Jamie Huskisson : Re-enabling error reporting in MAMP

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..

There are 19 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

Re-enabling error reporting in MAMP

There are 19 responses to this post so far

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