Roger’s Ramblings
by Roger Moffat – much more than just another WordPress weblog…
This blog will grow in 2 directions - hopefully I'll keep it up going forward, but I also want to try and make some historical posts, as if I did have a blog in the past. So posts will show up as new for a while... Then I'll change the date to reflect when it would have been posted so it's chronological.
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Upgrading to Mac OS X 10.6 “Snow Leopard”
Posted on August 29th, 2009 18 commentsAfter waiting almost patiently most of yesterday (Friday 28 August) I received my copy of “Snow Leopard” about 4:45 PM.
Being the cautious type I knew that I would first upgrade the MacBook, and see what out of PHP, MySQL and Apache didn’t work afterward before embarking on upgrading my Mac Pro which does full time duty as a webserver for a number of domains that use PHP and MySQL.
The install of Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard went about as easily as advertised, and an hour after starting the MacBook was back running again. There was a notice that I had some now unsupported applications, but I didn’t see a list of them. I tried to open Parallels and was told that it wouldn’t work with Mac OS X 10.6 – I had Parallels 3. But no worries – I have VMWare Fusion 2 and that works, so upgrade the Parallels Virtual Machine to work with VMWare Fusion and delete Parallels.
Then I set out to see if my previous installs of PHP 5.2.9 from http://entropy.ch/ and MySQL 5.1.32 from http://mysql.com/ were still working. Here the news was not so good.
Apple had seemingly reset everything – given me a new httpd.conf file that didn’t have PHP enabled and updated the built in PHP to 5.3.0. Luckily the built in PHP now supports the GD Library, so perhaps I can stay with Apple supplied PHP from now on as that is the only “extra” I’ve needed in the past.
So some hours of “circular” troubleshooting and confusion later I managed to get things working again. Here are some of the things I did.
Open /etc/apache2/httpd.conf and uncomment line 115
LoadModule php5_module libexec/apache2/libphp5.soand save the change. Restart the WebServer from the Sharing System Preference.
After installing MySQL 5.1.37 and trying to get that configured I was presented with errors about the socket not being in the right place – yikes!!!! And since I needed to be able to make some changes in the php.ini file I had to create that too. Apple has some bizarre way of having a default configuration used even when there’s apparently no file in place. So in Terminal
cd /etc
sudo mv php.ini.default php.inito make a copy of the php.ini.default file and name it to php.ini
then open that file for editing – I use TextWrangler – and look for the 4 instances of mysql.sock to find that php.ini is expecting to find them in /var/mysql/ but actually the mysql.sock file is in /tmp so change the 4 instances of= /var/mysql/mysql.sockto
= /tmp/mysql.sockand save the changes.
Now PHP and MySQL are running.
The next thing to do was to set up the MySQL passwords as described here http://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/5.1/en/default-privileges.html
Then after that try out my test TNG setup to see if that worked – drat – confronted by errors telling me that the server MUST have a timezone setting made (a new requirement with PHP 5.3.0). So some Googling later I’m at line 997 in the php.ini file
; date.timezone =change this to
date.timezone = "America/Detroit"or some other valid timezone as listed on this page http://us2.php.net/manual/en/timezones.php, save the changes and restart the WebServer.
Now we’re pretty much set I think. My TNG site seems to work, apart from issues restoring the tables which Darrin has already now sent me an update for.
Note that the above is a very abbreviated version of what I did for far too many hours last night, and in all likelihood wasn’t the best way to achieve this – for example providing a symbolic link to the mysql.sock file in the place it was expected should also have worked, but I needed to modify a php.ini file to take care of the timezone requirement and to change the upload_max_filesize setting also.
So all that taken care of, it was time to try out a couple of my other fears….
Drat – my HP LaserJet 4MP, which uses AppleTalk can’t be found – Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard has removed AppleTalk. Up until now it’s worked just great with an AsanteTalk box connected to the LAN and the printer. The LaserJet 4MP might be 16 years old, but it still works like a champ and doesn’t need replacing yet – particularly since I have at least 2 brand new $100 toner cartridges for it yet. So, instead I now have the eMac in the basement with Mac OS X 10.4.11 installed – running 24/7 as a FileMaker Server machine now “sharing” the HP LaserJet 4MP via Printer Sharing and the MacBook running Mac OS X 10.6 can see that and print to it just fine. But I guess eventually I’ll either need some type of HP DirectJet print server, or a new printer.
Next – the Epson R220 Inkjet Printer. Connected that to the MacBook and right away Software Update offered to download the required printer drivers and install it. A test page comes out of the printer no problems so that one seems to be easily solved.
But I seem to have lost the Epson Printer Utility that allowed for ink status, nozzle check and head cleaning. Turns out that has been replaced by “Epson Printer Utlitity Lite” which can be found in
Macintosh HD – - -> Library – - -> Printers – - -> EPSON – - -> Utility – - -> UTLand it is “Lite” – it shows a menu for printers, the Ink level status and buttons for “Nozzle Check” and “Head Cleaning”, but nothing else.
