Beau Ford’s blog

Snow Leopard, Windows 7, the good ol days and the fastest way to my cloud

nobody@vox.com(Beau Ford) — Wed, 26 Aug 2009 01:35:18 -0500

I remember watching QVC back in August of 95 when they were showing computers running Windows 95 for the first time. I bought my first copy at the local Target (an upgrade from Windows 3.1). I remember how exciting it was to install something so new and different. Back then, the mac was in sort of a dead zone. Microsoft had the excitement up. I had read about it in some computer magazines, but prior to main stream internet usage, there wasn't much beta testing going on like there is today. I am writing this post from my Windows 7 RC1 machine in my home office.

I say this as I was thinking about the upcoming release of Snow Leopard this Friday. I woke up Monday morning and checked all of my common news sites from my iPhone as I do every morning. When I discovered Apple announced the Friday ship date and opened pre-orders, I immediately placed my order. I also got in on the Windows 7 pre-order for $49 and will be expecting the promised October delivery.

As I await both operating systems, I can't help but think about the similarities between the two and the historical importance both companies have had. I remember what a big leap it was going to Windows 95. Looking back, its often criticized for its many stability issues, but it was no doubt the OS that changed everything for me. Apple's OSX was also a game changer. To completely redesign an entire platform was a bold move, but something the struggling company had to do. What I'm getting at, however, is the profound impact these changes have had.

Every so often something comes along like the Internet and changes everything. We now live in a world where the browser is becoming more important than the operating system. As I look forward to both Windows 7 and Snow Leopard, they seem to be rather minor updates compared to the big sweeping changes we saw years ago. Not that we aren't seeing fantastic progress today, I just think that most of this progress is coming from other areas, such as web applications and mobile apps. The iPhone was a game changer. Snow Leopard is a welcome addition for $29, but I think the OS is starting to become transparent. While both OS's are very attractive with glassy looks and subtle transitions, the changes are very much cosmetic. While some "under the hood" changes are nothing to scoff at either (video decoding on the hardware for OSX) we aren't really seeing "new features" anymore as much as improvements and further transparency. I think the price reflects that both companies see a day where the OS is really just the way for our online applications to access our hardware. Perhaps we will in some way come full circle to the days of thin clients.

Cloud computing is clearly taking over. I happen to believe Microsoft may be in a better position to embrace this than Apple. Making Office a cross-browser compatible web app? I never would have expected that from Microsoft. I am already finding it easier by the month to move between my Mac and Windows machines because more and more of my information is being stored in the cloud. My e-mail is all routed through Gmail, my data is synchronized on multiple machines, and the rest of my life resides on my web server, on Evernote and I remember it all using Remember the Milk. Do any of these things change by upgrading to the newest operating system? No. So why was I so anxious to do so? I'm going to Windows 7 because it seems to be a little faster and prettier on my multi-monitor setup and it lets me add lots of gadgets to my desktop for all of the web services I use and news I consume. Did I get it for the e-mail client, movie making capabilities or bundled software? No. In fact I have used Firefox for so long, I wouldn't notice if IE wasn't even included (No pun intended for Europeans). In short, its more transparent than its fat bloated predecessor. Do you think its just a coincidence that Snow Leopard is touting speed and reliability over new features? I don't think so. They know that users want the OS to get the hell out of the way and just work. If we could embed it into a chip, that would be great. Just get me instantly to my browser and give me some heads up display info for what I want to see the most and I'm happy. Transparency equals beauty. Just tell me the fastest way to my cloud and I'll run whatever. Perhaps I don't really think we are at this stage quite yet, but I do believe we will get there.

That said, I'm still excited. I'm a tech fan. I spend way too much time listening to TWIT and reading the tech blogs. I have an extensive gadget profile over at GDGT and I'm always hopeful to witness the next game changer. Until then, I'll be happily switching gears awaiting the announcement of the next big cat (what comes after snow leopard anyway?) and the Windows 8 beta.

