Build Your Own Mac OS X Apache/mod_perl Server

Kathryn writes "An article by David Wheleer on O'Reilly's MacDev Center, Build Your Own Apache Server with mod_perl, covers issues to consider as you begin working with Apple's Apache install -- key information for any serious mod_perl-based Web development work on Mac OS X."

Comments

How many people does this apply to?

[L. VeGas]

Oh, all right. Some people might actually do this, but it reminds me of that old saying about how every problem looks like a nail when all you have is a hammer.

Re:Instructions

[Twirlip of the Mists]

I can't swear to it, because I'm not in front of an OS X Server system right now, but I'm pretty sure OS X Server and vanilla OS X are identical as far as this article is concerned. OS X Server includes many more applications, and some "helper" applications to manage things like starting and stopping daemons, but the actually web server software itself is the same.

Again, I could be wrong about this. It's possible that I'm confused, in which case I apologize in advance.

AMP (apache, mysql, php) in macworld Nov.2002

[awerg]

There is an article in the November issue of macworld about setting up a Apache, php, mysql web server.

I tried to find the article on-line but was unsuccessful. Maybe someone else can find it and put in a link.

mod_perl DSO unstable?

[red5]

The documentation is written under the false assumption that mod_perl as a DSO is unstable. I have been using mod_perl as a DSO for some time now and it works fine for me. I've herd of issues with it one Solaris/x86 but thats about it. IMHO all 3rd party modules should be compiled as DSOs.

Also the article fails to mention the advantages of running a local proxy with the mod_proxy_add_forward module.

Re:mod_perl DSO unstable?

[ChrisDolan]

I don't know about stability, but here's an anecdote of how mod_perl as dylib hurt me: I upgraded to 5.6.1 shortly after getting 10.1.4 (IIRC) and took all of the cinfigure defaults. This overwrote the 5.6.0 libperl.dylib with the 5.6.1 version. Boom! No more mod_perl, since mod_perl.c is linked pretty closely with a particular version of Perl. It took a LOT of careful cp'ing off the install disk to recover.

This is mostly the fault of Apple's braindead perl install which neglects to include a "5.6.0" component to the perl tree. When I went to 5.8.0, I used "prefix=/perl" and left Apple's 5.6.0 (and mod_perl) untouched, except for replacing /usr/bin/perl.

[disclaimer: I haven't read the article yet]

As Goldblum said...

[cei]

Step one: Open the control panel
Step two: Turn on Personal Web Sharing
Step three: There's no step three! There's no step three!

Apache & mod_perl are preinstalled in OS X. Sure, there are things you can do to tweak them, but you're given a hell of a head start by Apple...

Not quite....

[red5]

If you look at the httpd.conf file. The line to load the mod_perl so is commented out.

You'll have to open it up in your favorite text editor and change:
#LoadModule perl_module libexec/httpd/libperl.so

To this:
LoadModule perl_module libexec/httpd/libperl.so