Comments on: Fix MAMP: Apache won’t start but MySQL will

By: amitsamtani

amitsamtani — Tue, 22 Mar 2011 21:00:52 +0000

Thanks for the tip on checking the Document Root. Worked!

By: Qark

Qark — Sat, 19 Mar 2011 20:47:59 +0000

I found the Syntax error on line 326 of /Applications/MAMP/conf/apache/httpd.conf:
User takes one argument, Effective user id for this server,

It was my user name. It was ‘Mac Pro 1′ and I changed it to my computers user name… which is my first name. and it worked….

By: brad

brad — Fri, 18 Feb 2011 17:40:37 +0000

I LOVE YOU

By: kombismoke

kombismoke — Thu, 03 Feb 2011 03:37:51 +0000

For those who are getting this error:

Syntax error on line 326 of /Applications/MAMP/conf/apache/httpd.conf:
User takes one argument, Effective user id for this server

The problem is you have a user account (home folder) that is more than one word. EXAMPLE: “this user” instead of the correctly formatted “thisuser”.

The solution is to rename your user account so that it contains no spaces as detailed in the following official support document from Apple:

http://support.apple.com/kb/ht1428

hope this helps.

By: rk76

rk76 — Sat, 15 Jan 2011 15:53:16 +0000

I get the same error:

Syntax error on line 326 of /Applications/MAMP/conf/apache/httpd.conf:
User takes one argument, Effective user id for this server

What to do?

By: prince

prince — Sat, 27 Nov 2010 09:41:06 +0000

I keep getting this error on MAMP and my apache server does not start.

./startapache.sh
Syntax error on line 326 of /Applications/MAMP/conf/apache/httpd.conf:
User takes one argument, Effective user id for this server

By: londonthelost

londonthelost — Thu, 04 Nov 2010 22:05:56 +0000

after typing the second portion
“/startApache.sh
Syntax error on line 368 of /Applications/MAMP/conf/apache/httpd.conf:
DocumentRoot must be a directory”

I just keep receiving the notice “command not found”.
Am I doing something wrong?

By: vig0

vig0 — Wed, 27 Oct 2010 15:45:22 +0000

this was a huge help. Thanks for posting! I had forgot that I had ‘Web Sharing’ checked off in the system preferences.

By: Seb

Seb — Fri, 22 Oct 2010 13:17:07 +0000

I believe that I’ve got a bad user severin.
I ran your command line on the correct file and got:

httpd: bad user name severin

I got smart and tried changing my username (as well as my password) to something other than ‘root’. I re-installed and hope. Any idea where I could go and jolt apache’s config to use the right username – which I’ve now reverted to root.

By: oluwaseun

oluwaseun — Mon, 27 Sep 2010 17:18:10 +0000

Thanks a lot. Solved the problem.

Cool