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Dear Steve

nobody@vox.com(Beau Ford) — Tue, 13 Jan 2009 23:16:01 -0600

January 13, 2009
To: sjobs@apple.com

Dear Steve,

Well now I really hope you get this message because it took me a long time to type it. For some reason my iPhone only works in portrait mode for typing an e-mail. I guess that is not a big deal since I can only connect with Edge on my new 3G iPhone. No biggie, I'll just send this from WiFi as soon as I figure out how to type in the 64 character WPA key in portrait mode. If there was only some way to do that more easily, like if I had a magical way of pulling text from one screen and putting it back on another screen.... oh nevermind, Im in fantasy land. Anyway, how are those push notifications coming along?

Beau

Sent from my iPhone.

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Apple announces final MacWorld

nobody@vox.com(Beau Ford) — Wed, 17 Dec 2008 00:53:50 -0600

In repsonse to the Engadget article:
http://www.engadget.com/2008/12/16/apple-announces-final-macworld-steve-jobs-wont-deliver-keynote/5#c16152216

I am personally disappointed to see it go. Apple has been ramping up their own special events for a while now and everyone gets excited about those, but for years MacWorld was the one big event other than WWDC that we expect big things. I can't help but think it has to be hard for Apple to knock one out of the park every year in January, but lets not underestimate the power of this event.

While its value as a trade show may be limited and the explanations of the online and retail stores trumping the need for a trade show make logical sense, I can't help but think that the nostalgia and nearly un-rivaled coverage they receive from this one event is something that is hard to value. How many companies other than Apple can systematically pull this off every year and get the attention that they do? I don't know the cost involved for attending MacWorld, but it would have to be awfully high for this to be dropped. This makes me question why they chose to do this. Special event coverage doesn't occur on a pre-defined schedule, so I would think they would at-least want to replace MacWorld with their own event every year. I guess we'll see.

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Griffin RoadTrip SmartScan Follow Up

nobody@vox.com(Beau Ford) — Mon, 15 Dec 2008 12:30:07 -0600

To follow up my previous post about the Griffin RoadTrip with SmartScan I bought on Amazon.... I did receive a replacement last Thursday. This time I used it in our TrailBlazer. It worked fine out of the box when I plugged it in, but it does seem very snug and I am a little worried this might not be the device to transport back and forth between vehicles for fear of what happened with the first one.

After a weekend of use I have a few issues to complain about. I was hopeful that the SmartScan feature would work better. Unfortunately, it seems to pick stations that are far worse than the ones I find manually (usually in the 88.3-88.9 range). Also, while it works fine to charge and play the iPhone 3G, the adapters in the box do not include one for the iPhone or iPod touch, so I am using the 80GB adapter. It seems to fit snugly (maybe too snugly) and the home button on the iPhone is slightly covered. I also found myself fiddling with the controls. While the play / next buttons might be more useful with a regular iPod, I find the iPhone interface easier to control my music. Not that I would mind the functionality, but the existence of these nicely lit up buttons on the Griffin do obscure the function of switching stations while driving. You actually have to change the function to manually adjust the stations.

In designing the Griffin I imagine the idea was you would be switching music tracks often while leaving the station setting alone. I, however, have the opposite need. I listen to podcasts primarily. I have never found any of these FM transmitters good enough to listen to music with. A single podcast (TWIT, Security Now, MacBreak Weekly) may be an hour and 20 minutes or so. During this time, I don't need to do anything but occasionally pause the podcast. I do, however need to change station about 5 times between Springfield, IL and Bloomington, IL due to static.

In my original article I mentioned that the older Griffin I had a lot of trouble staying upright under the weight of the iPhone. The new flexible one did solve that problem and it is definately more aesthetically pleasing. However, I wish there was a way to shorten the flexible neck. While it is fine for our TrailBlazer, It has a much bigger footprint than I expected it to have in my car. For this reason alone, I will probably be leaving this device only in the TrailBlazer.

Overall, I am a little disappointed. I do think that the Griffin RoadTrip SmartScan is a decent solution for podcast / audiobook listners, or non-picky music lister with plenty of room in their vehicle and for someone who plans to leave it in one spot. I do also want to mention the audio out for users with a Line-In in the car. That solves the mediocre audio, however, if you are going this route you might as well save some money and buy the Tune2Aux device. I have not decided if I will keep this unit or not, but I am continuing to look.

