hpr-knowledge-base/hpr_transcripts/hpr2312.txt

Episode: 2312
Title: HPR2312: Troubleshooting Websites with XAMPP
Source: https://hub.hackerpublicradio.org/ccdn.php?filename=/eps/hpr2312/hpr2312.mp3
Transcribed: 2025-10-19 01:10:15

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This in HBR episode 2,312 entitled, Trouble Shooting website with MAMP.
It is hosted by Frank Mel and in about 15 minutes long and Karim a clean flag.
The summary is, Frank describes how he used MAMP to clone his website to local host so he
could shoot some trouble.
This episode of HBR is brought to you by AnanasThost.com.
At 15% discount on all shared hosting with the offer code HBR15, that's HBR15.
Better web hosting that's honest and fair at AnanasThost.com.
Hello, this is Frank Bell.
I haven't recorded a podcast for HBR in some time.
Part of the problem is identifying a topic on which I feel confident to speak and which
I also feel the HBR audience would find interesting.
The other part of the problem is that I had just about the most annoying winter ever.
I won't go into the details.
As Gildner Radner would have said, if it wasn't one thing, it was another.
But I am going to talk about one of the annoyances which was that for most of February my website
was broken.
In particular, the WordPress blog that I maintained was broken.
I took advantage of that to do two things.
One of them was to move from shared hosting to a VPS.
Not because I really eat a VPS, but hey, I'm a Linux geek.
I wanted a VPS.
The other was to clone my website, including the blog to local host.
I did that using Shamp.
You may know it as XAMP, XAMP, pronouncing X as in xylophone, but according to a video
at their website, the maintainers pronounce it SHAMP, and I will defer to their wishes.
Their website is www.apachefriends.org.
It is a complete web server stack of Apache, MariaDB, PHP, and Pearl.
All configured to work together out of the box.
And if you've ever established those different components separately, and then try to get
them to work together, you will appreciate the simple beauty of this.
It's available for Linux, Windows, and Mac, but I can only speak of the Linux version.
It's useful for testing changes to an existing website before bringing them live, practicing
your web design skills, or as in my case, troubleshooting something that's not working right.
When you download it from Apache Friends, you download a small stub, and that stub starts
a binary installer which installs the rest of the package.
It really works very, very nicely.
I would note, regarding security, that none of the components, the database, the FTP,
what have you, of XAMP, are password protected by default.
The idea is that this will make it easier for developers to get it up and running.
The maintainers caution strongly that XAMP should not be used for a production website.
In other words, it should not be public-facing.
However, if you have a need for passwords, and I did, you can institute password protection
after the installation is complete by issuing the following commands as root, CD, slash
opt slash lap by default, ZAMP installs to opt lap, and then issuing the command dot slash
lap, that's LAMPP for Linux Apache, MariaDB, PHP and Perl, space security, and that will
start a script that will enable you to password protect the various components of the application.
In my case, I needed to do so because since I was going to be testing an existing database
that already had password protection built into it, I needed to have passwords that were
compatible to the existing passwords in my database.
That is, the password to access the database as a database administrator, not a title that
I would ever give myself.
There will be a link in the show notes to the XAMP Linux fact for more information about
the LAMP security script and the program as a whole.
Once you've got it installed, you can test the installation as follows.
As root, issue the command CD, space slash opt slash LAMP, then issue the command dot slash
LAMPP space start.
As a footnote, if you want to turn it off, the command is dot slash lap LAMPP space stop.
If the application has been successfully installed, Shamp will respond as follows.
Starting Shamp for Linux kernel kernel number.
Starting Apache, okay, starting me SQL, okay, starting pro FTPD, okay, if you do not
give that response, it's broke and you need to do some troubleshooting as to why it's
not working.
But frankly, I have never had an IBU Shamp off and on over nearly 10 years now, never
had an installation fail.
Assuming I follow the directions, the final test is to point your browser at HTTP call
and slash slash local host and you will see the Shamp dashboard page.
The next step is to clone your website.
The first step of that is to copy all your website files, which you should have backed
up to your local hard drive into slash off slash LAMPP slash HT docs, HTDOCS.
That is the web root directory for Shamp.
If you have a static website, you're done.
You can go to work updating your HTML pages in the text editor of your choice and then
testing them out in Shamp.
Indeed, you can actually edit them directly from the HT docs directory and test your changes
on the fly, if you wish.
I have actually done that.
But if you have a database, there is more to it, much more to it.
And who doesn't have a database anymore?
For a database, the next two steps are to use PHP MyAdmin to configure MariaDB to
receive the database and then to actually import the database into MariaDB.
