Posted on September 4, 2009 - by J Lane
ColdFusion 8 on Snow Leopard
Seems like every time Apple does an update, ColdFusion breaks. Usually it’s some problem with Java, this time it looks like Apple running 64 bit Apache under Snow Leopard. That’s not new though, Leopard also ran 64 bit Apache that cause a few pains on install (you’d think the 64 bit ColdFusion installer would do the trick, but sadly it fails early in the install).
The trick that worked for me:
- Uninstall/re-install 32 bit ColdFusion (it’s probably not necessary, but I wanted to make sure that nothing else got messed up during the Leopard -> Snow Leopard upgrade).
- I installed as standalone, multi-server should be fine too.
- I didn’t configure the Apache connector during the install, I just told Coldfusion to use the built-in server.
- After the install finished, and I verified Coldfusion was working, I popped open a terminal and went to: cd /Applications/ColdFusion8/bin/connectors/
- (Again in Terminal): sudo nano apache_connector.sh (you’ll have to enter your password)
- Change the line that starts with -dir to /etc/apache2, the line that starts with -bin to /usr/sbin/httpd and the line that starts with -script to /usr/sbin/apachectl
- Press “Control-O” (that’s oh) and “Control-X” to save the file and exit the editor.
- Type: sudo ./apache_connector.sh
- It’ll report that everything went smoothly. If you try to access http://localhost/, you’ll notice that Apache isn’t running though. Grab the recompiled connector from Scott Pinkston’s article on ColdFusion 8 with Apache on Leopard (thanks Scott!)
- It’ll download and unzip. In your terminal window, type cd /Applications/ColdFusion8/runtime/lib/wsconfig/1
- Type sudo cp (and the drag the .so file from your Downloads folder onto your terminal window) and type ./
- For good measure, type sudo apachectl graceful.
Yup, a 12 step program to get ColdFusion running on Snow Leopard. Maybe someday Adobe will just be able to make an installer that works properly.
Update: As was noted in one of the comments, images aren’t showing up properly in the CF Admin. For me, the problem seemed to be that Apache didn’t think my web root for http://localhost/ was actually /Library/WebServer/Documents/, but that’s unlikely to be the case for you. To “clean up” the install I did a couple of additional things (listed here separately so as not to ruin my great “12 step” joke above – har dee har har).
- In the Terminal, type sudo pico /etc/apache2/httpd.conf and look for the like that reads:
DirectoryIndex index.html
Change it to read:DirectoryIndex index.html index.cfm- Also in Terminal, type “sudo chown -R _www:_www /Applications/ColdFusion8/wwwroot/CFIDE/”. That will set the ownership of the CFIDE directory to _www, which is the user Apache runs under. That should fix any permissions problems you’re having (if not, drop a comment!).
- Give Apache a “sudo apachectl graceful” once this so that Apache picks up the config change from step 1.
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September 11, 2009
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Andy Roberts said:
My scenario is slightly different. I’m on 10.6 Server and I desperately need to get CF 8 to work on it. Am willing to pay for help… really. When I get to step 10, terminal replies that no such file exists even though I can go there in the finder and see it. Is the .so file (the recompiled connector) supposed to be in the same directory as wsconfig or what is the functional thing that needs to happen in Step 11. I thought I’d successfullt done it at one point, but my CF pages keep coming up as code and unprocessed. The CF Administrator is working fine though. Thanks.
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September 11, 2009
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J Lane said:
Hi Andy,
Unfortunately I don’t have acces to 10.6 server to be able to work through it. I have worked it on 10.5 server before though, it shouldn’t be too much trouble.
1. You said the CF Admin is working, but any other pages are coming back as code. Is that right, or did I mis-read it? Are you accessing the admin through a different port (8500) or just at /cfide/administrator?
2. The .so file is the one you downloaded. You need to copy it over into the “1″ directory (that file is the Apache connector)
I’ll try to help you through the rest of the install.
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September 11, 2009
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Andy Roberts said:
1. The Admin was on port 9010 and worked great. But when I tried to bring up my own pages, it was pure unprocessed code with cfoutputs, etc.
2. In my set up, there isn’t a “1″ directory… mine looks like this:
/Applications/ColdFusion8/runtime/lib/wsconfig.jar
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September 11, 2009
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J Lane said:
Did you run the “apache_connector.sh” script first? (just notice I had a typo in that command, fixed it). It should create a wsconfig/1/ directory structure with the proper permissions.
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September 11, 2009
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Jefz Lim said:
That was a great piece of step-by-step instruction for a Mac newbie like me
I’ve managed to installed CF8 on apache for my new Snow Leopard MBP. However, I wonder why all the images link appeared as broken in the CF Administrator screens. Checked all image links and the images are sitting well within the CFIDE/administrator folder – not a big concern but would look less irritating.
Cheers.
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September 11, 2009
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J Lane said:
As far as I can figure, it’s a permissions issue. The virtual mapping is there.
I’ll experiment a bit and see if I can figure it out.
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September 11, 2009
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Andy Roberts said:
I’ll do that tonight. I’m at work and away from my server. Thanks Jonathan.
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September 22, 2009
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Rob said:
You are a lifesaver! Ever since the upgrade I had been trying to get this to work, and eventually gave up and built a VMware instance of Ubuntu that I could run it on. That was killing my available memory, I’m so glad to have CF8 back on OS X.
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September 30, 2009
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J Lane said:
Just for posterity:
I just did a clean install of Snow Leopard and re-installed ColdFusion 8 from scratch. The only additional step to the ones listed above was that I created a symbolic link to the CFIDE directory in the web root:
1. cd /Library/WebServer/Documents
2. sudo ln -s /Applications/ColdFusion8/wwwroot/CFIDE/ CFIDE