Installing Aegir on OS X 10.6 with MAMP

Aegir install on OSX Snow Leopard

Aegir install instructions are fantastic if you run Debian/Ubuntu Linux. Some of the steps for OS X are a quite different

Setting up the Server components.

Your Mac will need to run Apache, Php, Mysql, and Bind (for DNS). Snow Leopard comes with Apache, Php and Bind installed, however it comes with version 5.3 of Php which is not compatible wit Aegir and other parts of Drupal (as far as I can tell).
The easy solution is to downnload and install MAMP 1.82 from Sourceforge. Here is the direct link: http://sourceforge.net/projects/mamp/files/mamp/1.8.2/MAMP_1.8.2.dmg.zip.... Note: this is not the latest version of MAMP. The latest version runs PHP 5.3 also. MAMP 1.82 runs PHP 5.2.10. This is what we need. This gives us Apache, Php and Mysql. However, OSX still has the original versions of Apache and PHP. So we can trick the system using the MAMP versions as follows:

First back up the original version of Php.

Symlink the MAMP version to /usr/bin/php

Symlink mysql the same way if needed. (If you have never installed Mysql before than this will not be needed).

Back up the original version of apachectl.

Symlink the apachectl version to /usr/sbin/apachectl

Next, set up DNS services. See http://geoffhankerson.com/node/108 for a complete guide

You should now have Apache, Php, Mysql, and Bind running.

1. Create the aegir user
   $ sudo dscl . -create /Users/aegir NFSHomeDirectory /var/aegir 

2. Set password for Aegir user
   

   $ sudo passwd aegir
New Password:
Retype Password:

3. Create aegir home directory
   $sudo mkdir /var/aegir

4. Make aegir user the owner of his home directory
   $sudo chown aegir /var/aegir/

5. Change group to _www
   $sudo chgrp _www /var/aegir/

6. Become the aegir user
   

   su - aegir
password:


Preparations

Setup CVS repository...

Download Drush and Provision

At this point we need to gain superuser privileges to execute the next few commands, so we logout of the aegir session...

We're now back as the aegir user.

Test that the drush setup is working:

This should list all available drush commands. Check that it includes the 'provision' commands. If this doesn't work as expected troubleshooting is needed... check the permissions of the directories and drush file. Try /var/aegir/drush/drush.php. If that works, then there's a problem with the symlink.

If all is working with drush, let's move on to the next step.

Setup Drupal codebase

We start by checking out the latest drupal 6 release...

See how easy drush makes things?!

Get Hostmaster install profile

Note that the hostmaster profile still needs to be checked out via CVS, as drush has problems downloading profiles (see http://drupal.org/node/500324).

Configure Apache

Now we'll copy across a file template (with the filename changed from aegir.example.com to the domain name of our aegir install)...

Edit this file as you wish, but you must ensure the servername, documentroot and directory are all correct for the codebase. So:
vim ~config/vhost.d/aegir.example.com

Next, we'll create some other useful directories...

And then...

So we're now back as root. Next we add the aegir user to the _www group.

Now we want to tell apache to include aegir's vhost files. Apache will automatically run files in /etc/apache2/conf.d, so add/edit the new file with:
sudo vim /etc/apache2/conf.d/aegir 
putting the following inside it:
Include /var/aegir/config/vhost.d/* 

Next we configure sudo to allow aegir user permission to restart apache:
sudo visudo 
Use the arrow keys to go to the last line. Press 'a' to add a line. Type:
aegir ALL=NOPASSWD: /usr/sbin/apache2ctl 
Hit Esc. Type ':'. type 'wq' and hit ENTER.

Configure MySQL

We'll now setup the necessary users and database in MySQL.

The main aegir site uses database 'aegir' and a database user 'aegir'.

We also configure a MySQL 'superuser' who is capable of creating more databases. It is advised to not use the same user as the previous db user, but instead a separate superuser for security. As a naming standard, we recommend calling this superuser 'aegir_root'

If your database server is running not on the local server but as a remote database server, substitute the 'localhost' commands for the wildcard '%'.

