Volume Number: 19 (2003)
Issue Number: 12
Column Tag: Programming
by Kevin Hemenway
Panther worth your time? Databases besides Filemaker? Pffffttt.
Panther worth your time? Databases besides Filemaker? Pffffttt.
"What's new in Panther?" you shout with mindless adulation, anxious saliva and drool waiting to soil the pages of your newest MacTech. Bad news, bub: absolutely nothing: nothing to write about, nothing to justify your upgrading, nothing worth your time, effort, or worrisome heart palpitations. I was hoping I could pound out a peck of pickled pages on pathetic Panther proselytizing, but no, Apple has spurned my deadly Shaolin technique.
I am, of course, talking specifically about web serving.
Sure, a lot of other incredible drool-worthy stuff has happened in the latest OS: Expose, word completion in certain applications (via Option-Escape or F5), FileVault for the paranoids, gcc 3.3 and distributed building, a finished version of X11, Xcode, blah, blah, blah. But web serving? Nothing, nadda, zilch. Happily, this is not really a negative--it's hard to improve on something that was nearly perfect in the first place (of course, this all depends on your needs, desires, and expectations).
Which isn't to say there's nothing new with the Apache web server and its related technology... just nothing monumental, merely incremental, ornamental, and supplemental. I'd have loved to see Apache 2.0 and MySQL 4.0, but let's cover the relevant changes we got instead. Note that I'll only cover areas we've touched upon in the previous columns: explaining the differences between features we've yet to use isn't very productive. When the time comes, if there are crucial differences between Jaguar and Panther, I'll address them.
The PHP configuration has been improved in /etc/httpd.conf. Under Apache 1.3.27, we had the AddModule and LoadModule lines, as well as AddType's for .php and .phps (see last month's Untangling the Web). We've got the same thing in 1.3.28, but they've been slightly improved (Listing 1). First, the MIME types are more tightly defined--they'll only come into play when the PHP module is loaded (IfModule is a simple conditional... if mod_php was loaded, then do this). The second improvement is the addition of index.php to the DirectoryIndex, which allows that file to be served by default when someone requests a directory (http://disobey.com/example/).
Listing 1: Configuring PHP under Panther
The improved PHP configuration from httpd.conf
<IfModule mod_php4.c>
# If php is turned on, we respect .php and .phps files.
AddType application/x-httpd-php .php
AddType application/x-httpd-php-source .phps
# Since most users will want index.php to work we
# also automatically enable index.php
<IfModule mod_dir.c>
DirectoryIndex index.html index.php
</IfModule>
</IfModule>
Figure 1: The output of PHP 4.3.2's phpinfo() under Panther.
"Apache 2.0 and MySQL 4.0?" What's this MySQL (http://www.mysql.com/) thingy thing? Quite simply, it's your new Filemaker or 4D, only without the pretty pictures. Pronounced my-ess-que-ell, it's one of the most popular free and open sourced databases, installed and readily available to most web hosting accounts you'd normally pay monthly fees for. It's also installed by default in Apple's Mac OS X Server. Another, arguably stronger, database program is PostgreSQL (http://www.pgsql.com/) but, in a move sure to flirt with disaster, I'll rudely ignore it for most of my Untangling the Web columns. Enough emails convincing me otherwise will certainly sway my decision.
Since this column assumes you're not using OS X Server, our first step is to install MySQL. Incidentally, this is also the most complicated, not because it's difficult, but because there are so many different directions in which to approach it:
/03/08/apache_mac_5.html. While compiling from source gives you ultimate control, I've yet to see a situation that wasn't adequately handled by using a pre-packaged version (below).
Which adventure should you embark on? As much as I like the thrills of a shiny new "official" release, the added treasure of ServerLogistics' unofficial binary can save you a couple of steps in your initial exploration. Regardless which path you choose to install MySQL, its continued configuration and administration is the same: you can use the command line to do everything, or nearly everything through GUIs (like CocoaMySQL, phpMyAdmin, etc.) or code (like PHP). We'll cover CocoaMySQL (http://cocoamysql.sourceforge.net/) and PHP database coding (http://www.php.net/mysql) in our next column and, if there's time, possibly phpMyAdmin (http://www.phpmyadmin.net/).
Complete MySQL comes with a rather verbose installation document, but we'll cover the process quickly here. Go ahead and download the latest version (4.0.15 at the time of this writing; the latest official release is 4.0.16). Extract and mount, double-click the MySQL.pkg, agree to everything, and pause for a second when you get to the "Select a Destination" screen.
It continually surprises me how many people don't know about the File > Show Files command. Within any installer built using Apple's package system, you can always get a list of the files that are about to installed simply by choosing that menu item (Figure 2 shows the file lists for both the official MySQL binary and Complete MySQL). The list can be saved, printed, and used as a roadmap if, and when, you want to uninstall the package (though some creative license will need to be applied to find out where the package's root install directory is, represented as ./).
Figure 2: Using "Show Files" gives you a roadmap for uninstalling in the future.
Once the Installer finishes, you should be able to browse to /Library/MySQL and see a bunch of newly added files. Likewise, you should notice that a MySQL StartupItem has been installed into /Library/StartupItems. Note that even though MySQL has successfully been installed, it has not been automatically started... there's still some initialization to do.
Next, install the MySQL Preference Pane. Since I alone will be administrating MySQL, I've dragged my copy into /Users/morbus/Library/PreferencePanes/; if you'd like it accessible to any user on the machine, choose /Library/PreferencePanes/ instead. Once it's in place, open up your System Preferences, and choose the new "MySQL" item (Figure 3).
Figure 3: The newly installed MySQL Preference Pane.
To finalize your installation of MySQL, you'll want to first "Initialize" the database, than assign a password to the MySQL root user. MySQL database users have nothing to do with users that you've created within OS X, so don't get them confused. Once MySQL has been initialized, "Start" the server, then "Set Root Password" (Figure 4).
Figure 4: Setting MySQL's root password in the MySQL Preference Pane.
We can ensure that MySQL is running a few different ways: by checking the newly created logfiles (at /Library/MySQL/data/computername.local.err; you'll need to authenticate as an administrative user to do so), or by checking the currently running processes via the shell (ps auwx) or Panther's Activity Monitor (Figure 5), a much improved replacement for Jaguar's Process Viewer. If you've got hundreds of processes, use the "Filter" input to narrow in on "mysql".
Figure 5: Verify MySQL is running with Panther's Activity Viewer
In our next column, we'll look into interacting with our new MySQL database: administrative tasks from the command line, visual interaction with GUI-based tools like CocoaMySQL, inserting and manipulating database records with PHP, and more. We'll really just be scratching the surface on what's possible, but it'll give you enough knowledge to start your own database project, or feel relatively confident about installing someone else's. For now, students may contact the teacher at morbus@disobey.com.
Kevin Hemenway, coauthor of Mac OS X Hacks and Spidering Hacks, is better known as Morbus Iff, the creator of disobey.com, which bills itself as "content for the discontented." Publisher and developer of more home cooking than you could ever imagine (like the popular open-sourced aggregator AmphetaDesk, the best-kept gaming secret Gamegrene.com, the ever ignorable Nonsense Network, etc.), he is absolutely and positively disgusted by the lack of Jolt cola within walking distance. Contact him at morbus@disobey.com.
