I cannot get Web Sharing to turn on.

Question

Level 1

4 points

I cannot get Web Sharing to turn on.

Ever time I click the check box to turn on Web Sharing, the gray light blinks quick to orange, then turns back to gray. I try it over and over and still it will not turn on. I've read many other support discussions related to this and I have tried many of the "solutions", including:

Changing the name of my computer, multiple times
Replacing the existing httpd.conf file with the "original" httpd.conf file
Commenting out LoadModule fastcgi_module libexec/apache2/mod_fastcgi.so from the httpd.conf file
Starting apache in the terminal by typing sudo /usr/sbin/apachectl start
Removing the lines <key>Disabled</key> <true/> from the /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/org.apache.httpd.plist
Removing old users from the /etc/apache2/users/ directory

Nothing has worked so far. I've redownloaded Lion hoping to be able to use the files contained within the installer package to restore all of the relevent files that might have become corrupted somehow. I haven't done this though because I don't know how.

When I try to start Web Sharing while Console is running I get the following message

5/31/12 12:57:43.618 PM org.apache.httpd: httpd: Could not reliably determine the server's fully qualified domain name, using ChrisMacBook.local for ServerName

5/31/12 12:57:44.549 PM System Preferences: -[__NSCFDictionary setObject:forKey:]: attempt to insert nil value (key: NSLink)

5/31/12 12:57:44.551 PM System Preferences: (

0 CoreFoundation 0x00007fff9205bf56 __exceptionPreprocess + 198

1 libobjc.A.dylib 0x00007fff88f04d5e objc_exception_throw + 43

2 CoreFoundation 0x00007fff9205bd8a +[NSException raise:format:arguments:] + 106

3 CoreFoundation 0x00007fff9205bd14 +[NSException raise:format:] + 116

4 CoreFoundation 0x00007fff92018c4b -[__NSCFDictionary setObject:forKey:] + 219

5 SharingPref 0x000000010bc5e48f SharingPref + 115855

6 SharingPref 0x000000010bc5e3a0 SharingPref + 115616

7 SharingPref 0x000000010bc5e315 SharingPref + 115477

8 SharingPref 0x000000010bc4d970 SharingPref + 47472

9 SharingPref 0x000000010bc47d60 SharingPref + 23904

10 Foundation 0x00007fff90dc4f40 __NSFireTimer + 102

11 CoreFoundation 0x00007fff92010934 __CFRUNLOOP_IS_CALLING_OUT_TO_A_TIMER_CALLBACK_FUNCTION__ + 20

12 CoreFoundation 0x00007fff92010486 __CFRunLoopDoTimer + 534

13 CoreFoundation 0x00007fff91ff0e11 __CFRunLoopRun + 1617

14 CoreFoundation 0x00007fff91ff0486 CFRunLoopRunSpecific + 230

15 HIToolbox 0x00007fff8acd44d3 RunCurrentEventLoopInMode + 277

16 HIToolbox 0x00007fff8acdb781 ReceiveNextEventCommon + 355

17 HIToolbox 0x00007fff8acdb60e BlockUntilNextEventMatchingListInMode + 62

18 AppKit 0x00007fff9108fe31 _DPSNextEvent + 659

19 AppKit 0x00007fff9108f735 -[NSApplication nextEventMatchingMask:untilDate:inMode:dequeue:] + 135

20 AppKit 0x00007fff9108c071 -[NSApplication run] + 470

21 AppKit 0x00007fff91308244 NSApplicationMain + 867

22 System Preferences 0x000000010719fb30 System Preferences + 6960

23 ??? 0x0000000000000002 0x0 + 2

)

This is really driving me crazy. If anybody can help, please let me know.

MacBook, Mac OS X (10.7.4), 2.0Ghz - 4GB RAM

Posted on May 31, 2012 10:12 AM

Reply

Answer 1

Linc Davis

Level 10

209,547 points

Jun 1, 2012 9:05 AM in response to EChrisDenney

DEVONthink To Go

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Answer 2

EChrisDenney Author

Level 1

4 points

Jun 1, 2012 9:07 AM in response to Linc Davis

Looks like a nice app but I don't think it will fit my needs. It's very important that we don't save these PDFs locally to the iPad for security purposes as well as capacity limits. We would likely access hundreds of MB per day from each iPad and it could quickly fill up. Hence my desire to be able to serve these PDF's from a Mac and then access them through a browser.

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Answer 3

etresoft

Level 8

46,560 points

Jun 1, 2012 9:42 AM in response to EChrisDenney

And this is definitely a 10.7.4 machine you are working on? I had this problem in the very early days of Lion. I was never able to figure out what caused it because about 20% of the time, it would work. Once you get it running, just leave it running. I even mentioned this in my User Tip on the topic. All of my current 10.7.4 machine seem to be fine. I even keep a pristine VM around for this stuff. The problem might come from having migrated an older, working web server environment. The two 10.7.4 machines that work fine were not ones that I had mucked with for six years.