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GriffinRoadTrip SmartScan

nobody@vox.com(Beau Ford) — Fri, 05 Dec 2008 20:33:36 -0600

Griffinroadtrip2

I just bought the GriffinRoadTrip SmartScan on Amazon for around $60 to use with my iPhone 3G, since this is one of the few that works with it (although not officially). I was replacing my older Griffin RoadTrip (without flexible neck).

When the unit arrived, I took it out to the car to give it a try. My car is a Cadillac CTS and has an ashtray that you must flip down to access the cigarette lighter. This was a big reason I wanted the flexible neck, as the older RoadTrip never was ideally aligned and always slipped down under the weight of the 1st iPhone I used it with. When I bought the 3G, it wouldn’t charge it, so another reason I bought the RoadTrip with SmartScan.

As soon as I plugged it in, it seemed really snug. It lit up and starting scanning for stations immediately. I then adjusted the neck to get a good position to hold the iPhone. It seemed a little more akward and cumbersome than I hoped. I pushed it a little closer to the dash since it was sticking farther out than I thought it would and the unit immediately shut off. Thinking that I must have knocked the plug loose I went to pull the plug out and quickly realized I could smell burning electronics. I grabbed the plug (luckly the iPhone was not connected) and started examining it. It appears the end metal connector came loose and was pushed inside the end of the adapter.

Long story short, I have a replacement on its way from Amazon, but I am a little bummed about the whole situation now. I will be extra careful with the new one, but I do have concerns about taking it in and out of the car on a regular basis as to this happening again. Hopefully it was just a fluke, but I will report back in when I get the new one if I have any problems.

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My response to "The top 5 reasons why Windows Vista failed"

nobody@vox.com(Beau Ford) — Mon, 06 Oct 2008 17:26:48 -0500

I just finished reading Jason Hiner's article on ZDNet titled "The top 5 reasons why Windows Vista failed." While I have plenty of criticism for Microsoft, I couldn't help but think what an incredibly biased article this was.

You can read the article here: http://blogs.zdnet.com/BTL/?p=10303

Either Jason Hiner fell off his rocker or he is cleverly trying to create the perception that Windows Vista is this horrible thing.

5. Apple successfully demonized Vista

Sure Apple has done a great job with their ads, but why are you comparing Apple ads to the demise of Vista? You only show the Enterprise adoption rates which are ALWAYS slow and I am quite certain were impacted very little by Apple. I think if you compare the consumer markets you might have a more accurate idea of what is really happening.

4. Windows XP is too entrenched. I agree, but is this a surprise for an OS that has been around since 2001? Microsoft screwed up in my opinion by waiting sooooo long between XP and Vista. Also, what research do you have that says all netbooks will be running XP and that somehow netbooks are going to take over sales of normal laptops / desktops? And how did you predict that netbooks will never have the power to run Vista?

3. Vista is too slow - Really? What year is this? I noticed your benchmark link was from 2007. Sure you may need more resources to run it, but wouldn't Windows 98 fly on a P4 or Windows 95 fly on a P3 (Assuming it would operate). Vista is quite fast on my machine. I would understand if you were trying to upgrade your old machine to Vista, but isn't this really the start of a new platform, really meant to run on new computers? If you are going to say XP is faster than Vista, why don't you elaborate? Don't you think you need to consider that most drivers at release time may not have been tuned as well as they are now and that future performance will only increase on Vista, most likely far surpassing XP in gaming and other intensive areas? Isn't Leo Laporte's Ultimate Gaming Machine running Vista 64 because that was the consensus of many people in the know (like NVida and ATI) as being just as fast?

2. Windows Vista failed because there wasn't supposed to be a Vista?

Is this like Letterman saying "no number 2, writer stuck on Jet Blue?" Microsoft has been talking about a subscription based model for a long time. Will they get there? I don't know, but I expected to hear something about Windows Live Mesh. That seems to be some coherent concept moving in that direction. I wouldn't say they dropped it, they are just slow at getting there. I'm not neccesarily defending them here, but I say again, how is this a reason Vista failed (your words, not mine).

