The recommended way to set up and run an OS X web server for a busy public website

apachemamposx-serverwebserver

I am moving from a VPS to a dedicated Mac mini server running Mavericks. All I want to do is serve a typical website using Apache, an nginx reverse proxy, PHP and MySQL.

My website isn't gigantic, but it's not tiny either: I typically serve a hundred thousand pageviews a day. It is a public site on the internet, not a local intranet. I am familiar with tweaking .conf files and fiddling in the terminal, but the idea of creating virtualhosts and manually setting up modules stretch my abilities.

I have had difficulty finding the right software solution for this task. From what I can tell, there are three basic ways:

Use the inbuilt Apache provided by Apple and managed in Server.app. The configuration options are limited and certain advanced aspects (including using nginx, or anything much involving security) are not covered.
Use Homebrew or plain old .tar.gz files to set up my own server, treating the OS X like any old Unix. While this would work, I am hoping OS X can help me avoid the quagmire of editing config files entirely on my own.
Using Mac software like MAMP or AMPPS, though both of these appear to be outdated or unsupported, and seem geared towards local testing rather than production server use.

I would like to know of the best way to set up a Mac mini as a "real" web server, ideally with a solution that is both easy to configure and open to. Is there a well-known tutorial that I can follow? What of the alternate software recommended by this months-old article which ultimately recommended AMPPS, albeit for local testing?

Best Answer

For my own outward-facing servers, I did everything from within the built-in server software itself, except managing virtual hosts, for which task I used VirtualHostX.

The best tutorial I know for configuring Mavericks for web server use is done by Charles Edge, at his site, Krypted. I followed this same process essentially, and thus far, I've seen no issues since deployment.

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How to move the web server folder for web sharing

So the short answer with reply is, "Sure, but WHY?!?"

The WebServer for Mac OS X (I'm assuming 10.6 Snow Leopard Client for the details of the answer) is based entirely on Apache. There are tonnes of web resources for Apache.

The key to Apple's Web Services are in /etc/apache2

You can (with admin privs) modify the httpd.conf (again; loads of web refs on this file) specifically pointing DocumentRoot anywhere.

However; and this is the list of caveats of why this is a weird thing to do...

You have to be sure that the web process has the proper privs to read the directory in the location you may move it.
You run the risk of something getting access to other files around the moved location
This is non-standard configuration in the OS and is likely to break in a future verison
The location is non-user volatile; meaning that deleting a user won't accidentally delete the served root folder. (Apache will fail to launch) if it can't find a served root folder

On top of this; we talk about moving the ~Sites. When you generate a new user acct; the OS generates a virtual directory conf in the /etc/apache2/users directory. Apache is smart enough to expand the ~ into a user name. All the above Caveats hold.

The question is why do you want the root folder on your desktop? It would seem to be more convenient to do one or more of the following:

make an alias of /Library/WebServer/Documents on your desktop
Setup groups/acls on /Library/WebServer/Documents to assure the correct write access

Without knowing why you're motivated to do this; I can't really hazard any other suggestions.

If it's a question of moving your web services directory to a network share... Now your solution is more along the lines of OS X Server (10.6) or doing your own apache install.

Good luck.

You have to be sure that the web process has the proper privs to read the directory in the location you may move it.

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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