I recently upgraded to Mac OS X Leopard. After the upgrade, MySQL was still working but PHP was not working at all. (The MySQL preference pane doesn’t work but I usually start and stop it from the command line anyway.) I discovered that there are three problems. I will briefly describe how to resolve them in case you have the same problem.

Grant Access To Your Sites Directory

Mac OS X Leopard uses Apache 2 instead of Apache 1.3. This only presents a problem because Apache 2 uses a different directory for its configuration files and Apple’s installer scripts do not move all your existing configuration files over. Those old files grant access to your user directory. The old configuration directory is /etc/httpd. The new configuration directory is /etc/apache2.

Let’s move the user configuration files over. We will ignore +entropy-php.conf file because it is only necessary for the old setup.

If this is a new install and not an upgrade, then you’ll need to create a .conf file for your username. The contents of that file should be simply (swapping in your username for mine):

Enable PHP 5

PHP 5.2.4 is installed with Leopard, but it is not enabled by default. You need to make a tiny edit to the main Apache 2 configuration file to enable it.

Find the line that looks like this: #LoadModule php5_module libexec/apache2/libphp5.so and remove the “#” from the start of the line to uncomment it.

Help PHP find MySQL

Apple’s version of PHP 5.2.4 will look for a connection to MySQL by looking for the file /var/mysql/mysql.sock. In the past, that file was /tmp/mysql.sock.

Here’s a good explanation of your choices in how to fix it. I like solution #1 unless you have the time and energy to tackle solution #4. If you use Ruby on Rails or any GUI client to connect to MySQL then do NOT use solution #3—MySQL will put the file where PHP can find it but also where no one else can.

Restart the Webserver

And the last step is to restart the server with: sudo apachectl graceful

PHP 5 should be enabled, ready to connect to MySQL and accessible through your Sites directory.

A more thorough guide is here if you run into different issues or need more help. I should note that I disagree with their choice on how to fix the mysql.sock problem.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, December 19th, 2007 at 3:10 pm and is filed under PHP. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.