Re-enabling error reporting in MAMP

Posted on February 9th, 2007 in code tidbits, mac

For some reason error reporting is turned off by default in MAMP.. So this is how to re-enable it to how it should be.

1. Find your ‘MAMP’ directory in ‘Applications’

2. Find ‘conf’ and open it up..

3. Open up php4 or php5 (depending on your enabled version)

4. Line 270 should be something like this:
error_reporting = E_ALL

5. Line 277 will be:
display_errors = Off

Change this to:
display_errors = On

6. Restart servers

And voila! We have PHP errors..

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There are 38 responses to this post so far

• 
  Eli Sand wrote:

  I don’t even know what MAMP is, but there’s a very good reason to *NOT* have errors (PHP especially) piped out to the end client over the web (supposing that’s what you’re intending to re-enable).

  Should a bug arise somewhere where a user/pass is used to access information, it could be spat out to the browser, giving away sensitive info to your viewers! Same can be said about any potentially unsafe information, like directory structure, etc… It would give some extra info to hackers as to how to compromise your site.

  Just a thought if you value your site security.

  # February 15th, 2007 at 6:17am

• 
  Jamie Huskisson wrote:

  Always do a search first Eli – http://www.mamp.info/en/index.php

  There’s a reason you’d want error reporting on whilst coding offline on your local development server for your clients.

  Whilst your comment is semi-valid, it’s not valid in the case of a local development server.

  # February 15th, 2007 at 10:03am

• 
  Eli Sand wrote:

  Searching requires me to put forth effort in to the form of clicking, reading and junk like that. It’s far easier for me to criticize than it is for me to research what I’m criticizing.

  That and I personally frown on those bundled McDonalds meals. They always “do it for you” which leads to this exact, very, overly troublesome, always experienced, “why the…” issues which can so easily be avoided by the age old DIY method.

  Besides, writing errors to logfiles is always the best method for PHP. There’s always a chance that an error message gets embedded in html comment tags, meaning you never see it.

  That’s reason #2 for never turning on HTML errors. :P

  # February 15th, 2007 at 11:14pm

• 
  Jim wrote:

  Thanks mate,

  Although, you have to restart the server too!

  # February 17th, 2007 at 5:01pm

• 
  Jamie Huskisson wrote:

  Thanks Jim – I’ve now added that to the post ;)

  # February 17th, 2007 at 5:04pm

• 
  peter wrote:

  sure there is a good reason to NOT display errors to the client
  but you must be one hell of a novice programmer to not know the value of getting debug messages while you are developing, idiot

  secondly I wouldnt use this novice toy, mamp on a production site. Its a tool for novices and beginners who barely understand php and mysql

  # September 4th, 2007 at 2:31am

• 
  otto gutschein wrote:

  thanks for that hint – had some nasty bugs here in my scripts i couldn’t find with errors turned off.

  don’t know why the MAMP-people disabled them in a development package :/

  # September 12th, 2007 at 11:34pm

• 
  frank wrote:

  Wow, some serious dickhead comment posters around here. novice toy? macdonald’s meals? sounds like a bunch of brats, its just web dev, take it easy.

  # September 24th, 2007 at 9:30pm

• 
  frank wrote:

  >a tool for novices and beginners who barely understand php and mysql

  MAMP is a perfectly handy developer setup, hotshot. Screw off poser.

  # September 24th, 2007 at 9:33pm

• 
  john wrote:

  thanks, this was just what i was looking for:)

  i think for you to write of mamp is plane silly, technically mamp is just the the initials of the stack so to say mamp is for newbies is actually an incredibly stupid thing to say. What I suspect you meant to say is that the package bundling them together is only for novices, but until you correctly learn the difference between a stack and a program I won’t be tacking you too seriously;)

  # November 24th, 2007 at 9:35pm

• 
  marxista wrote:

  Thanks, this helped me a lot! Greetings from Sweden.

  # February 3rd, 2008 at 8:25pm

• 
  Wes wrote:

  MAMP is a beauty. Drag that baby to your applications and start her up. Real developers have deadlines to meet, and don’t have time to compile and install an entire technology stack for a simple dev environment.

  Also: “Besides, writing errors to logfiles is always the best method for PHP”

  Made me laugh. If you’re doing even semi-serious debugging, you’ve got a server debugger running. Therefore: display_errors = On.

  In conclusion: Peter + Eli = village idiots.

  # February 21st, 2008 at 6:29pm

• 
  Shane wrote:

  Great help! I’d been editing another PHP.ini, and wondering why I wasn’t getting errors showing.

  Guess that’s the standard install of PHP, rather than MAMP’s?

  Anyway, I’m happy, thanks to you.

  # March 4th, 2008 at 9:49pm

• 
  Hammy wrote:

  Thanks for the info. Totally agree with Wes about some of the comments above :)

  Greetings from New Zealand

  # June 6th, 2008 at 10:28am

• 
  SoC: AtomPub Week 4 Status · cavemonkey50.com wrote:

  [...] been oblivious to this since apparently MAMP had PHP error reporting disabled. I have since enabled error reporting, and will start fixing the small bugs early next [...]