Next – the Epson Perfection 2450 Photo scanner. According to http://support.apple.com/kb/HT3669#epson it is supported. But trying to start up Epson Scan results in an error that the scanner can’t be found. The Scanner is recognised by Image Capture, but I can’t get it recognised by an earlier version of Graphic Convertor that I have. Epson’s website notes that there might be incompatibilities with the Epson Scan software and to “check back”. UPDATE – have just found that Adobe Photoshop CS3 sees the scanner just fine as long as Photoshop is “running in Rosetta” so that’s a relief!!
Now I need to stop worrying too much about this, and try and do something productive for the rest of today. Hopefully the next few days will bring some clarity from others on the issues surrounding PHP and MySQL so that I can upgrade my Mac Pro and keep the PHP and MySQL all working with less hassle, Epson will get their act together on my scanner software and the eMac in the basement running as the printing server for the LaserJet as well as of course hosting 28 FileMaker Pro databases will keep on ticking.
16 responses to “Upgrading to Mac OS X 10.6 “Snow Leopard””
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Hey. Thanks! Wondering though…I already had enabled gd extension in 10.5 and now I’m getting an odd statement in the gd section of my php info readout. It is:
Directive Local Value Master Value
gd.jpeg_ignore_warning 0 0This is in a block all its own after the block that gd normall has. Is this a problem somewhere? Thanks!
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Hi Nathan
I’m not the person to answer questions like this – I muddled through getting my MacBook running properly again after the upgrade to Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard, but don’t know much about the inner workings. I had used the Entropy.ch installs of PHP 5.2.9 for Mac OS X Leopard rather than try to figure out or follow directions online about how to add the GD Library to the existing Apple install.
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Nathan Roth August 31st, 2009 at 23:15
Hi Roger. I wasn’t really looking for tech support on it (I don’t really think it’s an issue), I was just curious if you also saw this following the gd info section in the output of the phpinfo function.
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Yes, I have the same section in mine too. From looking on Google it seems that this is telling us that GD is set to not ignore warnings. It can be controlled in the php.ini file it seems.
http://www.phpro.org/manual/ref.image.html
has some information about it.
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Thanks for your post, I was able to follow along and revive my WordPress install.
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Cynthia September 23rd, 2009 at 16:54
Thanks for helping me find the new printer utility but my Epson Stylus Photo R800 isn’t showing up. It only shows my Picturemate. I am out of ink and trying to figure out which one to change. I hope my printer hasn’t fallen off the support wagon!!! Thanks for your help!!
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Thanks for the help. I was a bit confused about the whole php.ini thing after upgrading. There was no php.ini file in /etc, but it was acting as if there was one. I was also experiencing some issues with warning messages being enabled and messing up PHP output in Joomla. I was heading down the path you offered and felt much better that I wasn’t about to totally screw things up.
MySQL configuration was fine regarding the mysql.sock file, so I don’t know why mine system was OK in that regard.
Again, thanks for publishing your experience. It was very helpful.
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Martijn October 1st, 2009 at 15:51
Thanks for the writeup, it got my php/mysql combo working again after upgrading.
Apple really messes this up every time again! (migrated from 10.2 to 10.6)
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iRacoon October 6th, 2009 at 08:30
Hi there everyone, I have lost my php.ini.default. Does any one know where I can download an unedited copy.
Thanks
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Having just moved over from the Dark Side (Win PC), I’m just going through this myself… I haven’t tried yet but wouldn’t it just have been easier to install MAMP?
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I’ve been running my sites on Mac OS X with PHP and MySQL since soon after Mac OS X came out, and so have always just continued to try and do so.
I did look at MAMP some time ago as a possible alternative, but decided against it, although the reasons are now lost in the haze of memory – maybe it was something to do with Virtual Hosts (I have 35 entries in my vhosts file) or for some other reason. But I remember that at least at that time I determined that it wasn’t going to work for me.
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Thank you sooo much for the epson advice. You are a champion.
If only apple released something like this every time they upgrade an OS.
Every time i upgrade i run into some sort of trouble.
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bill hendricks December 31st, 2009 at 09:42
Thank you…. I have a G5-IMac and a very old HP Laserjet 4mp. Turned on print sharing… now I can print from my OS 10.6 computers. Sadly, I have to turn on my G5-IMac but the printer works.
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I plan to keep one computer running Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard for a while, so that will take care of it for me, but eventually I guess it’s going to need to be either a new printer, or some type of print server box. HP make JetDirect boxes that will do this. I have 3 brand new genuine HP cartridges yet, so don’t plan on replacing the printer any time soon.
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Thanks for the printer utility info, Roger – sadly when I open it I get a message saying “this printer is not registered” – it’s an old C61 I have moved to my mother’s place, and I have no idea how to register it anyway, at the moment. I can’t see my ink or clean my heads! Grrr.
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Crawl, Walk, Run - Making Snow Leopard’s PHP 5.3.0 usable in the real world September 24th, 2009 at 17:40
[...] Notes from another 10.6 upgrade process [...]
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[...] I hit Google and came across a great article that highlighted the high-level things about tweaking settings when upgrading to Mac OS X. This was [...]
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Nathan August 29th, 2009 at 19:11