1. It broke too much stuff

You mean it broke some stuff. And some of that was due to wating on vendors to upgrade drivers. Since you are focusing on enterprise again for this point, isn't it always the case that enterprises don't adopt right away because they know it takes time? How is this any different than any other release of Windows with enterprise wide adoption?

Bottom Line:

You said "Microsoft needs to abandon the strategy of releasing a new OS every 3-5 years and simply stick with a single version of Windows and release updates, patches, and new features on a regular basis." So maybe we could all be running Windows 95 with 13 years of patches from Windows Update? Cool. Sign me up.

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My solution for image thumbnails in PHP

nobody@vox.com(Beau Ford) — Thu, 07 Aug 2008 23:33:44 -0500

A very common dilemma I come across as a PHP developer is how I want to handle creating thumbnails for lots of images. Sure, I could use some software and make thumbnails, but I'm talking about bigger projects that need to handle it for thousands of photos. I have been down the path many times of using PHP GDI+ and writing a function to do resizing. A couple of years ago I got fancier and made some proportiate resizing functions so that those pesky pictures people take holding their cameras vertically don't have to be squished into a pre-determined width of 100px. However, each and every time I do a project like this I always think how messy it is. If you have 50 thousand photos, you will have 100 thousand files once you pre-make all those thumnails. And what if the client comes back next year and wants a different size, or you decide to do something in-between sizes for another use? Heck, what if you update a photo, you have to remember to do the thumbnail. Don't forget to remove them too, or you are just creating a new project for yourself 5 years later when you are running low on disk space and backups take forever because of the 10 gazillion thumbnails left rotting on your system that link to nothing.

My new approach to doing thumbnails is to not do them at all. That's not quite what I mean, but I have really been sold on the idea of dynamically generated thumbnails. There is very little performance hit if it is done correctly and I have been extremely happy with the results so far. My development time has been reduced and I never worry about wanting to add more sizes later, changing / updating existing thumbs. Even better, I can remotely host images and pull them in doing the thumbnail version on the fly.

This was very useful to me in revamping a real estate web site design project my company, Vermilion Design Group, built many years ago, www.conniedavis.info. I actually removed nearly 60 thousands photos from the site and off-loaded only the good ones to a single site that can be shared for all of my real estate web site customers.

My new method involves two items. First, I use phpThumb(), an open source thumbnail generator from http://phpthumb.sourceforge.net/. I really like this solution because it uses the most efficient method available to generate thumbnails. It determines the available memory when creating images, so massive bulk conversions won't crash and burn. It also chooses the best option depending on if you have ImageMagic installed on your server or GDI+, etc... Finally, I am really impressed that it can do all of this work on remote images, just as if they were local.

Implementing phpThumb was very easy. I put it in a folder and then call it just like using a normal img tag. The trick is you can add all kinds of parameters to the end of it:

The above will show myphoto.jpg from the images folder and on the fly proportionally resize it to 400px wide.

In addition to incorporating phpThumb for image manipulation, I needed a quick solution for determing if an image existed before showing it. The fast way of course is if the image is stored on the same site, you could do:

if (file_exists("images/myphoto.jpg")) {
<img src="phpThumb.php?src=images/myphoto.jpg&w=400">
}

However, the really cool part is using it with remote images. You can do this many ways, but I chose to remain in PHP and test to see if I get a header back from the image. In the next example, I am calling a remote image to be 400px wide, but only if it exists, that way I could show a friendly photo if it wasn't there. In my case, these photos were of real estate houses, so I didn't know for any 1 listing whethere there would be 1 or 15 photos.

function url_exists($url) {
$hdrs = @get_headers($url);
return is_array($hdrs) ? preg_match('/^HTTP\\/\\d+\\.\\d+\\s+2\\d\\d\\s+.*$/',$hdrs[0]) : false;
}

if (url_exists("http://www.othersite.com/myphoto.jpg")) {
<img src="phpThumb.php?src=http://www.othersite.com/myphoto.jpg&w=400">
}

While there are many options for handling thumbnails and a variety of tools, I think this combination is a very fast, comprehensive solution to the problem. If you find this helpful, I encourage you to post any additional solutions or any corrections to the comments.