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Answer 4

EChrisDenney Author

Level 1

4 points

Jun 1, 2012 9:51 AM in response to etresoft

I just double checked and I am indeed running 10.7.4

This machine was purchased second hand. So somebody could have mucked it up before me but I doubt it. The machine was hardly used at all when I bought it. It could be that I upgraded the hard drive on it a few months back and used Time Machine to restore the system. Not sure if something got corrupted along the way. That's the reason I redownloaded Lion, hoping that maybe I could extract files out of it to help restore functionality.

I opened your User Tip and it's a little overwhelming to me right now. I'm a really fast learner, especially when I'm determined, so I'll read this closer a little later.

I own VMWare Fusion 3. Perhaps I could use that to test things out. Currently I'm using it to run Windows XP (work related MRP system).

Reply

Answer 5

etresoft

Level 8

46,560 points

Jun 1, 2012 10:05 AM in response to EChrisDenney

Most of that is just to get PHP and MySQL running. If you are just serving PDFs you don't need all that.

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Answer 6

EChrisDenney Author

Level 1

4 points

Jun 1, 2012 10:09 AM in response to etresoft

Ok good to know.

So if my web server is running, which it appears to be, how the heck do I access it from Safari? Since the GUI isn't working, it's not telling me what IP address I should be using to access the web server. Any idea how I could identify the address I should be using to access my web server now?

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Answer 7

etresoft

Level 8

46,560 points

Jun 1, 2012 11:27 AM in response to EChrisDenney

First of all, with a second hand machine you should always erase the hard drive and start from scratch. If your web sharing panel is only functioning halfway then that may be something entirely different.

Apache should listen on all of your IP addresses. Check any other sharing service and see what IP address they are using. You can always use localhost or 127.0.0.1 to test.

Reply

Answer 8

Linc Davis

Level 10

209,547 points

Jun 1, 2012 11:59 AM in response to EChrisDenney

DevonThink is a web server. It does exactly what you say you want to do. And if you're reading a PDF on an iPad, that PDF is resident on the iPad, even though you don't see it as a file.

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Answer 9

EChrisDenney Author

Level 1

4 points

Jun 1, 2012 8:06 PM in response to etresoft

@etresoft - Thank you. I see that I can access the "It Works!" page using that IP address. But now how do I actually populate it with content, ie the reference I made before. It was my understanding that I use the "Sites" folder in my user directory, but I don't know how to access files once they're in there from a web browser.

@Linc Davis - I understand what you mean. I realize that the PDF does exist on the iPad while I'm viewing it. However, it's my understanding that once you close the Safari tab that contains that PDF, the OS should mark that sector of memory as available for use again. In other words, it would not clog up the limited capacity of the flash memory. We'd like to be able to distribute 16GB iPads. Also, we don't want any files stored and archived on the iPad. It's very important that I be able to controle revisions of PDF files on the web server, so that the next time somebody went to access the BOM for part number XYZ, they would get the latest BOM because they pulled it from the web server on my computer, rather than pulling the BOM that was downloaded weeks ago that is now outdated.The claimed feature "Take your documents with you" freaks me out. But this could relate just to the iPad app. Perhaps this DevonThink can run only on my Mac and then I can access the files from the iPad browser as described above. I just don't see where it talks about DevonThink acting as a web server so that I can access files on my Mac from my iPad through a web browser.

Reply

Answer 10

etresoft

Level 8

46,560 points

Jun 2, 2012 7:12 AM in response to EChrisDenney

EChrisDenney wrote:

@etresoft - Thank you. I see that I can access the "It Works!" page using that IP address. But now how do I actually populate it with content, ie the reference I made before. It was my understanding that I use the "Sites" folder in my user directory, but I don't know how to access files once they're in there from a web browser.

You would access a user's folder with a URL like this: http://localhost/~ecdenney/

If this is for something other than testing, it would be better to put the files in /Library/WebServer/Documents. If you really want to be clever, you can edit/create an Apache config file to create a virtual server or custom directory for this content. You could access it from http://documents.local/ or something like that.

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Answer 11

EChrisDenney Author

Level 1

4 points

Jun 4, 2012 4:30 AM in response to etresoft

Thank you @etresoft

etresoft wrote:

EChrisDenney wrote:

@etresoft - Thank you. I see that I can access the "It Works!" page using that IP address. But now how do I actually populate it with content, ie the reference I made before. It was my understanding that I use the "Sites" folder in my user directory, but I don't know how to access files once they're in there from a web browser.

You would access a user's folder with a URL like this: http://localhost/~ecdenney/

If this is for something other than testing, it would be better to put the files in /Library/WebServer/Documents. If you really want to be clever, you can edit/create an Apache config file to create a virtual server or custom directory for this content. You could access it from http://documents.local/ or something like that.