  # June 21st, 2008 at 3:33am

• 
  Joachim wrote:

  Thanks for the info!
  Was getting fed up with the White Screen of Death…

  # July 17th, 2008 at 2:18pm

• 
  Josh wrote:

  Thank you! This was so frustrating.

  # August 5th, 2008 at 3:03pm

• 
  Mash wrote:

  Thanks Jamie.

  Peter you sound like a wanker. No-one cares about your ‘expert’ abilities except you. I bet you like to plaster W3C compliant logos all over your websites to tell the world you know about standards rather than just getting on with it.

  Anyone that has had to set-up a mac for local dev knows what a timesaver MAMP is.
  Apache, MySQL, PHP with phpMyAdmin and SQLlite as a one-click install bundle – bloody great – you can configure the stack anyway you want after that – such as tweaking php.ini to control your degree of error reporting as this post suggests.

  # September 4th, 2008 at 4:33pm

• 
  simon wrote:

  Works for me. Thanks.

  # September 6th, 2008 at 4:32pm

• 
  Dean wrote:

  Thanks! Other sites mentioned first part about E_ALL, but didn’t mention Line 277 display_errors to “On.” Thanks for being thorough!

  # October 10th, 2008 at 5:00pm

• 
  abc@abc.com wrote:

  Dear Eli Sand

  Would publish your site by xampp? If not then you should do know that most web developers don’t publish their site with xampp or mamp because they use them to develop site locally and since nobody could write perfect codes without errors, they normally turn display error on. You need that for debugging not for your visitors… Your visitors will see your site from another server which normally don’t came as a package like xampp or mamp. So stop, showing off, while other people are trying to share their knowledge and make the net a better net.

  A reader who happens to read your comments

  # October 16th, 2008 at 3:07pm

• 
  Rui Covelo wrote:

  Thanks for the tip. I lost a few minutes of my day until I found your post. It really doesn’t make sense to be off by default.

  # November 30th, 2008 at 9:42am

• 
  Max wrote:

  Thanks mate! Its always nice to google and find REAL usefull info, you saved me a couple minutes :)
  Cheers!

  # January 4th, 2009 at 3:14pm

• 
  Pinto wrote:

  Thanks to this post, works for me too.
  I think Eli Sand uses IIS.

  # January 7th, 2009 at 8:44pm

• 
  bujisky wrote:

  thanks

  # March 23rd, 2009 at 3:48am

• 
  Neptúnus Hirt wrote:

  Great, thanks for the information.

  One note, however, for those that don’t know: If you’re using MAMP Pro, you need to navigate to the MAMP Pro application, then do a “Show Package Contents” on it to find the configuration files.
  I’ve had some trouble figuring that out, since I assumed that MAMP Pro accessed all the same files as MAMP, but simply had more configuration options.

  # March 31st, 2009 at 1:06pm

• 
  Dan Nicholls wrote:

  Thanks for this, a big help when developing and when you’re a total newbie to Mac and therefore a total newbie to MAMP!

  # April 12th, 2009 at 6:11pm

• 
  Chris wrote:

  Nice one, Jamie.

  This post saved a good few hours of frustration.

  Thanks very much.

  # May 5th, 2009 at 1:37pm

• 
  viopico wrote:

  Thank you very much^^

  # May 28th, 2009 at 11:15am

• 
  Zack wrote:

  Thanks man I owe you a beer!

  # August 14th, 2009 at 10:38pm

• 
  Joe Elliott wrote:

  For those on MAMP Pro, a even more simple solution:

  Click on Server, then PHP… from there you get a fancy checkbox error selection.

  Thanks for the post! I was looking to figure out how to do it, did it first with your post, then explored MAMP more…

  # August 19th, 2009 at 12:42am

• 
  Andrew wrote:

  Many thanks! Greetings from NYC!

  # September 4th, 2009 at 12:02am

• 
  yc wrote:

  Awesome! Thanks. The lack of errors was making MAMP development impossible.

  # September 27th, 2009 at 12:58am

• 
  Kit MacAllister wrote:

  Thanks, this was very useful. It’s so frustrating when the entire site disappears because of a missing semi-colon.

  # October 20th, 2009 at 2:30am

• 
  Pieter wrote:

  Thank you for this. I’ve recently made the switch from PC to Mac and also changed from XAMPP to MAMP in the process. This post was incredibly helpful.

  # October 31st, 2009 at 2:38pm

• 
  Andrew wrote:

  Thanks for the tip. One of those little things that saved a few hrs of confusing frustration.

  This should come enabled on a testing server, in my book!

  # November 12th, 2009 at 1:51pm

• 
  vlado wrote:

  thanks a lot man – really nice tip!

  # December 14th, 2009 at 8:01am

• 
  Constant Meiring wrote:

  /sigh/ Eli at the top seems to be quite daft. Thanks for the tip. I just did a search because I already enabled E_ALL with no avail. Seems I didn’t know about display_errors. :)

  # January 19th, 2010 at 6:40pm

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