jeffamm

Paul, thanks for responding, hope you had a good holiday. I'm fine with cancelling IIS whenever I want to run Apache. My bigger headache right now is that I haven't been able to set a password for the root user. I've tried the command in the book, and tried doing it also from phpmydmin and both return the same result: ERROR 1044 (42000): Access denied for user ''@'localhost' to database 'mysql' Any idea of how to get past this?

OK I got this resolved, with the assistance of folks on the apache friends forum http://www.apachefriends.org/f/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=49397&p=190518#p190518 Since I have visual studio installed, I had IIS running. Disabling IIS solved most of the port 80 conflicts, but another component of IIS, MsDepSvc.exe also uses port 80 and I had to end the process through the task manager to get apache to run. We'll see if this is really a fix, or if it just gets apache running at the expense of something else that will be needed. I'll post here with any other problems/learnings.

For the benefit of anyone with the same problem, what I've learned so far is that if there is no log file, it means that Apache has never started. With no log file you'll want to be using the control panel 3 http://www.apachefriends.org/f/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=48932 but check also that it may already be in your xampp folder. In my install the desktop shortcut it creates go to the older control panel, but it did install the newer version, I just had to double-click it. With cp3 I now get these errors 8:47:05 AM [main] Xampp version: 1.7.7 8:47:05 AM [main] Control center version: 3.0.2 [ Compiled: Jul 21th 2011 - build #1 ] 8:47:05 AM [main] Running as admin - good! 8:47:05 AM [main] Working with basedir: "c:\xampp\" 8:47:05 AM [main] Initializing moduls 8:47:05 AM [apache] Possible problem detected: Port 80 in use by "inetinfo.exe"! 8:47:05 AM [apache] Possible problem detected: Port 443 in use by "inetinfo.exe"! 8:47:05 AM [mysql] "c:\xampp\mysql\bin\mysqld.exe" seems to be running on port 3306? 8:47:05 AM [mercury] Possible problem detected: Port 25 in use by "inetinfo.exe"! 8:47:05 AM [mercury] Possible problem detected: Port 25 in use by "inetinfo.exe"! 8:47:05 AM [main] Starting check-timer so I can see that I have the port 80 conflict with IIS but I don't know why my edit of the httpd.conf file isn't changing the port to 8080

Bueller.............Bueller.............Bueller..............

I figured out that the username/password I prompt when I go to http://localhost/ is for mysqld.exe Does that indicate anything helpful to solving this?

I did some searching around regarding why I don't see any log files and found this interesting guidance Be aware that if httpd cannot access its log directory (perhaps /var/log/httpd or a symlink in /etc/httpd/logs) it will not start up or even log a message. Maybe this is my problem, since apache isn't starting or logging. Problem is I don't know what to do with the information. The page it came from is at http://wiki.apache.org/httpd/Logs

Thanks, I googled it on "apache won't start on xampp" and found this article http://www.netshinesoftware.com/component/option,com_myblog/Itemid,65/show,Apache-wont-start-on-XAMPP.html/ It suggests first checking to see if anything else is using port 80, which I did, but found nothing. (I don't have skype installed either). It then suggests swapping the php.ini file from the /xampp/apache/bin/ folder with one from the /xampp/php/ folder. Interestingly, I didn't find a php.ini file in my /xampp/apache/bin/ folder. Ideas?

I opened the logs folder and found it empty Yes I believe I have IIS enabled. I opened the httpd.conf and found the LISTEN lines as follows: #Listen 0.0.0.0:80 #Listen [::]:80 Listen 80 I changed the 80s to 8080s so it reads as follows #Listen 0.0.0.0:8080 #Listen [::]:8080 Listen 8080 but when I run apache the behavior is the same (it never changes to "running") and the message in the control panel still reads Apache started [Port 80]. That seems to suggest it isn't trying to use port 8080. Any further suggestions?

Larry, I looked around the control panel but didn't find anyplace to display the Apache log. I don't have Skype installed. I went to apachefriends.org to view the XAMPP documentation as you suggest but their website says "There is no real manual or handbook for XAMPP. We wrote the documentation in the form of FAQs" and searching the FAQ I found nothing on an error log. I'm a bit stuck now, other than trying a de-install/re-install, which I'll do tomorrow. I doubt that I'll be the only reader to run into difficulty with the install, and any assistance rendered here will probably benefit a number of other readers.

Jonathon, Thanks for the reply, but I have to admit that I'm more confused now than before. Here's why: When I try that URL I get a 404 Page Not Found. Interestingly, when I try that URL I am prompted for a user name and password. I have no idea what application is doing the prompting. Is there some way to tell? Good, I did something right I'm surprised that the busy thing is an error, as I thought it was normal. In the part of the book "To Install XAMPP on Windows", image D shows the control panel, and Apache returns busy there also, so I thought maybe it was the normal condition. Does it not show busy on yours?

I'm having some trouble with the installation and hoping I can get some help here, since I can't really proceed with the book until I've got the development environment installed properly. I'm using windows xp. Question 1. XAMPP - The installation seems to have gone fine, and I got the "Congratulations ..." message at the end of it, as shown in the book. However when I click the Apache "Start" button I only get a very brief green "running" indication and then it goes away. Is this normal and is Apache running, even when the indication goes away? The log at the bottom of the window says: Apache started (port 80) Busy ... FYI, when I start MySQL the "running" indicator stays on. In the book there is a picture of the control panel that shows both indicators on at the same time. I don't get that on my install. Question 2. Set a password for the root MySQL user - in short the problem is that when I attempt to set the root passwod I get the error ERROR 1044 (42000): Access denied for user ''@'localhost' to database 'mysql' Here's the blow by blow: I installed the xampp folder in by c:/ directory. Next I'm following the instruction to "Immediately change the password for the root MySQL user" I'm not on a hosted server so my understanding is that I can't use PHPadmin I don't know how to use the command-line mysql client so I go to the Accessing MySQL section of Chapter 4, “Introduction to MySQL.” I use the command window and navigate to a c:\ prompt and type in C:\xampp\mysql\bin\mysql which returns a mysql> prompt . So far so good I think. It seems that I need to now go back to Appendix A "To assign a password to the root user via the MySQL client" I then type in as instructed: SET PASSWORD FOR 'root'@' localhost' = PASSWORD ('thepassword'); except with my own password (letters and numbers) In return I get an error beep and the following: ERROR 1044 (42000): Access denied for user ''@'localhost' to database 'mysql' I'm clueless on how to proceed? Question 3. Looking ahead to when I have this working, I noticed this instruction: Your Web root directory—where your PHP scripts should be placed in order to test them—is the htdocs folder in the directory where XAMPP was installed. Following these installation instructions, this would be C:\xampp\htdocs. To me this means that I'm going to place the demonstration files (downloaded for the book) in the htdocs folder, and point the program that runs them to the chapter 1-19 folder or file. Is this correct?