MacOS – Is it possible to remove all installed terminal applications and extensions back to native without doing a clean OSX install

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Basically I would like to know if it is possible to remove all php, apache, homebrew, mac ports etc. installs back to native without doing a clean install of the OS?

If not is the best way to go about having a mac in this state to do a clean install and then revert some of the folders back using time machine i.e. the applications folders, documents etc?

Best Answer

Firstly, you should be sure why you would like to do this and what a fresh environment would provide. This is going to be a bit tedious to do since you have multiple sources for the installs.

For homebrew, follow the steps in this answer to uninstall homebrew.
For MacPorts, follow the steps from the uninstall MacPorts page page.
For PHP and Apache, it may not be simple to revert them to what the OS came with if you installed these outside of solutions like homebrew, MacPorts, MAMP or XAMPP.

The non-tedious way, which may take longer to complete, is to

Clone your drive (using a tool like Carbon Copy Cloner or SuperDuper! or Clonezilla).
Reinstall the OS afresh.
Then use Migration Assistant to bring everything over from the clone. You would have to uncheck the "Other files and folders on ..." option in Migration Assistant to prevent it from bringing back the locations that homebrew, MacPorts, etc., use. This method would also skip many files (like in /Users/Shared) that you would have to copy over manually from the backup.

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MacOS – Reinstall Mac OS X Lion and do selective restore from Time Machine backup

As I answered in this recent question your Time Machine drive will also appear as a valid Migration Assistant source if you opt for wipe and reinstall - I was surprised. When you use Migration Assistant you do get some control over what you install and what you leave behind.

MacOS – Nginx on 10.7 with homebrew

If you type brew info nginx you should get answers to many of your questions. In particular, you should see something like:

To have launchd start nginx at login:
    ln -sfv /usr/local/opt/nginx/*.plist ~/Library/LaunchAgents
Then to load nginx now:
    launchctl load ~/Library/LaunchAgents/homebrew.mxcl.nginx.plist

So I expect if you link the plist to /Library/LaunchDaemons instead of ~/Library/LaunchAgents it will load at boot.

I don't know what you want to change, but it's the same nginx as you use on Debian, so you can copy over your Debian nginx.conf if you want. Also the brew package comes with a set of default/example configuration files installed under /usr/local/etc/nginx/.

The default conf runs on port 8080, so you have to edit it to run on port 80, and yes it will conflict with Apache running on port 80 so you have to turn Apache off or put it on another port. Apache config files are in /private/etc/apache2/ and you can turn it off via System Preferences -> Sharing -> Personal Web Sharing. (Note that this option has been removed in Mountain Lion. Mountain Lion still ships with Apache, but it is disabled by default.)

You can, of course, set it up however you want, but if you're looking for what's easy and Mac-like, just follow the Apache setup, which uses user and group _www and uses /Library/WebServer/Documents as document root and serves user content out of ~user/Sites.

Best Answer

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MacOS – Reinstall Mac OS X Lion and do selective restore from Time Machine backup

MacOS – Nginx on 10.7 with homebrew

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