apache

Apache at Sparkbox

Many of our projects, especially CMS projects projects, are based on PHP or require a traditional server. We tend to prefer Apache in those cases, because it's prevalent and widely used.

This guide walks you through setting up Apache natively on your MacOS with the ability to support multiple versions of PHP using PHP-FPM (FastCGI Process Manager). It is based on the fantastic instructions provided by MacOS Sierra Apache Multiple PHP Versions and Apache httpd 2.4 and PHP 7 in macOS

After running this setup guide, you will have 2 types of services running:

1. httpd Apache accepting incoming http(s) requests and matching them up with configured VirtualHost entries.
2. php-fpm PHP FastCGI Process Manager receiving requests from Apache to process a PHP file.

PHP runs as a service to allow us to have multiple versions of PHP active for Apache at any time. Without FPM, Apache must be configured for a specific version of PHP. Switching for a project requires reconfiguring and restarting Apache.

Steps

• Prerequisites
• Installing Xcode Libraries
• Installing Apache
• Setting up Apache
• Installing PHP
• Setting up a new PHP site in Apache
• Installing Composer
• Common Issues

Prerequisites

• MacOS Sierra 10.12.6 or greater
• Successfully run the Sparkbox laptop script to install Homebrew, PHP-FPM, and MySQL.
• Reader must be comfortable issuing commands in the terminal

Installing Xcode Libraries

xcode-select --install

Installing Apache

Disable MacOS Apache

which apachectl
sudo apachectl stop
sudo launchctl unload -w /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/org.apache.httpd.plist 2>/dev/null

Configure Apache (httpd), which was already installed via the laptop script, to auto start using Homebrew services.

brew services start httpd

Useful commands to know:

sudo apachectl start
sudo apachectl stop
sudo apachectl -k restart

Important file locations:

/usr/local/etc/httpd/httpd.conf

Setting up Apache

Edit your Apache Configuration File (/usr/local/etc/httpd/httpd.conf) to enable:

Listen on port 80

Change the Listen setting from 8080 to 80.

Listen 80

Enable Apache Modules

Uncomment out the following lines (they will not be together):

LoadModule xml2enc_module lib/httpd/modules/mod_xml2enc.so
LoadModule rewrite_module lib/httpd/modules/mod_rewrite.so
LoadModule proxy_module lib/httpd/modules/mod_proxy.so
LoadModule proxy_fcgi_module lib/httpd/modules/mod_proxy_fcgi.so

📝 Note: mod_proxy will support using PHP-FPM for executing multiple concurrently installed versions of PHP.

vhost file support

Each vhost (site) will be configured in its own file in the /usr/local/etc/httpd/vhosts directory. Allow this to happen by:

1. Add the following line to the end of your httpd.conf

Include /usr/local/etc/httpd/vhosts/*.conf

2. mkdir -p /usr/local/etc/httpd/vhosts

PHP

Multiple versions of PHP were installed and configured to run as [brew services] by the Sparkbox laptop script. You can see each version running with

brew services list | grep php

Important file locations:

/usr/local/etc/php/5.6/php.ini
/usr/local/etc/php/7.0/php.ini

Setting up a new PHP site in Apache

Create the vhost file

Each site will have its own vhost file in /usr/local/etc/httpd/vhosts.

⚠️ You’ll need to swap out the following placeholders with your own settings:

• <project_name>: Domain safe name such as seesparkbox
• <php_port>: Port to the PHP-FPM instance, such as 9071 for 7.1
• <project_root>: Web root such as /projects/seesparkbox.com/ee

⚠️ You should not place your Apache projects under ~/Documents. Apache requires both write and execute permissions on all paths in the site directory, which is not advised. Instead, we recommend ~/projects as the parent for all Apache projects.

Copy, paste, & edit the following vhost configuration inside the file /usr/local/etc/httpd/vhosts/<project_name>.conf:

<VirtualHost *:80>
    ServerName <project_name>.local
    DocumentRoot "<project_root>"
    ProxyPassMatch ^/(.*\.php(/.*)?)$ fcgi://127.0.0.1:<php_port><project_root>/$1
    ErrorLog "/usr/local/var/log/httpd/<project_name>-error_log"
    CustomLog "/usr/local/var/log/httpd/<project_name>-access_log" common
    DirectoryIndex index.html index.php

    <Directory "<project_root>">
      AllowOverride All
      Options Indexes MultiViews FollowSymLinks
      Require all granted
   </Directory>
</VirtualHost>

Save this file.

Finishing up

1. Make sure httpd is configured to start on reboot: brew services restart httpd
2. Restart Apache with the changes made: sudo apachectl -k restart

Add the site to your hosts file

With sudo open /etc/hosts and add the following to the end of the file:

127.0.0.1 <project_name>.local

Installing Composer

Installing composer globally.

brew install composer

Common Issues

PHP Segfaults

In PHP versions similar to 7.0.27, and httpd versions similar to 2.4.29, you might run into errors like this within your log file:

[Thu Feb 15 09:16:51.849759 2018] [core:notice] [pid 3230:tid 140735914537792] AH00052: child pid 3254 exit signal Segmentation fault (11)

To fix this, you must enable the mpm_prefork_module by adding this line to your httpd.conf file:

LoadModule mpm_prefork_module lib/httpd/modules/mod_mpm_prefork.so

⚠️ Note: You may also need to comment out the mpm_event_module in order to get this to load.