Comments on: ColdFusion MX on FreeBSD - It Works!

By: Andy

Andy — Wed, 05 Dec 2007 19:29:31 +0000

Very old article but one of the few I found for installing CF on FreeBSD.

After several days of research and trial & error I now have CFMX7 running on FreeBSD 6.2 with the internal webserver. I will put a tutorial online once it’s working with the Apache connector!

By: AbsoluteGorilla

AbsoluteGorilla — Tue, 30 Nov 1999 00:00:00 +0000

I’m trying to get cfmx running on freebsd and so far have failed
miserably.

Do you happen to have any of your steps documented?

By: zam4ever

zam4ever — Tue, 30 Nov 1999 00:00:00 +0000

Brandon, I have tried several times to install and compile with this OS but it end with failure. Do you have the tutorial how to install it?

cheers

-zam4ever-

By: Brandon Harper

Brandon Harper — Tue, 30 Nov 1999 00:00:00 +0000

I just downloaded the ISO for FreeBSD 5.2-RELEASE– once I’m done with what is left to do on this website, it’s what I’ll be working on next (documenting the install of CFMX on FreeBSD that is).

By: Heath Provost

Heath Provost — Tue, 30 Nov 1999 00:00:00 +0000

I just completed the process of getting CFMX6.1 running on top of FreeBSD 5.2 RELEASE/Tomcat 5. Ive only been up for a few hours, but so far everything looks pretty good. It isnt exactly an easy process, but it is doable. Notes to follow shortly.

By: Heath Provost

Heath Provost — Tue, 30 Nov 1999 00:00:00 +0000

Ok, these are the basic steps I took.

1. Install FreeBSD 5.2 RELEASE. This procedure may also work on 4.9 or other recent 5.x releases, but I have not tested. You do NOT have to install X but you do need all the binaries and src and stuff.

2. Follow the normal procedure of cvsuping a fresh ports tree (if you do not know how to do this you are in over your head).

3. Now you need to build a native Java jdk. I used the port of jdk1.4.2 and it seems to be working great. Installing the port at this point is not fun, but it can be done if you are patient. just go to /usr/ports/java/jdk1.4.2 and type “make”. You will be told you need to get additional files and where to get them and how… Just keep doing this (rinse and repeat) until you have all the required stuff. You primarily need these 4 files in your distfiles folder:

j2sdk-1_4_2_03-linux-i586.bin (linux jdk, for bootstrapping)
j2sdk-1_4_2-bin-scsl.zip (sun community licensed binaries for jdk)
j2sdk-1_4_2-src-scsl.zip (sun community licensed src for jdk)
bsd-jdk14-patches-6.tar.gz (the freebsd native jdk patchset)

All the rest of the stuff will be auto-fetched during make.

By: Heath Provost

Heath Provost — Tue, 30 Nov 1999 00:00:00 +0000

4. If you follow my approach to this, eventually in the process of repeatedly running make you will eventually get everything you need, but the build will hang at the point where you start bootstraping using the Linux jdk. This is because the linuxprocfs is not mounted properly (I would guess that if you were to make sure all dependancies were resolved prior to running make the first time it would work, but that is just a guess). Anyway, it is easy to fix. Just kill -9 the java process you see hung in ps and restart make again, it will tell you the exact commands needed to mount linuxprocfs. Once you do that, just run make again and the build should complete ok. It takes a LONG time though, be warned.

5. Once your native jdk is up and running, you can deinstall the linux jdk by going to /usr/ports/java/linux-sun-jdk14 and doing a “make deinstall”. At this point you should have a working native java jdk. Test by doing

/usr/local/jdk1.4.2/bin/java -version

If no errors are reported you should be good to go.

By: Heath Provost

Heath Provost — Tue, 30 Nov 1999 00:00:00 +0000

6. Install Tomcat 5 from the ports tree. There isnt much to tell about this, a simple make, make install did it for me. I did, however, have to make a change to the rc.d script to get it to work right. You can find the needed change here:

http://mofon.pns.to/memo/m200312080.html

By: Heath Provost

Heath Provost — Tue, 30 Nov 1999 00:00:00 +0000

7. At this point it is just a matter of getting and installing CFMX. You will want to use the downloadable version from macromedia’s site that is marked for use on OSX, it is a .jar file. Once you have the file, just follow the instructions here:

http://www.macromedia.com/supp.....omcat.html

Use the instructions for tomcat. The basic process is pretty much identical as for OSX. Once you do all this stuff you should be good to go. Just try loading the CF administrator and start testing. I personally am using Postgresql for my database engine, but Mysql may be a better choice for most people because CF has direct support for it. As usual, your miliege may vary.

By: Brandon Harper

Brandon Harper — Tue, 30 Nov 1999 00:00:00 +0000

Thanks for posting that Heath– that’s essentially how I got it to work. It’s really pretty simple if you have any FreeBSD experience. I just have some rough notes still from the original install I did this last summer, and I haven’t got around to doing a repeat install yet. I guess that full-time job and full-time school thing sort of creeps into my available free time.