Remote debugging with XDebug and PHPStorm

Question

First things first:

• Server is an Apache running on Debian in a VMPlayer
• Host is Windows 7
• Debugging-Server is XDebug
• Files are directly accessible via a shared folder

Important: XDebug is properly configured on Apache and my Win7 firewall as well. I know that b/c I can debug using Eclipse.

So what I am failing at seems to be the basic configuration of PHPStorm.

Let me give you some more details:

• IP of Server: 192.168.56.128
• IP of my host: 192.168.56.1

the file that I want to debug is index.php:

• location on my Win7 host: C:\dev\sf\Symfony\
• location on Debian: \mnt\hgfs\sf\Symfony\
• URL: 192.168.56.128/Symfony/index.php

No matter what I fiddle together ... I get weired error messages like "Waiting for connection from JetBrains PhpStorm..." or PHPStorm asks me for Mozillas profile.ini, even though I configured Chrome as Default in Web Browsers.

So I will just set up a new project and hopefully someone tells me what is wrong with my configuration.

Run / Edit configurations / Defaults / PHP Remote Debugging:

• Server: "Debian"
• IDE key: -
• Break at first line: yes

Servers:

• Name: "Debian"
• Host: 192.168.56.128
• Port: 80
• Debugger: Xdebug
• use path mappings: yes
• one path mapping configured:

C:\dev\sf\Symfony => /mnt/hgfs/sf/Symfony (also tried /Symfony - b/c PHPStorm shouldn't care about anything above /Symfony !?)

Run / Edit configurations / Defaults / PHP Web Application:

• Server: "Debian"
• Start URL: /Symfony
• Browser: Chrome
• Break on first line: yes

Now I choose: Run / Debug ... / 1.index.php

And I get asked for: Mozilla's profile.ini ... but I can't find it

Where is it ... ?

I already got so far that PHPStorm started Chrome. But maybe I first sort this out. So how can I get Firefox up and running? I also use Firefox with Eclipse ... no questions asked for a profile.ini.

Answer 1

Okay, there are three things I'd like to share with you. It's not the full recipe but the key ingredients that were first confusing me are:

1. The important sections to configure are "Servers" and "PHP Remote Debugging".

2. To configure "PHP Remote Debugging" you have to first add a new dataset using the [+] in the top left corner. The panel you get from just clicking on the "PHP R D"-button just keeps the default settings!

3. Absolute path regarding the VM actually means the absolute path starting from root (\mnt\hgfs\sf\Symfony). This was confusing to me cause I am still not sure why PhpStorm cares about directory levels above the shared folder. but it does.

Answer 2

If you are still having problems, there are two blog posts by the makers on how to set things up correctly.

First should work in most cases and requires zero-configuration other than a working xdebug install

Second details all of the configuration settings in detail

Answer 3

To 'see' the profile.ini in the PHP Storm 'Select File' Dialog simply rightclick inside of it and choose 'Show hidden files' then (in WIn7) move to C:\Users\YOURUSERNAME\AppData\Roaming\Mozilla\Firefox or the equivalent in your OS