[RndTbl] Mac as a web server

Wed Sep 15 17:47:28 CDT 2010

On 10-09-15 05:14 PM, Dan Martin wrote:
> Hi Mike
>
> The curse of *nix users everywhere is dependency hell, and I've had
> my share.

	Yup. Me too. Especially in the early days of Red Hat (pre-enterprise).

> I have not done what you're trying to do, but I would second Peter's
> suggestion to use MacPorts or Fink.

	My response to him didn't make it to the mailing list. He also said the 
software was already installed with MAMP. A couple of minutes ago I 
realised I didn't check out the web server without going through the 
default port for Webmin. I tried it and found it was bringing up the old 
Apache 1.3 web page (or does it... - Hmm). Anyhow, if I add /MAMP/ to 
the end of the system address it brings up what MAMP considers to be the 
default system page. phpinfo() shows everything up and running properly. 
I ought to give it a try at the system level and see if it works there 
too...

	My experience with MacPorts has been pretty good on a different Mac. It 
only failed once.

> I have installed several *nix things on my Mac, the most recent being
> GnuPlot on Snow Leopard.  Being a slow learner, I spent a couple
> hours duplicating what someone at a web site had done (I'm sure with
> a different Mac OS and different vintage software) using install and
> make to compile the dependencies from zipped sources.

	Depending on what I find out I may consider using MacPorts to update 
the software I want.

> When it failed, I used MacPorts, and had it running within minutes.
> Darwin does some weird stuff with some of the dependencies.

	I installed a couple of packages on a Mac Mini. The dependencies made 
the compile take a couple of hours. Also considering this is a G4 it may 
take a while for all this too...

> A long time ago I had similar experiences with Suse and Red Hat.  If
> the package manager (in your case MacPorts or Fink) does not have a
> port for the software you're looking for (and MacPorts has a lot), at
> least install as many dependencies as you can from the package
> manager before you go to the direct compilation route.

	I'm pretty sure MacPorts has the software I want. The question is how 
to replace the default which comes from Apple. Particularly Apache. Then 
again I may already have solved my own problem (minus Webmin) and not 
realise it.

> -Dan

				Later
				Mike

P.S. Sorry I didn't say hi last night. It's just I've been getting 
REALLY tired over the last few years and things don't seem to come to 
the front of my mind the way they used to.