As always, if you would like to hire me for a web development project, please visit www.vermiliondesign.com

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Apple TV - Recover from nothing Take 2

nobody@vox.com(Beau Ford) — Sun, 16 Dec 2007 13:48:47 -0600

Ok, so I have updated this for Take 2 and Leopard. This is more of a rought draft, but it worked well for me. Please comment if I have missed any steps since I am writing this after the fact. One big change from the original article us you can let Disk Utility do some of the work for you now. Also, I just skipped the restore partition to keep it simple since that was the source of many problems.

Connect your Apple TV drive in Leopard. Remember disk1 may not be the name of your drive.

From the terminal: Wipe out and re-create the partition structure
sudo diskutil unmountDisk /dev/disk1
sudo gpt destroy /dev/disk1
sudo gpt create /dev/disk1

Create the OSBoot Partition
sudo gpt add -b 888872 -i 3 -s 1843200 -t hfs /dev/disk1
diskutil unmountDisk /dev/disk1
sudo diskutil eraseVolume "Journaled HFS+" OSBoot /dev/disk1s3
diskutil unmountDisk /dev/disk1

Create the Media Partition
Go to Disk Utility and format the Media partition - Name it Media and use the rest of the free space on your drive.
diskutil unmountDisk /dev/disk1

Restore the OS image to the drive
Download it here:
http://mesu.apple.com/data/OS/061-3561.20080212.ScoH6/2Z694-5274-109.dmg
to your desktop.

sudo dd if=/Users/username/Desktop/OS.dmg of=/dev/disk1s3 bs=1m

Now Bless the boot file
Notice how the OSBoot we are blessing is OSBoot 1 because it is on Disk 1.

bless --folder="/Volumes/OSBoot 1/System/Library/CoreServices" --file="/Volumes/OSBoot 1/System/Library/CoreServices/boot.efi" --setBoot

Now pray and let me know if you are successful or not so we can make this article more useful.

--ORIGINAL ARTICLE IS BELOW

I titled this appropriately after destroying all data on my AppleTV and learning the hard way how to rebuild the drive with no backup or spare AppleTV. The process does not take very long, but I had a hard time finding all of the info in one place and I don't know anyone else currently that owns an AppleTV that I can borrow.

Assumptions / Caveats:
1. My guide assumes that you will remove the drive from your AppleTV. However, this could be done without removing the drive by booting from a USB drive with OSX (Sorry, you'll have to search for this elsewhere).

2. You will need to download the Apple OS 1.1.dmg file (The latest at the time I am writing this) which contains the OSBoot data. Luckily, Apple provides this file at http://mesu.apple.com/data/OS/061-2988.20070620.bHy75/2Z694-5248-45.dmg. You can also use version 1.0 if you happen to have that DMG image, I have verified it works as well.

3. You will need an Intel Mac and a USB cable or external enclosure to connect the AppleTV drive to you computer. I used an old 40gb IBM TravelStar hard drive in my test.

4. I don't know if this is crucial, but to be safe I downloaded an app called Spotless that lets you turn Spotlight off termporarily while doing this.

5. I did not restore the recovery data, therefore my guide lacks this step, although the partition is there. From my readings, it looks like you can do this by renaming the DMG you downloaded from apple above to OS.DMG and copy it to the recovery partition / reset its permissions to 777 after you finish this guide by using a patchstick, or possibly even do it right after you create the partition. I don't know and I hope someone will post this in the comments. However, this guide should get you back to factory state and a working AppleTV otherwise.

6. When you are in the terminal, you should be running as root, or you need to add sudo in front of the below commands.

Instructions:
Follow the instrctions on removing your AppleTV drive (if you need to). Basically, peel the rubber off the bottom and remove the 4 case screws and the 4 drive screws with a torx screwdriver ($6 - Lowes).

1. Connect the drive to your Intel Mac with your USB connector.
2. We need to know which drive it is, so open up the terminal and type:

diskutil /list

Pay attention to which disk is your usb disk. On my Intel mac, my internal hdd was disk0, so my USB was disk1. Throughout this document, be sure to substitute your correct disk id or you may blow away your hard drive.

