[RndTbl] Mac as a web server

[Mike Pfaiffer]

	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