Comments on: Start an Apache Web Server in Mac OS X Mountain Lion

By: William

William — Wed, 03 Apr 2013 18:22:18 +0000

This worked perfectly except that i needed to make the “Sites” folder. I just wondered if it is possible to show the index.html file without entering a user?

By: Paul

Paul — Sun, 17 Mar 2013 19:30:42 +0000

I was able to confirm that Apache still works in OS X 10.8.3, make sure you have everything configured properly and use sudo to launch apache:

sudo apachectl start

If you’re encountering permissions errors, you can also try to point apache at a different directory with the -d flag:

sudo apachectl start -d /Path/To/Directory/

By: Pod

Pod — Sun, 17 Mar 2013 14:50:44 +0000

Well looks like 10.83 broke Apache again. I normally do everything in this webpage with each update and now I get a “Forbidden: You don’t have permission to access / on this server”. The nearest I can figure is that the 10.83 update has munged permissions somewhere. Apple really needs to get on the ball with this – apache on OS X used to be the most painless thing I can imagine and now it’s some of the most painful. Ideas?

By: tim

tim — Thu, 14 Mar 2013 00:43:44 +0000

and what about http sharing not only localhosting ??

By: David Bagdasarian

David Bagdasarian — Thu, 07 Mar 2013 23:07:47 +0000

Hi Guys,

For everyone that’s having trouble with accessing localhost/~user, make sure that you have a folder called Sites under your user directory. I had to create one and drop in an index.html file for it to show up.

Hope this helps.

By: Berik Visschers

Berik Visschers — Thu, 07 Feb 2013 13:48:16 +0000

As most of the mac computers are used by only one user, the per-user configuration is a bit overkill. I would suggest using these changes in the http.conf file:

Switch off the userdir_module, by inserting a # in front of this line:
#LoadModule userdir_module libexec/apache2/mod_userdir.so

Set the documentRoot to the Sitesin your home directory:
DocumentRoot “/Users//Sites/”

Give permission to acces your Sites directory
#
# This should be changed to whatever you set DocumentRoot to.
#

Everything in ~/Sites will be accessible from http://localhost and http://.

Cheers!

By: Torben Brams

Torben Brams — Thu, 27 Dec 2012 15:35:37 +0000

For what it is worth, I was struggling with this for a while and found a nice way to debug and fix my problem.

From the terminal, run “httpd -t” to get a syntax check of the config files (I guess a lot of people before me has been typing wrong). I got this message, that was very easy to understand and fix:

tbrams$ httpd -t
httpd: Syntax error on line 471 of /private/etc/apache2/httpd.conf: Syntax error on line 15 of /private/etc/apache2/extra/httpd-userdir.conf: Syntax error on line 3 of /private/etc/apache2/users/tbrams.conf:

And then, my Site directory was working as expected.

By: Mike

Mike — Tue, 11 Dec 2012 22:01:22 +0000

You may have to restart apache. Type sudo apachectl stop then sudo apachectl start. Also, be sure you have a Sites folder in your home directory.

By: Paul

Paul — Thu, 29 Nov 2012 02:51:47 +0000

I’ve done all this stated above but I still get a 404 error page not found when I go to localhost/~paul
localhost gives me the welcome to server page.
I’m running it on a server mac mini.

By: T. Stile

T. Stile — Tue, 13 Nov 2012 17:38:26 +0000

Yes it does work, follow the instructions. I just did it.

By: John Valean Baily

John Valean Baily — Tue, 13 Nov 2012 16:51:50 +0000

Doesn’t work.

By: Ben

Ben — Mon, 12 Nov 2012 06:22:27 +0000

sudo nano /etc/apache2/users/USERNAME.conf

Needs to run as super user

By: Dave

Dave — Wed, 07 Nov 2012 11:50:54 +0000

terminal doesn’t ask for a password when I open the nano editor and I also get: Error writing /etc/apache2/users/davidleslie.conf: Permission denied ]

I have tried to locate the file using finder but i cant even find the directory… any help?

By: ReasonOverFaith

ReasonOverFaith — Sat, 27 Oct 2012 05:11:55 +0000

Yeah got that too, instead I just used vi and saved, but you can also use a normal text editor and copy the file using Finder too

By: Mottel

Mottel — Thu, 25 Oct 2012 23:22:06 +0000

I keep getting stuck at the
nano /etc/apache2/users/Mottel.conf
Terminal doesn’t ask for my password but when I go to save the changes it says
[ Error writing /etc/apache2/users/Mottel.conf: Permission denied ]