Tomcat – How to start Apache Tomcat at boot on Mac OS X

mac-osxtomcat

I observed that there is no full guide for installing tomcat on OS X that will include setting it up to start at boot time.

Here is the quick guide:

  • install macports
    • suport port upgrade
    • sudo port upgrade outdated.
  • sudo port install tomcat6, or if you want other version check port list|grep tomcat
  • config is now at: /opt/local/share/java/tomcat6/conf

  • startup script: /opt/local/share/java/tomcat6/bin/tomcatctl

    cp /opt/local/share/java/tomcat6/conf/tomcat-users.xml.sample /opt/local/share/java/tomcat6/conf/tomcat-users.xml
    nano /opt/local/share/java/tomcat6/conf/tomcat-users.xml

  • … check article

But I'm missing the part on how to make it run as true service/daemon: at system startup and optionally to make it restart if it does crash.

Best Answer

This is for installing tomcat as a daemon on port 8080 but enable also port 80 by using a firewall redirection. It was tested on Mac OS 10.6 but should work also with 10.5.

Edit /opt/local/share/java/tomcat6/conf/server.xml and add proxyport="80" URIEncoding="UTF-8" inside <Connector .../>.

For forwarding port 80 to 8080 run this line and add it do /bin/catalina.sh:

sudo ipfw add 100 fwd 127.0.0.1,8080 tcp from any to any 80 in

Assign enough memory to the Java machine or you may be in trouble later. Inside /opt/local/share/java/tomcat6/conf/local.env

export JAVA_JVM_VERSION=CurrentJDK
export JAVA_OPTS="-Xmx3000M -Xms3000M -Djava.awt.headless=true -Duser.timezone=UTC"

In my example I allocated ~3Gb or RAM but you can adapt this, anyway don't put less than 1GB if you are running hudson inside tomcat.

Running as a service

Run nano /Library/LaunchDaemons/org.apache.tomcat.plist and paste the code below:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<!DOCTYPE plist PUBLIC "-//Apple Computer//DTD PLIST 1.0//EN"     "http://www.apple.com/DTDs/PropertyList-1.0.dtd">
<plist version="1.0">
<dict>
    <key>Disabled</key>
    <false/>
    <key>Label</key>
    <string>org.apache.tomcat</string>
    <key>ProgramArguments</key>
    <array>
            <string>/opt/local/share/java/tomcat6/bin/catalina.sh</string>
            <string>run</string>
    </array>
    <key>RunAtLoad</key>
    <true/>
</dict>
</plist>

Check that launchd detected you new daemon, if not reboot :(

launchctl list|grep tomcat

Start tomcat manually.

launchctl start org.apache.tomcat

If the status is something else than -, you have a problem and you should investigate it: launchctl log level debug and check /var/log/system.log.

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