Installing Alfresco on OSX – quick and dirty

Note: These are terrible instructions – no security or any set up in regards to
making upgrades easy. But this gets you up and running fast.

  1. Prerequisites: JDK 5.x, MySQL 5.x
  2. First, insure there is no pre-existing alfresco database

    $ mysql -u root -p <ENTER> <ENTER>
    mysql> drop database alfresco;
    mysql> exit
    $ sudo /Library/StartupItems/MySQLCOM/MySQLCOM stop {Enter OSX admin password} <ENTER>
    $ sudo /Library/StartupItems/MySQLCOM/MySQLCOM start
  3. Create the directory you are going to install alfresco into

    $ mkdir /opt/alfresco
  4. Download and extract Alfresco-Community-3.2-MacOSXInstall.tar.gz from Alfresco

    $ tar xvf Alfresco-Community-3.2-MacOSXInstall.tar.gz 
  5. Run the installer

    $ ./Alfresco-Community-3.2-MacOSXInstall
  6. Choose defaults until destination folder. Override that and select /opt/alfresco
  7. When dialog asks for root password, leave blank, it is referring to MySQL
    root password. When you click Next it will inform you that database
    creation was successful.
  8. After finishing, using terminal cd to the directory Alfresco was installed into:

    $ cd /opt/alfresco
  9. Fire it up:

    $ ./alf_start.sh start
  10. Fire up the virtual server

    $./virtual_start.sh
  11. First time start up can take up to 5 minutes. Give it time. Refresh
    http://localhost:8080/alfresco/ every minute or so and then you should get the
    default dashboard. Username/password admin/admin.
  12. When finished, shut ‘er down.

    $ ./alf_stop.sh
  13. The virtual server too

    $./virtual_stop.sh