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Revision of Mac OS X installation instructions hints from Tue, 10/25/2011 - 22:20

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Mac OS X installation instructions hints

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If you would like to set aegir up using nginx instead of Apache, The team at Realityloop have created a great video and text tutorial documenting the entire process at http://rl.cm/mempae otherwise continue below.

This is a helper file to the canonical [/installing/manual](manual install process). It is aimed at helping you install Aegir on Mac OS X. Since PHP and MySQL support on OS X is fairly limited and complicated, a separate documentation page was created for that part of the documentation. You should follow this page all the way through and then proceed with the regular install, step 4: becoming the aegir user.

1. Special software requirements

While Mac OS X comes with Apache & PHP (and even MySQL on the Server version), the version of PHP shipped with 10.6 Snow Leopard is 5.3.x and thus may not work with Aegir (as of the 0.4alpha-era) and various other software. If you're running 10.5 Leopard, it may work out of the box, but I haven't tested it.

There are several different ways to get Apache, PHP 5.2, and MySQL 5 onto a Mac OS X machine. I give detailed instructions for MacPorts below, but if that's a bit more than you're ready to bite off right now, feel free to use an alternative approach.

One such alternative is MAMP. There is a good but outdated HOWTO for installing Aegir on Mac OS X 10.6 (Snow Leopard) using MAMP located here: http://groups.drupal.org/node/30270

MAMP stands for Mac, Apache, MySQL, and PHP and is the Mac equivalent of "LAMP". It is a self-contained package of all of these programs with a nice graphical installer and control panel. You can find it here: http://www.mamp.info/

MAMP is pretty straightforward, but it's also not very flexible (IMHO). While certainly not without its own headaches, MacPorts is a decently powerful way to sanely manage a healthy stack of open source UNIX software on your Mac. Since this is what I use, I'm going to assume MacPorts is in use for the rest of this HINTS file. I have also only tested this on Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard.

If you don't yet have MacPorts installed, go here to get it: http://www.macports.org/install.php

Once it's installed, quit and re-launch your Terminal before continuing. Otherwise MacPorts won't yet be in your PATH.

The first two commands below are optional but recommended.

  sudo port selfupdate
  sudo port upgrade outdated
  sudo port install apache2 mysql5-server git-core unzip php52 php5-posix php5-gd php5-apc +mysql5

php5-apc is optional, but highly recommended as it will significantly increase PHP performance.

Watch the output of the last port command carefully, as there are usually some boring tasks for you to perform once the install is done. You'll be wishing you were running Ubuntu/Debian and apt-get by the time you're done.

2. Configure system requirements

Next we'll create the aegir user and add it to the _www group. This part is very different on Mac OS X than Linux or most other Unices. Must be a NeXTism. The command we will use he is "dscl", which is a short for Directory Service Command Line. In OSX 10.3 and earlier, that command is "nicl" (short for Net Info Command Line). It is also possible to create the user using the "Workgroup Manager" utility included with OS X Server. To obtain Workgroup Manager for the OS X Client, download the "Server Admin Tools" from Apple. For example, for Mac OS X 10.6, the admin tools can be found at:

http://support.apple.com/downloads/Server_Admin_Tools_10_6

  sudo dscl . -create /Users/aegir NFSHomeDirectory /var/aegir

Now you need to find the next spare UID to assign the user.

Here's how you find out on your system:

   sudo dsexport users.out /Local/Default dsRecTypeStandard:Users

Then open the file users.out in a text editor, search for the highest 5xx user ID and add 1 to it (in your brain, not in the file). So if you find 506 but no 507, use 507. When you're done, delete users.out to be safe.

   sudo rm users.out

Now assign this UID to the aegir user, replacing "5xx" with the UID.

   sudo dscl . -create /Users/aegir UniqueID 5xx

Set a secure password for the aegir user, as it needs shell access.

sudo passwd aegir

Create the aegir home directory and set its permissions.

sudo mkdir /var/aegir
sudo chown aegir /var/aegir
sudo chgrp _www /var/aegir

Add the aegir user to the _www group. This is the group Apache runs as.

sudo dscl . -append /Groups/_www GroupMembership aegir

Give the aegir user the ability to restart Apache.

   sudo mv /usr/sbin/apachectl /usr/sbin/apachectl-apple
   sudo ln -s /opt/local/apache2/bin/apachectl /usr/sbin/apachectl
   sudo visudo

Go to the last line of the file and add the following.

   aegir ALL=NOPASSWD: /usr/sbin/apachectl

Save the file and exit your text editor.

Next configure Apache to include the Aegir config.

   echo "Include /var/aegir/config/apache.conf" >> /opt/local/apache2/conf/httpd.conf

Configuring your MySQL database and user accounts is the same as in the INSTALL.txt file. But you probably want to add the path to its executables to your user's PATH and the aegir user's PATH.

   echo 'export PATH=/opt/local/lib/mysql5/bin:$PATH' >> ~/.profile
   su - aegir
   Password: (the password you setup earlier)
   echo 'export PATH=/opt/local/lib/mysql5/bin:$PATH' >> ~/.profile
   exit

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