Prior to following your tutorial on setting up apache, php, and MySQL, I was using XAMPP. For whatever reason my relative links were not working properly. When i came across some clue that suggests i should us a virtual host to get the relative links working i then followed your next tutorial on this subject. I was successful in getting XAMPP to work with a virtual host but then “localhost” reports back as “404 page not found”. Using XAMPP i need to access the MySQL folder where my databases live. Without using a virtual host i have been successful in housing my site in my user sites folder and accessing the XAMPP admin page along with the PHPmyAdmin.

I’m in “process of elimination” mode as i try to troubleshoot my way to some resolve. I killed XAMPP and followed your tutorial in setting up Apache/php/MySQL then repeated your instructions for setting up the virtual host and ended up with the same results… “404 not found”. I was under the belief that i could have unknowingly messed up some configuration in XAMPP so by trying the native OS Apache install at least it gives some hope that i didn’t mess up XAMPP.

I then assumed i might have messed up some configuration within the OS… having several partitions and another “fresh” install of OS 10.6 I then booted into this partition and repeated your tutorials. Again, success using Apache but no luck when trying to access localhost. Same results! So, I think it’s safe to say that my OS config is fine, XAMPP config is fine… which brings me to the common place of the httpd.conf or the vhosts.conf files. Seeing as I can revert back at any time to dropping the virtual hosts and using only the httpd.conf file with success, this leads me to believe that I don’t have the write perameters in my vhosts file. Now I have tried more numerous configurations than it is worth posting but here is my current…

#### LOCALHOST – DO NOT CHANGE ####
#

ServerName localhost
DocumentRoot “/Applications/XAMPP/xamppfiles/htdocs”

Options Indexes FollowSymLinks Includes execCGI
AllowOverride None
Order Allow,Deny
Allow From All

#### VIRTUAL HOST – MySite ####
#

ServerAdmin removed4posting@gmail.com
DocumentRoot “/Volumes/UserData/Sites/MySite”
ServerName svr.loc
ErrorLog “logs/svr.loc-error_log”
CustomLog “logs/svr.loc-access_log” common

Now, i wouldn’t mind working in the native set up using OS X’s Apache install, but i run into the complication of using php 5.3.1 which has reported bugs that prevent me from using mediawiki. I have tried what i can find and so far the tutorials to up/downgrade php have been much less than clear. My goal was to learn web dev not web hosting and have yet to be able to really get started. Please help : )

In the example in the Apache configuration file
httpd.conf
the Apache directive
Include /private/etc/apache2/extra/httpd-vhosts.conf
points to both the path
/private/etc/apache2/extra/
and file named
httpd-vhosts.conf

In the example above, the author never explains that/how the file
vhosts-temp.conf gets renamed to httpd-vhosts.conf
and the author never states that the same physical file must be
moved to the path
/private/etc/apache2/extra/

Under Snow Leopard, if the defaults are taken, Apache, that is to say, apachectl,
will default to the directory
/Library/WebServer/Documents/index.html.en
The html file
index.html.en
has the words “It worked!” in it.
When the user types into the browser command line either
http://localhost/
or types in
http://127.0.0.1/
the words “It worked!” appear — which actually means the “It did NOT work”.
That is to say, Apache did NOT boot and redirect itself to the html file
index.html
in the “default directory” which for purposes of testing http://localhost/
has traditionally defaulted to
/Users/shortname/Sites/
See definition of “shortname” below.

To confirm and thus troubleshoot that in fact Apache is working but
the apache .conf files are mis-directed or defaulted to
/Library/WebServer/Documents/index.html.en
one has only to append a “~” plus the shortname of the user as follows:
http://localhost/~shortname
where “shortname” is substituted with logon shortname found in preferences
otherwise identified by the name beside the little house in the Finder display.
This is also the same name substituted, in the author’s example, in the file
vhosts-temp.conf
which ultimately becomes the file
httpd-vhost.conf
When using the “~” with the user shortname, Apache should be redirected
to the html file
index.html
in the path
/Users/shortname/Sites/

To summarize this whole procedure, the Apache directive
Include /private/etc/apache2/extra/httpd-vhosts.conf
located in the Apache configuration file
httpd.conf
located (in Snow Leopard version) in the path
/private/etc/apache2/
points to both the path and filename that must contain
the default path and shortname for localhost
so that Apache actually sees http://localhost/~shortname when presented with the defaults of
http://localhost/ or with http://127.0.0.1/
so that Apache does not default to
/Library/WebServer/Documents/index.html.en
which will display “It worked!” when in fact “It did NOT work!.”

As for virtual hosts, they must be added by placing them respectively,
according to the author, for the purpose of his/this article,
“after” the default “localhost” in both the file
httpd-vhosts
located in the path
/private/etc/apache2/extra/httpd-vhosts.conf
and file
hosts
located in the path
/private/etc/

Feel free to revise or correct this update and use it as you will.

Again thanks,

Bruce

Congrats on graduation! I love it when something is easy and your two tutorials did the trick.

Thanks a bunch!

This question deserves its own tutorial so I wrote one on how to setup virtual hosts in the MAMP environment.