a more efficient and focused corporate entity with effective marketing at its core. Look at the way they’ve trained people like Pavlov and his dogs; the website goes down and the Web is full of rumour about fabulous new devices.

But I guess this must come at a price and that is the old business models, where products were released when they were ready. Microsoft has long been marked as an example of the worst excesses of technology corporations, but is Apple much different any longer? I personally don’t think so, and not just because my bad MacBook Pro experience.

To be fair, the bigger your market share the greater the probability the people will talk about your failures. Yet we’re all hungry for the next big thing. No wonder technology companies now frequently practice early prototyping, fixing the problems in after-sales. It’s a tricky tightrope between reputation and lost market share.

In short, the mass marketing Apple has joined Microsoft in the big time and is bound by the same rules. Why should we expect a different result?

The day came and I received my MacBook Pro; beautifully presented in carefully designed and executed packaging. I opened it up and was immediately impressed by build quality that put my past laptops, Dell and Toshiba, to shame. The new LED screen was the very impressive, almost as good as my external Dell 2007WFP.

Before you get the impression that I’m one of those people that get over excited by anything with an Apple on it, I should point out that the MacBook Pro is not without faults. It lacks a few USB ports, could do with more battery life, gets too hot for my liking; though I’ve never felt in physical danger; and as a result the fan can get a little loud.

However, in use everything was going as well as I had hoped. All my favourite applications worked well and I am a convert to virtualisation, with both Windows XP and CentOS Linux running at the first attempt.

But less than three months later and I’m using my good old Mac mini again. The display suddenly dimmed and started to flicker. The local Genius bar, 30 miles away, think that either the backlight or display logic board has failed and are going to replace them under warranty. They were helpful and very apologetic, but have had it for six days now and I’ve not heard anything.

It’s pretty disappointing for what I previously considered a quality brand. I’ll be posting how well Apple handle the problem, both this repair and the ongoing MacBook performance.