The following tutorial will help you get started using ColdFusion 9 Developer Edition on a Mac. I haven’t tested the installation process on Mac OS x Lion yet so I can’t guarantee it will work.
Necessity is the Mother of Invention
I used to work for a company that didn’t have a staging server for it’s web sites. They only had one working copy of each site and those were the live ones. This didn’t make my job easy. I was asked to work on very complex web applications that pulled in quite a bit of revenue for the company. We’re talking lifelines of the business. Any mistake made in the code could crash the whole site and lose the company mucho dinero. Fortunately for me, I work on a Mac which comes with Apache and PHP preinstalled. I had installed MySQL previously and I only needed to install one more thing before I had a perfect copy of the production server. Adobe ColdFusion 9.
ColdFusion is not free. You have to purchase a license if you want to install it on your production server. You can, however, download the Developer Edition of ColdFusion 9 and install it on your personal computer for free. Thank you, Adobe. Installing ColdFusion is pretty straightforward. Adobe provides an install wizard that walks you through the process but there are a few steps along the way that might lose you. The instructions below were the steps I followed to get ColdFusion 9 to work alongside my existing development web server on my computer.
What You’ll Need
- Mac OS X 10.5 or 10.6
- Adobe Account (free)
- Adobe ColdFusion 9 Developer Edition 64-bit (free)
- Web Sharing enabled in System Preferences
- 10 minutes
You’ll need to do a few things before we begin the installation process. In order to download the developer edition, you’ll need to create an Adobe Account. Once you’ve completed the signup process and have logged in, navigate to the ColdFusion downloads page. Find the drop down box labeled “Adobe ColdFusion 9 Developer Edition” and select “English | Mac OS X 64-bit | 406.4 MB”. See screenshot below.
The installation process should take no more than 10 minutes. And while you can get ColdFusion up and running on Tiger these instructions are specifically for mac users who are running Leopard or Snow Leopard. I believe Tiger users can follow these instructions using the 32-bit version of the ColdFusion Developer Edition. Leopard and Snow Leopard users will need to stick with the 64-bit version. Also, if you plan to run ColdFusion alongside the built in Apache web server you’ll need to enable web sharing. You can find this in System Preferences > Internet & Wireless > Sharing.
Installing ColdFusion 9 Developer Edition
Unzip the downloaded file and double-click the ColdFusion 9 Installer.
Click Next on the Introduction window.
Agree to the License Agreement
Choose ‘Server configuration’.
Click ‘No’ when it asks if ColdFusion 9 is currently installed on your computer.
The 64-bit version of ColdFusion uses a lot of RAM. I opted out of the ‘Start ColdFusion’ on system init’. I only want it to run when I need it to.
The default installation directory worked for me.
Select ‘No’ when it asks if there are earlier versions of ColdFusion installed. Unless, of course, there are.
For the next step, I chose ‘Configure web server connector for ColdFusion’. This will allow ColdFusion to work alongside the Apache web server if you’re using it.
This next step left me a little confused the first time I saw it in ColdFusion 7. It simply wants to know where the Apache directory is located. Type in ‘/etc/apache2′ in the Configuration Directory field and click ‘OK’.
Click Next on the Configure Web Servers/Websites window.
This next window just wants to know where your web server root is located. Basic setups will be located at /Users/your-name/Sites. I try to keep my development server setup as close to my production server as possible. My server root is located at /var/www.
If you are planning on working with OpenOffice in your application, check this box, or else keep it blank and click Next
Create an Administrator password. This is not your user account password for your computer. Click Next
I plan on being the only developer working on my machine. I left RDS unchecked. Click Next
Enter your computer password. This gives the installer permission to continue. Click Next
Look over the summary window to make sure all of your settings are correct. Click Install if everything looks good.
Almost there. We need to launch the ColdFusion Administrator site. Keep the checkbox at the bottom checked and click Done.
Log in using your ColdFusion password.
Don’t click Continue. I didn’t read all of the text the first couple of times of installing. I thought ‘Continue’ meant ‘Go to the next step’ and not ‘Stop me from finishing’. Just wait.
Setup Complete. Click OK.
Welcome to the ColdFusion Administrator!
Wrapping Up
Once you get to the ColdFusion Administrator, go ahead and bookmark it. You’ll be using it a lot.
I set my root at macHD/users/name/Sites… but when i go to 127.0.0.1/cfide/administrator/index.cfm I get a site not found. now when I go to 127.0.0.1 to goes to a a file locatded at mscHD/Library/webServer/documents but I do not have access to put files there
Any ideas?
You need to open up /etc/apache2/httpd.conf and change any instance of “mscHD/Library/webServer/documents” and change it to “macHD/users/name/Sites”. Then you need to restart Apache.
The problem is ColdFusion has set it’s root directory to “macHD/users/name/Sites” but because your system accesses the Apache server before the ColdFusion server – it’s going to send you to the root directory of Apache’s web server – which is set to “mscHD/Library/webServer/documents”
Hope this helps!
When I try to go to 127.0.0.1/test.html I get Safari can not find the server In the httpd.conf the path is “/Library/WebServer/Documents”"
Any suggestions, I can not even get to the CF install
Change “/Library/WebServer/Documents” to “/Users/yourname/Sites” in httpd.conf
Once you are able to access the default page at 127.0.0.1 then you can worry about the CF install but first you need to fix the default web server root location.
I was so happy to see your instructions that I thought that – after way too many hours trying to install CF9 on my brand new Mac Book Pro – that I was going to hit pay dirt this time.
I have installed CF on Windows server since CF5 and I am so glad that I finally got a Mac instead of a Windows box and now I can’t install CF on it for anything. Granted, my Mac abilities have gone down the tubes over the last 10 years but I can’t believe that it is so hard to install CF9 on Mac OS X Lion.
I’ll just say that I started with the highest hopes of installing MAMP Pro and CF9 in the multi-server configuration, and now about 30 hours later and no success, I’m just begging CF9 to work. I’ve been through every method I can find on the internet and I can’t install and get the CF Administrator. Right now I am getting what appears to be a binary page where I should see the CF Administrator to finish off the installation and setup. I’ve tried it a few times from scratch and gotten the same result each time.
I read your posts on HouseOfFusion and lead me here but I’m still out of luck. Your method looks the most direct and efficient so I was hoping this would do it. If you have any idea what this binary file business is about and how to fix it I would be most appreciative.
Thanks, Jerry
Jerry – When you say you’re getting a binary page does that mean your browser is downloading a file instead of loading one? If this is the case, you’ll have to check Apache’s httpd.conf file and make sure you add index.cfm as a DirectoryIndex option. Just search for DirectoryIndex and add index.cfm after index.html. This should get your browser to load the ColdFusion setup page.
Lehi,
Yes you are correct in that it was downloading a file instead of loading one. The browser was offering to save the “binary” file. I had experienced the same thing with MAMP and MAMP Pro installations that I had tried.
However, I went to your posting again on the HouseOfFusion.com site and went through all the tweaks that you made to httpd.conf and that did the trick.
Kind of amazing to me that I don’t see a rundown of configuration changes on Adobe.com that is as complete as yours – let alone anywhere else on the web.
I got it working late last night thanks to your directions.
Thanks greatly, Jerry