My setup:

• OS: Mac OS X Yosemite (10.10.1)
• Using Homebrew
• PHP: 5.5.14

I’ve installed an empty Laravel installation and got the following error message when navigating to http://localhost/kanban/public/:

Notice: Use of undefined constant MCRYPT_RIJNDAEL_128 – assumed ‘MCRYPT_RIJNDAEL_128’ in /Library/WebServer/Documents/xxx/config/app.php on line 83

Googling for this error message return many tutorials on how to install mcrypt on Mac OS X (whether building it from source or using Homebrew). The problem was that both the mcrypt and the php55-mcrypt packages were properly installed:

$ brew install mcrypt
Warning: mcrypt-2.6.8 already installed
$ brew install php55-mcrypt
Warning: php55-mcrypt-5.5.20 already installed

Mcrypt was also properly loaded by PHP:

$ php -m | grep mcrypt
mcrypt

$ php -i | grep mcrypt
Additional .ini files parsed => /usr/local/etc/php/5.5/conf.d/ext-mcrypt.ini,
Registered Stream Filters => zlib.*, bzip2.*, convert.iconv.*, string.rot13, string.toupper, string.tolower, string.strip_tags, convert.*, consumed, dechunk, mcrypt.*, mdecrypt.*
mcrypt
mcrypt support => enabled
mcrypt_filter support => enabled
mcrypt.algorithms_dir => no value => no value
mcrypt.modes_dir => no value => no value

Looking at the results of phpinfo() in a Web browser, I could notice two things:

1. No mention of mcrypt being loaded
2. Scan this dir for additional .ini files: /Library/Server/Web/Config/php

Actually the directory /Library/Server/Web/Config/php didn’t exist (neither did the parent directories). Since the command line php seemed to scan the directory /usr/local/etc/php/5.5/conf.d for additional .ini files, I did the following:

First, I created the directory PHP wanted to scan:

sudo mkdir -p /Library/Server/Web/Config/php

Then, I created a symbolic link from the crypt ini file loaded by my PHP CLI to this directory:

sudo ln -s /usr/local/etc/php/5.5/conf.d/ext-mcrypt.ini /Library/Server/Web/Config/php/ext-mcrypt.ini

Finally, I restarted Apache:

sudo apachectl restart

After that checking the output of phpinfo() in my browser, I could see the following:

mcrypt

mcrypt support	enabled
mcrypt_filter support	enabled
Version	2.5.8
Api No	20021217
Supported ciphers	cast-128 gost rijndael-128 twofish arcfour cast-256 loki97 rijndael-192 saferplus wake blowfish-compat des rijndael-256 serpent xtea blowfish enigma rc2 tripledes
Supported modes	cbc cfb ctr ecb ncfb nofb ofb stream

 

Directive	Local Value	Master Value
mcrypt.algorithms_dir	no value	no value
mcrypt.modes_dir	no value	no value

And the Laravel application was working !