MySQL error installing Drupal -- total serendipty -- side issue with macports install itself.

[William H. Magill]

On Jan 14, 2010, at 5:03 AM, Scott Haneda wrote:

> Ok, lets take a step back and see if we can clear this up.  
> 
> At some point, you installed MacPorts, and now you are running commands that you desire to call to the MacPorts installed applications, but we are not sure that is the case or not.
> 
> A few useful things that you could show us:
> 
>    $which -a php
> 
> This will show what your shell knows about the locations of php, in order, for all of them.  In my case, I see:
> 
>    /opt/local/bin/php
>    /usr/bin/php

Having grown up on Unix long ago, I hardly ever use "which," but rather "whereis"  (the first thing you learn and all that...).

So seeing "which -a" I  took the "learn something new" approach and decided to see what it yielded on my system ... oops!

	shianbrae> which -a port
	/opt/local/bin/port
	/opt/local/bin/port
	/opt/local/bin/port

DUhhh....???

	 echo $PATH
	/opt/local/bin:/opt/local/sbin:/opt/local/bin:/opt/local/sbin:/opt/local/bin:/opt/local/sbin:/usr/bin:/bin:/usr/sbin:/sbin:/usr/local/bin:/usr/X11/bin:/Users/magill/bin:/usr/bin/X11:/usr/local/bin:/usr/local/sbin:/usr/local1/bin:/usr/X11R6/bin:/usr/bin/X11:/etc:/usr/etc:/usr/local/etc:/usr/local1/etc

So  I had to go back to see where THAT came from...

<--------- part of .profile ----------------->

##
# Your previous /Users/magill/.profile file was backed up as /Users/magill/.profile.macports-saved_2009-09-19_at_20:09:05
##

# MacPorts Installer addition on 2009-09-19_at_20:09:05: adding an appropriate PATH variable for use with MacPorts.
export PATH=/opt/local/bin:/opt/local/sbin:$PATH
# Finished adapting your PATH environment variable for use with MacPorts.


##
# Your previous /Users/magill/.profile file was backed up as /Users/magill/.profile.macports-saved_2009-10-13_at_16:36:02
##

# MacPorts Installer addition on 2009-10-13_at_16:36:02: adding an appropriate PATH variable for use with MacPorts.
export PATH=/opt/local/bin:/opt/local/sbin:$PATH
# Finished adapting your PATH environment variable for use with MacPorts.


##
# Your previous /Users/magill/.profile file was backed up as /Users/magill/.profile.macports-saved_2009-12-13_at_20:59:04
##

# MacPorts Installer addition on 2009-12-13_at_20:59:04: adding an appropriate PATH variable for use with MacPorts.
export PATH=/opt/local/bin:/opt/local/sbin:$PATH
# Finished adapting your PATH environment variable for use with MacPorts.

<--------- end part of .profile ----------------->

The answer is ... 
Yes. I was having issues  purging darwinports and a very old macports install and installing the current macports  back in the fall. 
"Obviously," I re-installed macports itself multiple times. 
I have no idea what I might have done to "un-install" it in between tries, probably just deleted "/opt"

In conclusion... 
This particular "issue" has no detrimental side effects (at least none that I know of), but it does offend one's sense of "neatness."

I don't know that my experience is at all that common, so I don't know that anything needs be done or even documented.
I just thought it "interesting" to point out to the maintainers of the port system, that it is possible to do "something weird"  inadvertently.


T.T.F.N.
William H. Magill
# Flat-panel iMac (2.1) [800MHz - Super Drive - 768 Meg] OS X 10.4.11 
# iMac6,1 Core 2 Duo [2.16GHz - 3 GB 667] OS X 10.6.2
# MacBook Pro4.1 Core 2 Duo [2.5GHz - 4GB 667] OS X 10.6.2
# Mac mini Core Duo [1.66 Ghz - 2 GB 667]OS X 10.6.2
# PWS433a [Alpha 21164 Rev 7.2 (EV56)- 64 Meg] Tru64 5.1a 
# XP1000 [Alpha 21264-3 (EV6) - 256 meg] FreeBSD 5.3
# XP1000 [Alpha 21264-A (EV6-7) - 256 meg] FreeBSD 5.3
magill at mcgillsociety.org
magill at mac.com
whmagill at gmail.com