Macintosh Laptop Installation

[SantaFe]

Hello all,
I am wanting to install OSCommerce on my Macintosh Powerbook laptop so I can create my store before uploading to my server.

I have researched this on Google and numerous other forums. Apple includes php in the OS, but I am told it won't do. I also have phpAdmin and MySQL.

My question is, has anyone else done this? I now have a couple of versions of php. The php4 install gives me error messages. The php5 was successful, but I understand that the register_globals is an issue with OSCommerce. Also I am not sure how I would go about installing OSCommerce here. I haven't gotten to MySQL yet.

As you may know, Mac OS X (10.3.5) has Apache web server installed. I have turned it on and had it working, but now it seems to turn itself off automatically when I close the System Preferences. Also, OS X is, of course, Unix. I don't have a lot of experience with comand line, but I have the terminal window easily available and I am reasonably knowledgeable and capable with code and have a little understanding of php.

I have built a number of PayPal enabled html sites and am ready to try the high road if I can get an overview of what needs to be done here. I have worked previously on OSCommerce stores, but it's a real pain to keep uploading as I work, and I don't have a fast connection.

Thanks in advance. I sincerely appreciate whatever help you can offer.

[SantaFe]

I am using Macintosh OS X (10.3.5) and have Personal Web Server (Apache 1.3) installed and working. I also have php 5.0.1 (from entropy.ch) installed and working. And, I also have MySQL 4.0.20 installed, but haven't tested it yet.

I also have an OSCommerce demo store which I ftp'd down from an installation. When I try to open the Catalog page I get an error message about register_globals:

"FATAL ERROR: register_globals is disabled in php.ini, please enable it!"

I located php.ini and modified the line and set register_globals = On

(There are two files there, php.ini and php.ini-recommended. I changed the php.ini file.)

I also set display_errors to On.

I have refreshed the browser, but with the same result.

Does this mean I must re-write some of the OSCommerce code?

Is there a way to make it work otherwise, at least for now?

Since register_globals is going to be depricated, is there a new OSCommerce release out, or in the works?

Sincere thanks to those who can help.

[SantaFe]

I am making progress! Here is what I did:
I went ahead and installed MySQL, after reading all the READMEs, notes, and instructions.
I restarted.
I found that System Preferences sometimes give a false indication of whether Personal Web Sharing is realy turned on. (Restarting fixed that problem.)
I again tried to start the demo Catalog.

Now the error message is:
"Unable to connect to database server!"

If any of the forum angels is reading this, I would appreciate some pointers on how to make that connection.

[SantaFe]

Further reading in this and other forums provided the following resource:
http://www.macservers.org/feature-4.html

Good Luck!