David Dubbeldam
The frontend of Rocks 7.0 requires a web server to have rolls “installed” to download. If the frontend needs to be installed often, like for testing purposes in a local machine, then it is preferred to have a local roll-server.
Starting the web-server on MacOS Big Sur
Start the builtin Apache server
You should now be able to direct your browser to ‘localhost’ or ‘127.0.0.1’ and see in the browser ‘ it works!’. The default Apache configuration reads from
Apple recommends to create a directory ‘Sites’ in your home account and run your local user website from there. However, that will not work for the rocks roll-server. We need to install it in the main sever. But first, let’s download rocks.
Downloading rocks
The iso-disk images can be downloaded from
Using wget, we can download the images
Creating the roll data
Next mount the disk by double-clicking it in the finder.
with for example output
Now mount the disk.
Copying the rpm’s from the disk to the web-server
Unmount and detached the disk.
Repeat this process for all the iso-images.
Setting up the web-server on MacOS Big Sur
Next the Apache server needs to setup as a rocks roll-server. First, edit the apache config file
Switch on cgi-capabilities, look the following section and uncomment the LoadModule lines.
Append to the file
Now restart the Apache web server
Testing the web setup
To test the setup, run
which should look like
Installing rocks using the local roll-server
For the selection of rolls, now point to the local roll-server
Select the rolls, and click ‘Add Selected Rolls’.