The people from Corsaire have done it again. They have published a whitepaper on how you can secure your installation of Leopard. It’s a document describing the best practices and some of it should be common knowledge. It’s a follow up on the previous guides they published for Tiger and earlier.

It’s a good and easy read and you can benefit from this when you have your Mac connected to the outside world. Did I mention it’s available for free.

You can download the PDF from here.

When I tested the latest MySQL upgrade I noticed I had left out some of instructions that accompany the other applications. So this weekend I wrote the pages “Upgrading MySQL” and “Starting MySQL on Leopard” which makes sure that MySQL is started automatically after a reboot using the new launchd program. With this you don’t need to install the MySQL startup item, it will only interfere. The new launchd scripts is also configured to automatically restart MySQL after a crash, shutdown or other failure.

No we didn’t miss versions, this is the first release after 5.0.51b. This is a bug and security fix release and it is available in source and packaged format for Mac OS X. Because this is a security fix I would urge you all to upgrade your MySQL server installation.

Check all the fixes that are listed on the release notes to what issues are resolved.

I’ve compiled this version and did some simple tests on Leopard and Tiger and both can be compiled and installed using the instructions in the documentation set without problems.

I’ve just finished updating all my Mac’s with the security update 2008-005. The update went without any problem and my setup was not affected in a negative way. Every item had started after the reboot and worked according to expectations.

If you want to read more on what is affected in the updates I would suggest reading the Apple support site for the 2008-005 Security update.

In case of doubt, please make a full bootable disk image backup with Cabon Copy Cloner.

Update: It is always good to wait a few days and monitor the blogosphere and forums to see if there are any major issues with the last update. It’s good to be prepared!