“Darwin Ports”:http://darwinports.com/ automatically downloads open source projects over the Internet and compiles and installs them on your Mac. Means the whole world of 40 years of unix tools is available with a single command line on your computer. (BTW, Darwin is the name of the core operating system under Mac OS X and Ports means “portable software” you can load onto your computer. To get them you need to:
# Download darwin at “download.darwinports.com”:http://download.darwinports.com
# Install “Xcode”:http://developer.apple.com/tools/xcode/
# Install XWindows. First see if there is a file /Applications/Utilities/X11 and if not, insert the Mac OS X install disk and run Optional Installs and check X11
# Set the Unix shell envioronment. Make sure ~/.profile includes the lines _export PATH=/opt/local/bin:/opt/local/sbin:$PATH_ and for X11 you need _export DISPLAY=:0.0″ and to run X11 appls properfly, you need to edit /etc/X11/xinit/xinitrc and add _source ~/.profile_ and finally open X11 and select Customize Menu/Applciations and double click on Terminal and change that entry to _xterm -ls_
# Install DarwinPorts by downloading and runing the installer. Regularly run the self updater by running the command _sudo port -d selfupdate_
Now you can install just about any open source software if you know it’s name. For instance to install the network mapper called nmap, you start /Applications/Utility/Terminal and run the command:
bq. sudo port install nmap
Here are some useful utilities from a huge list of 4,000 ports at “Macports.org”:http://macports.org/ports.php
* nmap. Listed above, this let’s you scan a network and look for broken devices. Unfortunately with Darwinports, only the text based thing work, the graphical interface called zenmap doesn’t
* nessus-core. This is security software that look for security holes in your network. This doesn’t build at all complaining about an error in a library. On the other hand, you can download a compiled binary at “Nessus.org”:http://nessus.org
* “aircrack.ng”:http://mac.softpedia.com/progDownload/Aircrackng-Download-26960.html is another open source utility for checking the security of your wifi keys that also has a Mac binary version
So I’m on to “Fink”:http://finkproject.org which has the same purpose. It is a little more complicated because you have to:
* download fink and then compile it yourself.
* You also have to load “Xquartz”:http://trac.macosforge.org/projects/xquartz/wiki/Releases which is a version of the X11 package.
* download “FinkCommander”:http://finkcommander.sourceforge.net/ which is a graphical interface to Fink
