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I hope these notes are of use to someone out there.

THE ENVIRONMENT

The following assumes you have Java already installed - it should be Java is installed by default on every MacOS X installation. Note that MacOS X 10.2 (Jaguar) comes with Java 1.3; MacOS X 10.3 (Panther) comes with Java 1.4. MacOS X 10.4 (Tiger) comes with Java 1.4.2 installed, but Java 1.5 can be downloaded. MacOS X 10.5 (Leopard) comes with Java 1.5. MacOS X 10.5 (Snow Leopard) comes with Java 1.6. It is possible to run Java 1.4 on MacOS X Jaguar but it may interfere with operation of the standard environment.

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Macintosh HD > Library > Tomcat > <extracted files>

Step 3: Configure JAVA_HOME

We then need to set the JAVA_HOME environment variable - this is almost the same as setting the Windows XP environment variable.

Doing this is easiest and best done with additional software to assist in setting the environment variables.

Recommended software is the preference pane RCEnvironment (http://www.rubicode.com/Software/RCEnvironment/)

Copy the RCEnvironment Preference Pane to Macintosh HD > Library > Preference Panes.

Go to System Preferences and click on Environment Variables.

The environment variable JAVA_HOME should be defined as /Library/Java/Home.

To do this, in the left hand column enter JAVA_HOME and in the right hand column enter /Library/Java/Home. Click Apply.

Step 4: Configure tomcat-users.xml

tomcat-users.xml

Open the /Library/Tomcat/conf/tomcat-usersOpen the /Library/Tomcat/conf/tomcat-users.xml file with a plain text editor. The default Tomcat installation only has the basic roles and users set up.

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In this case a role, a user and password have been set up with the name tomcat. You can change this later.

Step 5: Reboot

Reboot (or login again, at least). This sets up the environment and cleans out any extras you still have running. It sets up JAVA_HOME as well.

Step 6: 4: Start Tomcat

To start Tomcat, open a shell command prompt (using, for instance, the Terminal application).

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Any file in this directory ending in .sh can be executed in the terminal by putting a period and a slash before the file name (eg: startup.sh). The following example executes the tomcat startup script:

./startup.sh && tail -f ../logs/catalina.out

Terminal should display four lines looking something like this:

Using CATALINA_BASE:   /library/tomcat
Using CATALINA_HOME:   /library/tomcat
Using CATALINA_TMPDIR: /library/tomcat/temp
Using JAVA_HOME:       /Library/Java/Home
Users-Computer:/library/tomcat/bin user$ 

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There are some notes and a couple of Preference Panes for automating the starting and stopping of Tomcat. After trying them all on five different computers - this is the simplest!

Step 75: Test installation Open a browser window, and enter http://127.0.0.1:8080 - the default Tomcat page should open.

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• But I did need to fix vital file permissions in the downloaded Tomcat folder.

Also Updated in 2010

By Pid: I removed some of the original statements about setting JAVA_HOME as they did not match my experience of installing Tomcat on OS X. It's also certainly overkill to install an application just to be able to set an environment variable.

(1) Upgrade to Mac OS X 10.4.6

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