If I had any doubt that my geek IQ was not so high… I think I have proved it in the last few days trying to get our new XServe into business with MovableType. Let’s say that getting it running under Panther OSX Server is a delicate operation for those not familiar with planet unix.
The Apple OS apparently lacks a critical perl module that MT desperately needs. The order in which you do things is critical. It helps not to step on a crack or walk under ladders.
I was able to patch together a strategy with some help from ibry daily and links there to Kirk Samuelson. The ibry log touches on a suggestion that is better explained at OSX hints regarding the DBD module and a required edit to a Config.pm file buried deep in the bowels of perl.
To get back to action, I resorted to wiping out the server drive (again) and re-installing a fresh OS 10.3, getting the updates. It is critical (I think) to install the OSX Xcode tools as that updates Perl and adds some key files.
The next critical part is to NOT use the built in mySQL in OSX, but to download the source (it is a Mac pkg installer, just a click will do it) and install following the excellent instructions from Marc Linyage.
If it is a new install for MT, you will have to somehow get into mySQL and create a new database (I cleverly called my “movabletype” and create a user. Since I am moving mine from another site, I was able to get a dump file from my current MT database (basically a big text file that ends in .sql) and then to import that into my new server, essentially rebuilding the database.
Be sure to go to the OSX hnts site to get the details on editing that Config.pm file. This takes care of ibry’s note 2 (do not bother with that, besides he left off the ‘.PL’)
Next I followed steps 3 and 5 from Kirk Samuelson’s instructions Note however that the web URLs provided there for the 2 downloads (in the “curl” command) are incorrect:
http://search.cpan.org/CPAN/authors/id/T/TI/TIMB/DBI-1.30.tar.gz
should be
http://www.cpan.org/authors/id/T/TI/TIMB/DBI-1.30.tar.gz
and
http://search.cpan.org/CPAN/authors/id/J/JW/JWIED/DBD-mysql-2.1022.tar.gz
should be
http://www.cpan.org/authors/id/J/JW/JWIED/DBD-mysql-2.1022.tar.gz
I was going along great until the last part of the DBD install as something was kaflooey with my database privileges– I spent a bit of flailing cussing, flushing privileges, and somehow it got it right.
And that was it! Running the mt-check.cgi script is a great verification, but all the data was there. Besides a few places where I forgot to change the permissions, I was able to rebuild and edit a copy of this blog. There are some changes needed in the MT config since the path to my web files are different from the old Linux box.
Anyhow, I need to test a few more things, then tackle moving a phpBB forum, and we might be in business. The grand move hopefully will be done by Thursday (it better since I am leaving for the rest of the year), but the URLs here will stay the same.
I would say “Woah” but I am not that jubilant.
