apache

nfortunately, Leopard's PHP installation does not ship with a GD module. If you use this PHP version, Drupal will report that it can't find a GD library (and no image processing will be performed either). There is a tutorial on the web that explains step by step how to compile GD2 for the stock PHP 5.2.4 that comes with Leopard; however, PHP segfaults after the installation (at least for me).

You know, for an operating system that is hailed by many as an alternative to Linux that just works, OS X isn't really all that great.

I figured since I was using OS X and it touts being UNIX compliant that for a local web development sandbox, I'd just use a local install of apache instead of a virtualized Linux install. I thought all I had to do was go to System Preferences, go to Sharing, then tick the checkbox next to Web Sharing and I'd be good to go. This is OS X after all, not some complicated Linux install that requires some arcane knowledge to administer.

Didn't work. Got an access denied when I tried to view my localhost. Fan-fail-tastic.

I went to check the access logs, which I assumed were in /var/log/apache2/error.log but there wasn't even a /var/log/apache2 directory to look in. OK, check out /var/log/system.log. Hmm, this stands out:

No such file or directory: httpd: could not open error log file /usr/logs/error_log

A quick search yields the solution, you need to do a sudo mkdir -p /var/log/apache2 first and make sure the error log is set to log there. (I'm not sure why so many paths are prefixed with /private

While the config file isn't how I'm used to seeing things and the entire a2ensite and a2dissite thing doesn't work this way, it does work. Though I find it really interesting that in the modern Linux distros that I've used, apache worked out of the box, but under OS X, it doesn't.

Onward.

Last night, Christina and I were picking up some pineapples at a health food store when an older guy in front of us said I had a nice shirt, talking about my Apache: Mirrored Worldwide shirt. He asked me if I knew where the name came from and I remarked that Apache gets its name from the fact that Apache is A PAtCHy server. He responded "you truely are a geek, young man."