Setting up Apache, OpenBD, Railo, and ColdFusion – Part 1

This is Part 1 of a muilt-part blog post demonstrating how run OpenBlueDragon, Railo, and ColdFusion all on the same machine, and all using the Apache webserver with individual Virtual hosts using different CFML engines.  But, before we get into it, here is a little background.

For the past several months now I have stepped over to Windows on my laptop after years of not using it regularly.  It was actually the first time I had actually used Vista, actually and was quite an interesting experience.  First, as much as I love the Linux environment, I really expected to loathe being in Windows daily.  I was surprised at how much Vista *didn’t* suck.  With all the raging passion against it in general I suppose that I had low expectations, but nevertheless I really thought it was pretty decent in general.  However it has a more sluggish, constricting feel to it in comparison to Linux, so I have decided I have paid my dues and it is time to go back to using an OS that is truly fun to use, rather than one that just wasn’t as crappy as I thought it would be.

After lots of experimentation with various flavors, hands-down Ubuntu is the most painless and most comfortable Linux distros for me personally.  My reasoning for that is vast and probably belongs in another blog entry, so I will attempt to keep from straying any further off the topic!  That said, last night I decided to try gOS which is a really neat distro built off of Ubuntu.  Although the UI is Gnome based, it has more of a Max 10.5.x feel to it.  I think Mac folks would feel right at home taking this environment for a spin.

Immediately after the first boot of my shiny new OS I started trying to put my development environment back together.  I decided that I wanted to have ColdFusion, Railo, and OpenBD all on from the beginning, with all requests first passing through Apache httpd.  Quite some time ago, Aaron Lynch put together some steps to install Smith Project w/Tomcat/Apache, which we have used several times since, primarily setting up Railo. I am not sure I ever would have waded my way through it without his early experimentation and documentation.  On this iteration, I loosely followed those instructions, opting for several packages from the repos, and updated versions of software, and have documented my steps as the are somewhat different in areas. For my current environment, I first installed OpenBD.  I then followed this by installing ColdFusion and setting it up to user the default JRUN connector that is set up during the installation.  Lastly, I installed Railo as another webapp in Tomcat and tied that into Apache as well.

In the following posts, you will see these steps in detail.