The GD library for PHP is missing or outdated

September 4, 2007 6:36 AM

I have Drupal 5.2 installed on OS X 10.4.10. On the status page, Drupal says, "The GD library for PHP is missing or outdated. Please check the PHP image documentation for information on how to correct this." (This is the PHP 4.4.7 that is built into Tiger.)

OK, bear with me, I'm a Unix noob. The PHP image documentation Drupal directs you to was not much help to me. Here is what I've tried:

Based on the instructions on this page, I've used Fink to install libjpeg, libgif, and libpng3, though probably not into the directory where they are expected to be found.

"php -m" in the terminal yields this:


PHP Warning: Unknown(): Unable to load dynamic library './php_mbstring.dll' - (null) in Unknown on line 0
PHP Warning: Unknown(): Unable to load dynamic library './php_gd2.dll' - (null) in Unknown on line 0
[PHP Modules]
ctype
curl
dbx
exif
ftp
ldap
mbstring
mysql
odbc
overload
pcre
posix
session
sockets
standard
tokenizer
xml
zlib


The first two are lines that I've uncommented in php.ini. (I uncommented the php_mbstring line because a forum post I ran across said that that library was needed by the gd lib--I've no idea if this is true. I've just noticed that that's already enabled anyway.)

I could try disabling Tiger's PHP and using Marc Liyanage's binary, but I'd rather not, as I have had problems in the past with Drupal on PHP5.

I have a feeling that if I knew what I was doing, this would be simple. Please can you help me fix this? Bonus points if you can help me understand it in the process.

posted by bricoleur to computers & internet (3 comments total)

here is what Apple themselves have to say about it. And here is a tutorial on installing php+gd+mysql+apache on OS X.

It appears you're going to be stuck with installing something other than the default.
posted by DreamerFi at 6:50 AM on September 4, 2007 [1 favorite]

You could buy MAMP PRO; the GUI has a toggle for PHP4/5 and MAMP has things like GD bundled. It's all far easier than using the built-in Apache/PHP.
posted by malevolent at 7:04 AM on September 4, 2007

Thanks, malevolent, I just installed MAMP (not Pro, so it seems to be free). It looks like if I want to use phpMyAdmin, I'll need to use PHP5, but at least I have the option to toggle back to 4 for troubleshooting if need be.

DreamerFi, I'm just to lazy to go through that installation process when something as simple as MAMP is available.
posted by bricoleur at 11:10 AM on September 4, 2007