3. Now we will completely destroy anything on the drive to start with a blank slate. When the finder asks you to initialize the disk, just choose ignore.

diskutil unmountDisk /dev/disk1
gpt destroy /dev/disk1
gpt create /dev/disk1

4. Next, we need to add the OSBoot partition with the following command and then unmount it.

gpt add -b 888872 -i 3 -s 1843200 -t hfs /dev/disk1
diskutil unmountDisk /dev/disk1

5. Now, we need to determine how much space is on your hard drive for your Media partition. Look at the line directly above Sec GPT table. This is the starting number and size of the partition. Don't get these wrong.

gpt show /dev/disk1
diskutil unmountDisk /dev/disk1

6. substitute the words START and SIZE with the numbers you got from step 5.

gpt add -b START -i 4 -s SIZE -t hfs /dev/disk1

7. Now we are going to prepare the OSBoot and Media Partitions.

diskutil eraseVolume "Journaled HFS+" OSBoot /dev/disk1s3
diskutil eraseVolume "Journaled HFS+" Media /dev/disk1s4
diskutil unmountDisk /dev/disk1

8. Next, we will copy the image you downloaded from Apple to the OSBoot partition 3. This will take a few minutes to copy. You could also do this from the disk utility by choosing restore and dragging the OSBoot partition into the destination box. However you choose to do it, make sure it is done before proceeding. You can't mess around with the partitions once you create the EFI and boot partitions because Disk Utility will mess the order up.

dd if=/Users/beauford/Desktop/2Z694-5248-45.dmg of=/dev/disk1s3 bs=1m
diskutil unmountDisk /dev/disk1

9. Now we need to create the EFI parition and the Restore partition.

gpt add -b 40 -i 1 -s 69632 -t efi /dev/disk1
diskutil unmountDisk /dev/disk1
gpt add -b 69672 -i 2 -s 819200 -t 5265636F-7665-11AA-AA11-00306543ECAC /dev/disk1

10. Finally, we need to bless the drive so that the AppleTV can boot it (This is one big line).

bless --folder=/Volumes/OSBoot/System/Library/CoreServices --file=/Volumes/OSBoot/System/Library/CoreServices/boot.efi --setBoot
diskutil unmountDisk /dev/disk1

11. Unmount the disk and put it back in your AppleTV and boot up.

Credits / References

The guide I wrote is from many hours of searching other sites, newsgroups, etc.. I want to offer credit to the following sites specifically:

awkwardTV
Prepare a hard drive article: http://wiki.awkwardtv.org/wiki/Prepare_a_Hard_Drive
Info about the recovery partition: http://forum.awkwardtv.org/viewtopic.php?f=13&t=839

Cisco & Friends (English Version) - How to create a USB Patchstick: http://www.cerof.net/2007/10/19/piccola-guida-alla-creazione-di-un-patchstick/#more-99

MacRumors Forums - http://forums.macrumors.com/showthread.php?t=320839

AppleTV Hacks
Hack the AppleTV without opening the case
http://www.appletvhacks.net/2007/04/03/hack-the-apple-tv-without-opening-the-case

Removing the drive - http://blog.makezine.com/archive/2007/03/violating_my_apple_tv_war.html

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Cingular supports tethering Blackberry 8800 - no extra fee

nobody@vox.com(Beau Ford) — Mon, 30 Apr 2007 22:45:28 -0500

Read my current post on Blackberry Forums regarding the Blackberry 8800 and Cingular. They told me they do support tethering included in the Blackberry unlimited plan at no additional charge.

http://www.blackberryforums.com/524736-post33.html

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Beau's PHP 5 mail() logging Solution for Windows Server 2003

nobody@vox.com(Beau Ford) — Mon, 26 Mar 2007 15:03:26 -0500

When I set out to stop spammers from exploiting poorly written scripts scattered across various web sites hosted on a Windows server, I had no idea that I was in for such a long journey. I will try to lay out the steps I took in order to solve the problem, which I am happy to report is working well.

The Problem:
PHP as of 5.2.1 provides no way of tracking which script, or even which web site is the source of an email being delivered using PHP's mail() function. Because so many web applications use it, I didn't want to disable it. Furthermore, the idea of combing through all of the code on multiple sites was not intriguing. Furthermore, I can't change someone else's code and I don't want to start isolating customers by turning their scripts off.

