Macports Newbie - XServe use

Ryan Schmidt ryandesign at macports.org
Sun Apr 1 16:44:28 PDT 2007


Hi Alex. Long time no see. :) Welcome to MacPorts.

On Apr 1, 2007, at 17:24, Alex Kac wrote:

> I am very comfortable with BSD (specifically OS X Server over the  
> last few years) and maintain my current OS X Server primarily via  
> command line, though I like web admin tools as well because I don't  
> always have SSH access and I prefer to not have my impatient typing  
> kill a server. So for the last few years I've been using iTools  
> from Tenon on my Dual G5 server. We are moving to a new XServe Xeon  
> in the next 2 days and I need to migrate the servers/config to that  
> machine. I do not wish to use the Apple supplied servers because  
> they are usually out of date and don't meet my needs. I do not wish  
> to continue using Tenon's iTools for the same reason. I am  
> comfortable building my own servers from source, but its been so  
> long that I'm not completely aware of all the options and I'd  
> rather not recompile apache 50 times because I forgot something. I  
> was told by a friend who maintains Apple's XServes in their IT team  
> that some of those guys are enamored with MacPorts. So great  -  
> here I am :)
>
> Here are the open source servers I run:
> Apache2 with
> 	mod_SSL
> 	mod_auth_dbm
> 	PHP5
> MySQL 5
> Subversion
> SFTP
>
> I would like to add Webmin to the new server since we'd not be  
> using iTools. Right now we have Subversion using svn+ssh access  
> (direct SVN server access), but I'd like to change that to mod_SVN.  
> So add that to the list too :)
>
> So my questions and concerns. With Apache2 we have it use the dbm  
> for all authentication instead of htaccess or OS X accounts. I'd  
> like to move our SFTP over to using the same dbm instead of OS X  
> accounts like it is now. And I definitely want MySQL 5 running as  
> an x64 binary. The rest can run as 32-bit binaries.  Of course I'd  
> like to have it all start on startup and run in server mode.
>
> With all that said, any tips on variants/options to use with  
> MacPorts to set this up properly?

Apache and Subversion need apr and apr-util, and will install them  
for you automatically if needed, but will do so with BerkeleyDB  
support added. This is not necessary for most people, and on Mac OS X  
I believe it is not recommended, so I like to omit BDB support on my  
system.

Apache always includes SSL support so no special variant is needed.  
The apache2 port does install a mod_auth_dbm.so but I've never used  
it. Does it require BerkeleyDB? If so, then you should forget about  
the above BerkeleyDB-less recommendations.

Subversion includes some nice tools you may want which are not  
installed by default; use the +tools variant to get them. Couldn't  
hurt even if you don't need the tools right this second.

Use the +server variant for mysql5 to get the launchdaemon plist.  
Apache is always a server and always includes the plist.

php5 has many options selectable through many variants. "port info  
php5" to see what's available.

I haven't had a chance to use an Intel Xserve yet but I assume that  
anything you compile with MacPorts would end up 64-bit if you're on  
such an Xserve. If you find that's not the case and that we need to  
modify the portfiles in some way to make it happen, let us know.

I don't have any experience managing an SFTP server so I can't  
suggest a software package to install.

It's been years since I ran Webmin. There doesn't appear to be a  
webmin port for MacPorts. If you install it manually following their  
instructions, it may work, depending on what you try to do with it.

Here's how I would install the ports you mentioned:

sudo -s
port install apr-util +no_bdb
port install subversion +no_bdb +mod_dav_svn +tools
port install mysql5 +server
port install php5 +apache2 +mysql5

Then you need to install the initial MySQL databases (or move in a  
data directory from an old MySQL install). Then you activate the  
launchdaemon plists for apache2 and mysql5.




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