>
> On 2010-09-15, at 4:49 PM, Mike Pfaiffer wrote:
>
>> On 10-09-15 03:16 PM, Helgi Hrafn Gunnarsson wrote:
>>> Hi!
>>>
>>> I don't know if this is much of a help, but you can easily run
>>> Linux on a G4 Mac. I'm running it as a personal server at home on
>>> an ancient G4 laptop. Debian in particular is particularly
>>> apathetic to CPUs, you just put in the CD and install as if it
>>> were any other kind of computer, which is why I use it on my
>>> PowerPC "personal server" machines... well, also because Debian
>>> simply kicks a$$.
>>>
>>> http://cdimage.debian.org/debian-cd/5.0.6/powerpc/iso-cd/debian-506-powerpc-netinst.iso
>>
>>
>>>
That's an option I will absolutely consider. Since it's a G4 there
>> isn't the problem with "new world" vs "old world" Macs. I didn't
>> think it would be that easy.
>>
>>> Sorry if this is just ignoring everything you're trying to do,
>>> but I figured it was worth a mention. :) - I'm afraid you'll
>>> always have problems running the most recent versions of
>>> PHP/Apache/MySQL on a PowerPC Mac OS X installation unless you
>>> compile them from source, but I'm not sure how problematic that
>>> would be on Mac OS X in general. Apple tends to fiddle around a
>>> lot with the environment and GCC, often resulting in broken
>>> compilations from source, so I'm guessing you're up for a lot of
>>> long-term problems sticking to Mac OS 10.4.
>>
>> I was able to compile some software on my Mac Mini. So compilation
>> is a possibility.
>>
>>> Long story short, if losing Mac OS X is indeed an option, Debian
>>> is definitely the way to go with a PowerPC machine.
>>
>> I'm not really set on OS X but I'd like to see if I can exhaust
>> the most reasonable possibilities first. You know how these things
>> are... I am eventually going to be asked how to do it that way.
>>
>> With Debian I can apt-get install from source.
>>
>>> Hope it helps and apologies if it doesn't. ;)
>>
>> It does. I suspect this is what I am most likely to do in the end.
>> If not on this machine then certainly on another.
>>
>>> Kind regards, Helgi Hrafn Gunnarsson helgi at binary.is
>>
>> Later Mike
>>
>>
>>
>>> On Wed, Sep 15, 2010 at 2:56 PM, Mike
>>> Pfaiffer<high.res.mike at gmail.com>wrote:
>>>
>>>> This is just something to keep me occupied for a while. It
>>>> isn't anything serious (yet).
>>>>
>>>> As I said at this months meeting I have a spare G4 server
>>>> sitting around. Last month I was playing around with the
>>>> current Ubuntu server. I found some applications which should
>>>> work as long as the revision level of the software is fine.
>>>> Which is to say they worked with Ubuntu server but whine and
>>>> complain about the default revisions on the G4 (OS X 10.4
>>>> desktop). It really shouldn't be too difficult to set things
>>>> up on a Mac...
>>>>
>>>> Here is what I've done so far.
>>>>
>>>> After a couple of days of reading on the web I found people
>>>> are suggesting upgrading to 10.5 (out of the question), or
>>>> updating the software to something close to current. The
>>>> suggestions are Apache 2.x, MySQL 5.x, and PHP 5.x would be
>>>> good things to install. The defaults are Apache 1.3, and PHP
>>>> 4.x. I don't know if MySQL is installed. Oh, and it was
>>>> suggested Webmin would be good for playing around on a small
>>>> scale.
>>>>
>>>> I tried installing the individual components separately based
>>>> on what they suggested on the product web sites and had mixed
>>>> success. Although PHP was in the 5.x range it wasn't near
>>>> current. Apache 2.x installed but the built in 1.3 wouldn't let
>>>> it run properly. MySQL just whined.
>>>>
>>>> Following some suggestions from the net I looked at a series
>>>> of programs called MAMP and found the installation to be very
>>>> easy. All the software it installed was relatively up to date.
>>>> Everything ran well with a major show stopper. Connecting
>>>> locally was fine but connecting through the LAN defaulted back
>>>> to the old software versions. It seems MAMP and another series
>>>> of programs called XAMPP only want to be run locally as a
>>>> development environment.
>>>>
>>>> There was one web page I found about 20 minutes ago which
>>>> suggested using Mac Ports to update the software. After getting
>>>> into the page a little there was a hint I wouldn't have much
>>>> more in the way of success if I went that route.
>>>>
>>>> Oh, I also made sure Personal Web Sharing was turned off in
>>>> the System Preferences.
>>>>
>>>> Now for the request for some advice...
>>>>
>>>> If I were running an Intel Mac I would just install a virtual
>>>> machine with Ubuntu server or something similar and be done
>>>> with it. Unfortunately the G4 is a PPC and not an Intel box.
>>>>
>>>> Does anybody have any advice on where to proceed from here? The
>>>> Mac Ports idea might be worth a look if I can somehow point the
>>>> default server away from Apache 1.3 to 2.x. Running MAMP may
>>>> have some merit since I can change the default port to 80.
>>>> Unfortunately Webmin wants to run on a different port and
>>>> defaults back to Apache 1.3. I could install *BSD but I think
>>>> that's a little more involved than I want to get at this
>>>> point.
>>>>
>>>> Like the problem I was having with PHP last year, it's probably
>>>> a 10 second fix. The problem is where to apply the fix. ;-)
>>>>
>>>> Later Mike
>>>>
>>>> _______________________________________________ Roundtable
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>>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
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>>
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>
> Dan Martin GP Hospital Practitioner Computer Scientist
> ummar143 at shaw.ca (204) 831-1746 answering machine always on
>
>
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