The Platform:
Using a Windows 2003 Server and PHP 5.1.2, I thought this would be quick. Basically, the fix isn't that difficult, but finding the solution led me to many options for Linux / Apache, but few for Windows.

The Details:
I first discovered the option of patching mail.c, thanks to Ilia Alshanetsky's blog at http://ilia.ws/archives/149-mail-logging-for-PHP.html.

I wanted to provide similar functionality for Windows, but did not want to recompile PHP in a Windows environment. The patch added code so that every script sent from the server adds x-header information, such as the script and site sending it, as well as logging what goes out.

The Solution: (PHP Sendmail Wrapper Script + Fake Sendmail + php.ini)
I found a few other alternatives until finally deciding on a unique combination of tools to get the job done. First off, if you are not going to change users code, or patch and recompile the PHP source, you have to have some method of capturing the email leaving the web site, but before it gets to the mail server. In comes Sendmail Wrapper from Greg Maclellan (www.gregmaclellan.com)and Fake Sendmail from Byron Jones (http://glob.com.au/sendmail/.)

The Sendmail Wrapper PHP script is a great little script that will accept mail just as if it were sendmail and then deliver it to the real sendmail (or fake sendmail in my case). The clever part here is that you can specify this script as the default mail server in your PHP.INI file. For Windows, just disable the smtp port, host, etc.. and put c:\usr\lib\sendmail_wrapper.php as your path to sendmail. (Yes, specifying the sendmail path will work on Windows).

Setting up Sendmail for Windows was fairly straight forward. The executable sits in c:\usr\lib\sendmail and includes an ini file that lets you forward mail to your real SMTP server and specify a few other options, including a folder to log the messages. Sendmail simply captures the email piped to it from a script.

Putting the two together was fairly easy. I modified the sendmail wrapper script to use the path to sendmail and made sure fake sendmail was up and running. I also decided since I could let fake sendmail do authentication against an SMTP server to put an actual mail account on my mail server specifically for handling the mail processed via php and I added some limitations, one being a quota no more than 500 messages per day.

The final piece of the puzzle was getting PHP to add some extra headers beyond what the Sendmail Wrapper script was providing so I would really have some robust information. I decided to use Environment Variables and PHP's append directive in php.ini to set some variables up on each page. This idea is credited to Harold Paulson who posted on Greg Maclellan's blog. I made a page called prepend.php and put in in my php append path (or prepend, you choose). I added the following information to mine, although you could really capture anything you wanted to add to the message header).

<? putenv("REMOTE_ADDR=" . $_SERVER['REMOTE_ADDR']); putenv("SCRIPT_NAME=" . $_SERVER['SCRIPT_NAME']); putenv("SERVER_NAME=" . $_SERVER['SERVER_NAME']); ?>

Next, I made a modification to the sendmail_wrapper script to include this information in the headers of the mail.

// additional headers $add_headers["X-MsgID"] = $messageid; $add_headers["X-SenderIP"] = $_ENV["REMOTE_ADDR"]; $add_headers["X-WebSite"] = $_ENV["SERVER_NAME"]; $add_headers["X-Script"] = $_ENV["SCRIPT_NAME"];

I replaced the existing line (below) in the script with the above.

if (preg_match("|C:/Program Files/Plexus/Sites/([a-zA-Z0-9\._-]*)(/.*)?|", $_ENV["PWD"], $matches)) { $add_headers["X-Generating-Domain"] = $matches[1]; }

A few tips on making this work:
Be certain you have assigned permissions for the user that PHP is running as to have access to execute this script. Also, I believe in PHP 5 you still need to make sure cmd.exe has execute permissions to call the script. Finally, you must execute it using php.exe the CLI (Command Line Interface), not php-cgi.exe or the script will have trouble reading the STDIN input. If you ran the PHP binary installer when you originally installed PHP, head over to http://snaps.php.net/ and download the zip file, which will contain php.exe. Better yet, it might be a good day to upgrade anyway. Don't forget to restart IIS after you make the changes to php.ini.

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