Setting up my old iBook G4

Now that I have moved, I have decided to reclaim my old iBook (which I was using as my router). With this decision, I thought it would be a good idea to keep track of what I had to do to get this machine to a state where I was happy with it (and thus a mac in general).

So, here it is, for those who are interested. You might even find a few things that you had not though of performing on your mac.

Software installed:

• iTerm (latest svn build)
• fink - with customizations
• XQuartz updates
• Quicksilver - a very useful application launcher
• Witch - window switching on steroids
• Psi (Nightly snapshot) - an excellent jabber client
• Firefox

Fink customizations

I have quite a few packages that I use that are not (yet) in the standard fink repos. This means I must remember to add my own custom ones to the mix.

The first step is to install mercurial:

fink install mercurial-py26

After this, you may clone the two custom repos that I use:

cd /sw/fink
hg clone http://tsukasa.net.au/~hg/fink_infos gregdarke
hg clone http://delx.net.au/hg/finkinfos jamesbunton
cd dists
ln -s ../gregdarke
ln -s ../jamesbunton

After you have cloned these repos, you will need to update your fink.conf file:

sudo vim /sw/etc/fink.conf

Add "jamesbunton/main gregdarke/main" to end of the list for 'Trees:'.
Now you will need to update the packages list:

fink index
fink selfupdate
fink update-all

Fink packages

fink install mutt mplayer vim-nox screen git debfoster

Custom Compiles

Since I like the new version of offlineimap (containing the patches for idle), I generally compile it from source. For this, you need to have a fink version of python installed (as the system python has a memory leak in ssl) and you must also have installed git.

I also like to have a fresh copy of iTerm, and thus grab that from source as well. This is a fairly easy install though:

mkdir -p ~/Projects/software ~/Applications
cd ~/Projects/software
svn co https://iterm.svn.sourceforge.net/svnroot/iterm/trunk iterm
cd iterm
make Development
mv build/Development/iTerm.app ~/Applications/

Enabling dual screen support

Information taken from the everything website.

To enable support for dual monitors (ie, not mirroring), jump into open firmware:
Hold command+option+o+f, then at the prompt, type:
" /" select-dev
00000000 " graphic-options" get-my-property 2drop !
mac-boot
To make the above permanent, before typing mac-boot, press ctrl-c, then type the following:
nvstore
setenv use-nvramrc? true
reset-all