The first of these, preparing MariaDB.
By default, your MariaDB user is root and unless you've changed it by default, root does
not have a password.
In my case, I gave root a password.
You want to create a database user who is not root and does not have root access to
MariaDB, but will have full access to the database that you will be testing.
Here's how to do that.
Point your browser at HTTP, call and slash slash local host slash PHP MyAdmin.
You will get the login page, login as the root user of your database engine.
Make user accounts and then click new.
Create a new account, giving it a username and a password and here's where the password
and the username need to be compatible with your existing database.
Under database for user account, check to create database with same name and grant all privileges.
That creates a database with no tables.
So that's the first of those steps, preparing MariaDB to receive the database.
The next step is to actually import your database back up.
If you don't have a database back up at this point, you are now toast.
Most common database backup format is SQL.
There are other formats that PHP MyAdmin is capable of importing for that list, see the
PHP documentation.
I usually use the import function, open up the database, my new database and at the top
of the screen, there will be a row of buttons and one of them will say import.
In order to import the database, there are two changes you need to make in your php.inifile,
which is located in slash opt, slash lamp, L-A-M-P-P, slash ETC slash php.inif.
Open that up in the text editor of your choice and find the settings, memory underscore
limit and post underscore max underscore size.
By default, they are set at 8M, capital M for megabyte.
These those to a size large enough to allow you to import your backed up database, which
you have sitting in a safe place on your hard drive.
You can change them back later to smaller sizes if you wish.
But to do an import, you have to open the door wide enough to let the import in.
Once you've done that, stop and restart, shamp, so that the any files get read and new.
Plug into phpmyman again as your database user and then navigate to the empty database
you created.
Click the import button towards the top of the screen.
Navigate to the location of the backup on your hard drive and start the import.
Note, do not leave your computer unattended.
Even if you've opened the door wide enough, your import may stop with a message about latency
or some such thing.
I don't remember the exact wording and I am to click here to resume it.
If you're off doing something else and that message appears and you don't respond in
time, you will not get to resume the import, you will need to start all over.
Up the latest HPR podcast into your pod player and listen to it while you watch your screen.
Once the import is complete, you are almost ready.
Now here I am limited.
My only direct experience is with WordPress, but I suspect that other database programs
have similar settings that you will need to track down.
In your WordPress database, in the WP hyphen options table.
There are two settings that point to the location of your website.
If you have downloaded this from a hosting provider, they will point to whatever your address
is at www.bigwideworld.com.
You need to change those to point to localhost.
In WordPress, those two settings in the WP options table are site underscore URL and home.
The link is near the top of the options table, the other is near the bottom.
If you don't change these and you are able to successfully open, in my case, my blog
from localhost.
And I click on an internal link, such as the settings page.
The link will try to go to www.bigwideworld.com instead of to localhost.
You need to tell the database that it is supposed to work and play in the play pen on local
host and not go outdoors.
Now you are ready to troubleshoot.
Now going back to why I had this experience, the two problems I had with my blog were completely
unrelated.
One of them had to do with the theme which had worked very nicely ever since I moved to
Virginia which is when I had adapted on Taylor the new theme and it started to get fractures.
That had nothing whatsoever to do with the other more serious problem that my database
had grown my share hosting.
As I said, I got a VPS because I wanted a VPS, but I still wanted to find out what was
going on because the database by rights shouldn't have been that big.
And I found as I looked at it, I knew they were there, I just hadn't done my house
keeping.
There were a bunch of tables left over from various plugins I had tried and discarded
for various functions.
And I was hesitant to go willy-nilly deleting tables from the database for my live site.
Once I have it cloned to localhost, I could go through and say, aha, I think I don't
need you anymore, drop, you look like I don't need you anymore, drop, and I could find
out which tables were safe to drop without affecting the primary functionality of WordPress.
So that's why it's so nice to have a testbed.
If you break something, you haven't harmed anything.
You're still back in the dressing room and you're not falling over your feet in public.
And I've got my blogs working very nicely now.
I got a lot of profit.
The database is back down to a size where I could still be using shared hosting if I wish,
but it's really kind of nice to be able to SSH into your own virtual private server.
I hope you found this interesting.
If you've never experimented with Champ and you want to learn more about how websites
work, I recommend it to you highly.
You can reach me at Frank at PineViewFarm.net.
PineViewFarm is all one word and it's the name of the farm where I grew up.
And I hope to be back to HPR on a more frequent basis now that the annoying winter has passed
away.
I certainly don't want to have a summer as annoying as that winter.
I can tell you that.
Thank you all very much for listening.
Take care.
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