Apache, PHP & Postgres on OS/X 10.5 (Leopard)

The goal is to have Drupal running on OS/X using Postgres as the database.

I started looking at the MAMP install, but I don't want MySQL as part of the stack, so I didn't think it would work. However, I found Lullabot's post on Beginning with Drupal 6 and PostgreSQL on OS X 10.5 Leopard and John VanDyk claimed that the MAMP + plain vanilla install gave him the option of choosing which database to use. That didn't work for me -- the Drupal install gave me no such option.

So I tried testing the apache - php - postgres stack to make sure I could hit my long- working postgres database. Running a little php test showed that I wasn't able to connect to my postgres database and the documentation from the PHP site indicates that I needed to recompile php with the postgres option. So I got the latest PHP -- 2.5.10.

However downloading, configuring, makeing & installing, httpd was still using the original PHP 2.5.8 and not the new PHP 2.5.10. So said the phpinfo script after recycling httpd. Httpd uses the php5 shared object library in /usr/libexec/apache2. The libphp5.so had not been updated. Why? Is the problem with Apache?

DIYMacServer.com has an excellent series of articles on installing Apache on OS/X. I'm installing Apache in 32 bits mode on Leopard and chose to use the Darwin layout. So it was configure with the Darwin layout and all the options, make and sudo make install.

The next step was to edit /etc/apache2/httpd.conf and enable index.php, the user under which Apache will run to "_www", and allow the use of the .htaccess file. Next was enabling the use of the users directory in /etc/apache2 (I copied the original users directory into the new /etc/apache2 directory). To do this, I uncommented the Include /etc/apache2/extra/httpd-userdir.conf line in httpd.conf. I chose to not enable Virtual Hosts. I also changed the DocumentRoot to my Sites directory. Because this is a development environment, I also commented out the Deny from all directive in the block

With all that done, I fired up the "Web Sharing" from the control panel and hit http://localhost (which is how I configured the ServerName in my users .conf file). The default site came up, so I tried the phpinfo.php script. Nada. Not processing php. Well, there is no LoadModule directive for php5_module in the httpd.conf, so I added it. However, the reference libphp5.so was still from the older PHP installation, the one that was not compiled with support for Postgres.

Here's what worked:

• Moved old /etc/apache2 out of the way
• Made sure all httpd processes were shut down
• Deleted old /usr/libexec/apache2/libphp5.so
• Configured httpd-2.2.13 with the following. The Darwin layout preserved the ability to use the System Preferences to control httpd.
  

./configure -enable-layout=Darwin -enable-mods-shared=all

• Did the make and sudo make install.
• Edited the new httpd.conf with the changes described above & copied the user directory from the original apache2 directory to the new directory
• Configured PHP with the following. Note the "--with-pgsql" and "--with-apxs2" commands (From the DIYMacServer site)
  

./configure --prefix=/usr/local/php5 --mandir=/usr/share/man --infodir=/usr/share/info --sysconfdir=/etc --with-zlib --with-zlib-dir=/usr --with-openssl --without-iconv --enable-exif --enable-ftp --enable-mbstring --enable-mbregex --enable-sockets --with-pgsql --with-apxs2=/usr/sbin/apxs

• Finished with the make & sudo make install. This time I saw the libphp5.so being copied to the correct directory -- yea!
• Fired up the web service from the System Preference panel and checked my phpinfo file. SUCCESS! We are now looking at PHP 5.2.10.
• Wrote a small postgres test (below), created the table and added two names to it. SUCCESS! Whoot! We are in.

Next up: Drupal.