Early Adopters Beware
Today started out great. After all, today was the day of Steve Job’s keynote at MacWorld Expo and with that was sure to come the introduction of a slew of great new Apple gear that I am certain to drool over. I get home from work to settle in and watch the keynote. Wow, FM Radio Remote for the iPod. Oooh, iLife ‘06. Holy crap an Intel Powerbook! By now I’m glued to the screen and really enjoying all of the wonderful new products being introduced. As I’m watching the keynote, I decide to check my Software Updater. I mean, why not, Steve just said they were releasing OS X 10.4.4 today. There’s about a half-dozen other updates that need to install so I click on ‘download’ and let it fly. I don’t give it a second thought. The keynote is over and I’ve had my fill, it’s time to get started on some client work.
I open up my ‘localhost’ folder in Safari, click on the WebDev folder, into a client folder and then it happens. I see a WordPress screen that says that it can’t connect to database. I look at it, thinking maybe there’s a setting in the WordPress directory that got messed up. I check the config file, everything is where I left it and is correct. Something is definitely not right so I start digging around for answers. After a long search, it turns out that there is a problem with MySQL. Out of no where, it has stopped working. I can’t even access it in the Terminal because my root password isn’t recognized. Oh boy, this is not going to be fun.
First thing I do is verify and repair my permissions with Disk Utility. This yields unexpected results, as it turns out that I have quite a few permission problems. It looks bad, but I figured I’d run them and everything would be squared away. Even after repairing permissions several times, the same files keep popping up and nothing is being fixed. I suddenly get the sinking feeling that upgrading to 10.4.4 has done me wrong.
After looking around for a while, I stumble upon a page by Marc Liyanage that describes how to re-initialize the MySQL database. His solution causes all of the data to be destroyed, but I wasn’t concerned since none of it is important and can be re-done fairly quickly and easily. So I follow his instructions to a T, and lo and behold… nothing. I don’t panic yet because his site is filled with great stuff about MySQL so I just dig deeper. Nothing seems to help, so I opt for a clean re-install of MySQL. He has a tidy little script that makes the process very easy, although a little nerve-racking at times.
So I let the script do its magic, then I downloaded the newest version of MySQL and re-installed. After running through a few tests, I am still unable to make WordPress hook up with the database. MySQL still doesn’t recognize me as the root user, when I put in my password it tells me 'Access denied for user 'root'@'localhost' (using password: NO)'. I had to finally stop because I could feel my blood pressure reaching dangerously high levels.
Is this a bi-product of my upgrade to OS X 10.4.4? Last night everything was fine and now it’s not. I have disk permission errors, MySQL is completely botched, and I haven’t found a single thing online that’s helped me yet. Has anyone else had these problems or possibly a solution to the MySQL quandry?
UPDATE – January 11th, 2006 :: Thanks to Yoram, MAMP, and Michael Doig’s site all is right with the world. Thanks again for the suggestions guys, you saved the day!
Some has, and has a solution.
via wordpress support forums:
http://wordpress.org/support/topic/55902
Maybe you try another local dev solution: MAMP.
I think this way it’s much more independent than from the Mac OS X solution.
It’s a just drag’n'drop and there you go solution which works very fine for me.
Thanks for the input folks, that completely made my day. Problem is, like I said in the post, I already got rid of my default MySQL setup and I’ll have to start over. That’s what I’ll be working on tonight.
Also, as for MAMP, I actually have that installed on my computer but it was unable to access the MySQL database also. The Apache server was alive and well, but it couldn’t make the MySQL connection. I’ll definitely give it a good look tonight though if it will prevent me from having this problem in the future.
Thanks again!
Hi Matt,
Now that was something interesting to read! This site is made out of Wordpress? Well, I hope I’m not being rude, but would it be possible to give me a few pointers on how you adjusted the layout? I’ve just installed my first Wordpress-site, and though I know a bit about CSS and xhtml, I have no idea where to start. I do have my “number-one-a-ok” layout ready for slicing. I can also make that layout with CSS/xhtml. But implementing this layout in Wordpress is a whole different story. Do you have any good links perhaps, which could help me get on my way a little?
With kind regards,
Joram Oudenaarde
Joram,
This site is defintely WordPress and as I’ve stated in another post, I have started to realize the versatility behind the CMS and I’m loving it. I’m working on a few things right now that would proabably come in handy.
If I have some extra time this weekend I’ll pull out some things that might be of use that I’ve found along the way. Stay tuned and hopefully I’ll be able to answer some of your questions.
If that wouldn’t be too much trouble, I’d really appreciate it. Thanks a lot for the help (in advance, hehe). I’m still learning about css/xhtml, but I haven’t been able to find the xhtml of the wordpress pages. I did some minor fiddling in the CMS Template-stylesheets, but I was kind of worried I would wreck something.
But the whole CMS (control management system right?) was something I never expected to be so easy to use. I thought it was something like CSS, PhP or Actionscripting, hehehe.
Well, your site is in my bookmarks, so I’ll be sure to keep checking :-)