I recently had a crash on an old PowerPC server and had to reinstall Leopard and Rails 2.3.

It is not as straight forward as one would hope – here are the steps.

1. Install Leopard
2. Install XCode 3.0 from the Leopard DVD
   Note that the CHUD part of the XCode install consistently caused a crash on my PowerPC.
   If this happens to you, Customise your XCode install, and select only options 1 and 3 (not the CHUD part)

3. Install mysql from http://dev.mysql.com/downloads/mysql/5.0.html
   Also install the preference pane and start mysql server.

4. Activate the root user in Leopard

   http://www.macosxhints.com/article.php?story=20071025100950309

5. Upgrade rails (Leopard ships with Rails 1.2)

   1 2 3 4

   sudo gem update --system sudo gem install rails sudo gem update rake sudo gem install ruby-debug

   If you get error messages that ruby.h can’t be found, your XCodes install has not been successful.

6. Add mysql gem
   Rails 2 does not come with the mysql gem installed.
   This requires a special command
   On Intel Macs

   1	sudo env ARCHFLAGS="-arch i386" gem install mysql -- --with-mysql dir=/usr/local/mysql --with-mysql-config=`which mysql_config`

   On a PowerPC

   1	sudo env ARCHFLAGS="-arch ppc" gem install mysql -- --with-mysql dir=/usr/local/mysql --with-mysql-config=`which mysql_config`

Any comments or corrections welcome.