06 Mar 08 _ How to fix a broken MAMP
By Christopher
in BlogTorials
MAMP is an awesome program that allows you to install Apache, MySQL and PHP with just a few clicks on Mac OS X. It’s a really easy way to set up a local development environment, or to get a dynamic website running a laptop (which is something we recently had to do for a client).
Apparently there’s a bug in the current version (1.7.1) that causes MAMP to stop working even though the MAMP window reports Apache and MySQL running with a green light. When you try to load up pages in a browser you’ll get an unable to connect message like “Firefox can’t establish a connection to the server at localhost:8888“. Stopping and starting the Apache and MySQL services doesn’t fix the problem and even restarting your Mac doesn’t help! You may not even be able to get MAMP to stop running. Here’s how to fix the bug…
The solution is rather simple:
Open the MAMP preferences window. Make no changes, just click OK. The servers will stop and restart. Fixed!
It’s that simple, but who would have thought that would solve the problem? I’ll tell you who… thanks to Sairuh at Iwaruna.com for pointing out the fix. Sairuh also points out that it’s a known bug and it’s on the developers list to fix. MAMP is a really great application and I would definately recommend it despite this known bug!
April 16th, 2008 at 9:44 pm
Thanks, that’s a life saver.
June 18th, 2008 at 1:06 am
great, easy but so useful i had to reinstall it so many times thanls
July 16th, 2008 at 10:40 am
Thanks a lot!!
July 20th, 2008 at 2:55 pm
Thanks!
This happened when we lost power during a storm. When the server came back on MAMP restarted and showed two green lights, yet apache refused to serve any pages.
So MAMP kinda sucks… this is a significant bug.
August 19th, 2008 at 3:30 pm
Bloody invaluable. Thanks for the post!
September 10th, 2008 at 12:01 pm
Yeah this saved me ages of troubleshooting… thanks!
November 11th, 2008 at 8:09 pm
Great post, thanks a lot. This was killing me.
January 9th, 2009 at 9:38 am
Saved my afternoon, cheers man.
January 19th, 2009 at 3:20 pm
thank you! I was downloading to re-install when I came across this. So queer of it to just stop working like that. Wonder why.
February 20th, 2009 at 7:11 pm
Thanks! Anybody know if it was fixed in 1.7.2?
February 22nd, 2009 at 1:30 pm
Rebooting your Mac is necessary when you’re using the MAMP-widget. If you want to turn it off by hitting “Stop Servers” button in the dashboard, it won’t respond.
To fix that reboot the Mac, and start up MAMP from the Applications folder (not the dashboard-widget), and follow the steps described above.
May 7th, 2009 at 9:20 pm
+1 – brilliant!
I thought I was going to have to reinstall.
You’re a lifesaver
July 17th, 2009 at 3:07 am
Nice. I used to hack it from terminal. Sometimes the simplest solutions are the best.
Much appreciated.
Chris
July 24th, 2009 at 9:14 am
Saved me a day of worry and work. Thank you for posting this.
August 2nd, 2009 at 7:08 pm
[...] and my computer didn’t solve the issue. So, after some research I found this wonderful blog entry concerning the problem. It’s a known bug with a known workaround. Simply open MAMP’s [...]
August 3rd, 2009 at 6:33 am
Dude, Thank you.
Saved my day.
August 17th, 2009 at 11:43 am
Thanks so much, this was wonderfully helpful!
I couldn’t figure this out for the life of me.
September 27th, 2009 at 4:53 am
Have been getting :
Firefox can’t establish a connection to the server at localhost.
when trying to upload images in Joomla! articles
have turned on and off, have opened preferences and clicked OK – no difference!
January 5th, 2010 at 5:34 am
Thank you for this, life saver