Run the installer

First, restart apache:
sudo /etc/init.d/apache2 restart 

Then in a browser, go to http://aegir.example.com (you will need to have setup the DNS entries for your domain to point at the IP of your server).

Hosting setup

Setup the database with the 'hostmaster' details we created earlier.

The setup will ask you to enter the path to drush.php. This is:
/var/aegir/drush/drush.php 

The configuration path is:
/var/aegir/config 

And the backup path is:
/var/aegir/backups 

We've already done the step of adding the line to httpd.conf.

On the Database page, enter the details for the 'aegir' database user.

At some point during the install you'll be prompted to enter a drush command to run the hosting setup...

Configure Aegir

Aegir is now installed, and you can configure it with your preferred settings. Have a browse around. Read the wiki and other posts on here: http://groups.drupal.org/aegir-hosting-system to find out what you can do with it. Prepare to be excited (if you're a geek)!

For next steps see: Aegir Is Installed - What Next?

Preparations

Setup CVS repository...

Download Drush and Provision

At this point we need to gain superuser privileges to execute the next few commands, so we logout of the aegir session...

We're now back as the aegir user.

Test that the drush setup is working:

This should list all available drush commands. Check that it includes the 'provision' commands. If this doesn't work as expected troubleshooting is needed... check the permissions of the directories and drush file. Try /var/aegir/drush/drush.php. If that works, then there's a problem with the symlink.

If all is working with drush, let's move on to the next step.

Setup Drupal codebase

We start by checking out the latest drupal 6 release...

See how easy drush makes things?!

Get Hostmaster install profile

Note that the hostmaster profile still needs to be checked out via CVS, as drush has problems downloading profiles (see http://drupal.org/node/500324).

Configure Apache

Now we'll copy across a file template (with the filename changed from aegir.example.com to the domain name of our aegir install)...

Edit this file as you wish, but you must ensure the servername, documentroot and directory are all correct for the codebase. So:
vim ~config/vhost.d/aegir.example.com

Next, we'll create some other useful directories...

And then...

So we're now back as root. Next we add the aegir user and yourself to the _www group.

Now we want to tell apache to include aegir's vhost files. Apache will automatically run files in /etc/apache2/conf.d, so add/edit the new file with:
sudo nano /Applications/MAMP/conf/apache/httpd.conf 
putting the following inside it:
Include /var/aegir/config/vhost.d/* 

Next we configure sudo to allow aegir user permission to restart apache:
sudo visudo 
Use the arrow keys to go to the last line. Press 'a' to add a line. Type:
aegir ALL=NOPASSWD: /usr/sbin/apache2ctl 
Hit Esc. Type ':'. type 'wq' and hit ENTER.

Configure MySQL

We'll now setup the necessary users and database in MySQL.

The main aegir site uses database 'aegir' and a database user 'aegir'.

We also configure a MySQL 'superuser' who is capable of creating more databases. It is advised to not use the same user as the previous db user, but instead a separate superuser for security. As a naming standard, we recommend calling this superuser 'aegir_root'

If your database server is running not on the local server but as a remote database server, substitute the 'localhost' commands for the wildcard '%'.

Run the installer

First, restart apache:
sudo /etc/init.d/apache2 restart 

Then in a browser, go to http://aegir.example.com (you will need to have setup the DNS entries for your domain to point at the IP of your server).

Hosting setup

Setup the database with the 'hostmaster' details we created earlier.

The setup will ask you to enter the path to drush.php. This is:
/var/aegir/drush/drush.php 

The configuration path is:
/var/aegir/config 

And the backup path is:
/var/aegir/backups 

We've already done the step of adding the line to httpd.conf.

On the Database page, enter the details for the 'aegir' database user.

At some point during the install you'll be prompted to enter a drush command to run the hosting setup...

Configure Aegir

Aegir is now installed, and you can configure it with your preferred settings. Have a browse around. Read the wiki and other posts on here: http://groups.drupal.org/aegir-hosting-system to find out what you can do with it. Prepare to be excited (if you're a geek)!

For next steps see: Aegir Is Installed - What Next?