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

PHP Update: Mac OS X Sierra comes pre-installed with PHP version 5.6, however the latest version of PHP is 7.1. After you complete this post, you should upgrade PHP on Mac OS X.

When Mac OS X upgrades it overwrites previous configuration files. However, before doing so it will make backups. The backup files often have a suffix of previous or pre-update. 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 El Capitan and Mac OS X Sierra.

Updating Apache

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

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

sudo cp /etc/apache/httpd.conf /etc/apache/httpd.conf.sierra
sudo mv /etc/apache/httpd.conf.pre-update /etc/apache/httpd.conf

However, I encourage you to stay up-to-date. As such, you should take the time to update Sierra'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.sierra
diff /etc/apache/httpd.conf.pre-update /etc/apache/httpd.conf

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

sudo vi /etc/apache/httpd.conf

Uncomment the following line (remove #):

LoadModule php5_module libexec/apache2/libphp5.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 Mac OS X Sierra upgrade. This will help avoid confusion in the future.

sudo rm /etc/apache/httpd.conf.pre-update
sudo rm /etc/apache/extra/*~previous
sudo rm -rf /etc/apache/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 El Capitan came with PHP version 5.5 pre-installed. This PHP version has reached its end of life. Mac OS X Sierra comes with PHP 5.6 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 Mac OS X Sierra. You can compare the two files by running the following command:

diff /etc/php.ini.default /etc/php.ini.default.pre-update

Note: Your file may note be named /etc/php.ini.default.pre-update. 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

Updating MySQL

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

You're good to go.

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