Hi there I just installed Ubuntu on my mac mini and I am running it through VmWare Fusion, it took me some time to get it up and running to be able to do local testing of ZenPhoto and more.

I just installed the newest nightly
zenphoto version 1.2.2 [3417]

and everything looked just fine, after closer look things seemed a bit strange in some places. A dot was placed in front of what seems to be ghost files of something that is already there, here are 2 screenshots of it.

http://img.skitch.com/20090201-m1xbmbcjhu9hr94w91s4rwkqk8.jpg

http://img.skitch.com/20090201-ty64ddh2hng57jh7e2bxumrqi1.jpg

it is in more random places as well, when choosing the color of a theme in a drop down menu there are dot files there as well...

Is this something you guys have ever noticed before?

EDIT: and yes I am not able to delete the .files in edit mode in Zen, and they are nowhere to be seen in finder og any other file browser.

I have never seen something like that. Maybe it's a configuration issue of the local server software. (Why don't you use one of the local server packages that are available for Mac...:-))

yeah I was afraid that might be the case.

I just cant for the life of me get the sql to work in Leopard, I have tried so many times, as well I am having problem getting GD to work as well.

Doing it with Ubuntu worked like a charm very fast and doesn't use a lot of CPU power even when running through VmWare Fusion. Well I have been thinking about changing the Mac OS out for Ubuntu completely, but that's another story

I suppose you don't know about this, do you?:
http://www.mamp.info

I did know about this, I was recommended not to use it. Do you use it yourself? I might have to give it a better look.

Yes, I use it as my primary testing environment besides my real webspace and I am absolutly fine with it.

Why were you recommend not to use it? It's as easy as it could be on the mac to setup a local environment, directly working out of the box. Just drop the package into the applications folder and then start it via the widget.

I actually never tried to set up any server with OS X or any other system myself as I am actually coming from design not coding and just take the easy way if available (that's whay we are with Zenphoto, aren't we...:-))

I got told it wasn't stable enough, and that Everything was build into Leopard anyways.

Well later I found out that things are yes built into Leopard but somehow there are a lot of things missing, that Apple has decided to take out of the normal PHP5.

Apache can for example be turned on by one click in Leopard.

I am def going to check mamp out again in the next days. Thanks. Easy way is the good way.

MAMP turns on and off mysql and php with one click. And a big advantage is it works outside the normal system so it can't break anything.

I find it absolutly stable. Although I am still on 10.4.11. (I am thinking of buying 10.5 as my machine will not run with the "Snow Leopard" and I won't buy a new one right now)

SMACK. just tried MAMP and i have it up and running in matter of seconds with ZenPhoto. I see nothing wrong with this what so ever. Super fast.

Thanks again Malte.