MacPorts mysql5-server not working on boot

If you’ve installed MacPorts’ mysql5-server, you may find that it doesn’t work after a restart.

This can be resolved by running the following commands to make sure you’ve killed off everything MySQL related.

sudo port unload mysql5-server
ps -ax | grep mysql
sudo kill 

Once you have done this, load it again.

sudo port load mysql5-server

Not it should be working. This is fine, but quickly gets very annoying every time you restart your computer! A common cause is that you have a MySQL sock file in your tmp directory. Removing this may allow it to start automatically.

cd /tmp
rm -f mysql.sock

Once removed, restart your computer and see if MySQL works first time – hopefully, it will.

Installing ImageMagick and Imagick on Mac OS X

Trying to get ImageMagick and it’s PHP extension working on OS X Lion is a frustrating process. It will often fail and even if you try to configure it manually you may get an error like the following.

checking ImageMagick MagickWand API configuration program...
configure: error: not found. Please provide a path to MagickWand-config or Wand-config program.

First of all, install ImageMagick via MacPorts.

sudo port install ImageMagick

Now install the imagick PECL module.

sudo pecl install imagick

Very importantly however, make sure you specify the path when prompted, to be /opt/local, do not let it auto detect! Once this is done it should compile successfully and you will be prompted to add imagick.so to your php.ini file.