Quick and easy server control

I use a macports installation of Apache2, PHP5 and MySQl5 for development on my macbooks. This is a great system and really simplifies the installation and setup the utilities.

However, the start/stop commands for each are not added to the PATH by default and it's tough remembering the long paths to the control programs.

But there's a solution:

1. Open the Terminal
2. Make sure that you're in your home folder.
3. Edit (or create) .bash_profile
   
   
   

   $ nano .bash_profile

4. Add aliases for your commands
   
   
   

   alias apache2ctl="sudo /opt/local/apache/bin/apachectl"
   alias mysqlstart="sudo /opt/local/bin/mysqld_safe5"
   alias mysqlstop="sudo /opt/local/bin/mysqladmin5 -u root -p shutdown"

5. restart your bash session with
   
   
   

   source ~/.bash_profile

   and you're good to go...

Then you simply issue the following commands from the command line.

apache2ctl start # Start Apache
apache2ctl stop # Stop Apache
apache2ctl graceful # Restart Apache
mysqlstart # Start Mysql
mysqlstop # Stop Mysql