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

and 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

to 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

to

and 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

change this to

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.

Followup 27 April 2010 – I’ve written an article about using an HP JetDirect 300x to allow my HP LaserJet 4MP to be used by computers running Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard.

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

and 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.

Followup 27 April 2010 – I’ve written an article about using an HP JetDirect 300x to allow my HP LaserJet 4MP to be used by computers running Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard

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