Wordpress on USB stick & compatible with Windows AND Mac OS X

[McGarityDotMe]

I currently perform all of my WordPress development offline using a local install of MAMP on my PowerMac. It's a great setup, but there are times I need to perform my development on my Windows PC (at work, for example).

The solution to this would be installing XAMPP for Windows, then having it and MAMP share the same WordPress files and database.

Getting XAMPP (for Windows) and MAMP (for Mac OS X) running on the same USB stick isn't difficult. However, I am hitting a wall on sharing of files/DB. I attempted to do this by setting up Mac OS X aliases and Windows shortcuts to common "htdocs" and "db" directories, but my Apache server wouldn't start in these scenarios.

Does anyone know of a tutorial that could walk me through how to set this up, so the USB stick could be used on Mac or PC? And if there isn't a tutorial, can someone help me with this step, and together we can write this up as a tutorial?

Thanks!

[conorp]

I think it would just be easier to have 2 usbs. 1 for windows and the other for macs.

Sorry i cant be more helpful

[dancole]

Could you interlace them... meaning mix the files and folder so the WordPress directory is in a single, but right place for both. That's what I would tried if I was you, but I'm not sure if that would work.

Personally I would create a bootable Live Linux USB installation with some room to save information. I guess there could be problems having HTTPD and MySQL on a live install by default if you don't know what your doing, so I would likely just do a full install to larger USB drive (4GB+). The only problem may be if the computer your on has boot from USB disabled.

[McGarityDotMe]

@conorp Having 2 USB sticks = 2 separate sets of WordPress files and databases to keep in sync. Not the most ideal of solutions. The goal is to have one set of WordPress files/DB that can be edited from either machine currently being used

@dancole I'd perfer something I can plug-and-play without the need to reboot a system (and possibly mess with BIOS/boot settings). XAMPP and/or MAPP get around this quite easily. Another person suggested setting up an Ubuntu virtual machine, but doing so is beyond my current skill level

[Ryan]

I have no idea about the answer to your actual question, but personally I prefer to use SD cards as they generally load a lot faster than USB.

[Jeffro]

I remember reading something a long time ago about installing WordPress on a usb thumbdrive but I can't seem to recall it. I'll be doing some searching to see if I can find it. Sounds like a complex situation though.

[Ryan]

I remember reading something a long time ago about installing WordPress on a usb thumbdrive but I can't seem to recall it. I'll be doing some searching to see if I can find it. Sounds like a complex situation though.

No, that's easy. It's getting it to work on Mac and Windows which is the problem.

[SheeEttin]

Have you tried checking the Apache logs to find out why it's not starting?

[McGarityDotMe]

The issue with not starting was directly related to the Mac Alias -- MAMP does not play nice when you use Aliases, so therefore it's either symbolic links or using the Preferences panel in MAMP.

I've solved the issue with a shared "htdocs" directory. The next trick is getting a common "mysql" directory. I originally attempted this with overlapping XAMPP installs (one for Mac, one for Windows), but there is too much conflict. XAMPP and MAMP can't be overlayed -- different products with different directories and file paths.

[Stupidscript]

spamboy -- how, exactly, did you install MAMPP on the USB drive? I've had zero issues installing the Windows versions onto a stick, but the Mac binaries are all set up to use system files from the Mac hard drive. Same goes for the Apache Friends version of XAMPP for Mac ... paths look for various system files that are not found on all versions of OSX. I've changed every non-binary file in the Apache Friends distribution to try and get it going on a Mac stick, but there are always system file errors when it cannot find one that a binary is hard-coded to require.

Also, regarding MySQL ... there are two issues: (1) Where the database files are located (partition, etc.) and (2) where MySQL's socket is located.

1) Database files can be located on any partition that both Windows and Mac can read. For this reason, it is usually a good idea to format the thumb drive as FAT16, which both Windows and Mac can use. But this poses a problem for Mac users who wish to enable MySQL: Where to put the socket file?

2) A MySQL socket to be used by a Mac system cannot be located on a FAT16 partition (or FAT32), because Mac doesn't understand how to use a socket on one of those partition types ... it wants a Unix-ish partition. You'll need to create a tiny HFS+ partition exclusively for the use of MySQL when it runs on a Mac, for MySQL to put its socket on. To use the Mac socket location, modify the startup script for whatever program you are running (i.e. the Mac version of my.cnf or your application that calls MySQL) to log into the MySQL installation using the Mac socket location:

$database='mysql://user:password@localhost:'.$macsocket.'/dbname'

i.e.

$macsocket='/Volumes/HFSpartition';
$database='mysql://master:dD80kl^6@localhost:'.$macsocket.'/mydatabase

The 'localhost' portion may or may not be required for your installation. If you're having trouble, try removing it:

$macsocket='/Volumes/HFSpartition';
$database='mysql://master:dD80kl^6@'.$macsocket.'/mydatabase

Now, how about letting us in on how to easily install MAMPP on a Mac stick? :)