Note: This post assumes you followed installing Apache, PHP, and MySQL on Mac OS X Mojave and have since upgraded to macOS Catalina. If you did not follow the original post, you should follow installing Apache, PHP, and MySQL on macOS Catalina.

When Mac OS X upgrades it overwrites previous configuration files. However, before doing so it will make backups. For Catalina the original versions may have a suffix of mojave or be copied to a backup folder on the Desktop. Most of the time, configuring your system after updating Mac OS X is simply a matter of comparing the new and old configurations.

This post will look at the differences in Apache, PHP, and MySQL between Mac OS X Mojave and macOS Catalina.

Updating Apache

Mac OS X Mojave and macOS Catalina both come with Apache pre-installed. As noted above, your Apache configuration file is overwritten me when you upgrade to macOS Catalina.

There were a few differences in the configuration files. However, since both Mojave and Catalina run Apache 2.4, you could simply backup the configuration file from Catalina and overwrite it with your Mojave version.

sudo cp /etc/apache/httpd.conf /etc/apache/httpd.conf.catalina
sudo mv /etc/apache/httpd.conf.mojave /etc/apache/httpd.conf

However, I encourage you to stay up-to-date. As such, you should take the time to update Catalina's Apache configuration. First, create a backup and compare the two configuration files for differences.

sudo cp /etc/apache/httpd.conf /etc/apache/httpd.conf.catalina
diff /etc/apache/httpd.conf.mojave /etc/apache/httpd.conf

Now edit the Apache configuration. Feel free to use a different editor if you are not familiar with vi.

sudo vi /etc/apache/httpd.conf

Uncomment the following line (remove #):

LoadModule php7_module libexec/apache2/libphp7.so

In addition, uncomment or add any lines you noticed from the diff above that may be needed. For example, I uncommented the following lines:

LoadModule deflate_module libexec/apache2/mod_deflate.so
LoadModule expires_module libexec/apache2/mod_expires.so
LoadModule rewrite_module libexec/apache2/mod_rewrite.so

Finally, I cleaned up some of the backups that were created during the macOS Catalina upgrade. This will help avoid confusion in the future.

sudo rm /etc/apache2/httpd.conf.mojave
sudo rm -rf /etc/apache2/original/

Note: These files were not changed between versions. However, if you changed them, you should compare the files before running the commands.

Restart Apache:

apachectl restart

Updating PHP

Mac OS X Mojave came with PHP version 7.1 pre-installed. This PHP version has reached its end of life. macOS Catalina comes with PHP 7.3 pre-installed. If you added any extensions to PHP you will need to recompile them.

Also, if you changed the core PHP INI file it will have been overwritten when upgrading to macOS Catalina. You can compare the two files by running the following command:

diff /etc/php.ini.default /etc/php.ini.default.mojave

Note: Your original file may note be named something else. You can see which PHP core files exist by running ls /etc/php.ini*.

I would encourage you not to change the PHP INI file directly. Instead, you should overwrite PHP configurations in a custom PHP INI file. This will prevent Mac OS X upgrades from overwriting your PHP configuration in the future. To determine the right path to add your custom PHP INI, run the following command:

php -i | grep additional

Note: It appears Catalina does not include the PHP Zip extension. This is a popular extension used by many packages. This was one of the reasons I switched to using Docker.

Updating MySQL

MySQL is not pre-installed with Mac OS X. It is something you downloaded when following the original post. As such, the macOS Catalina upgrade should not have changed your MySQL configuration.

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