In this short tutorial you will learn:
- How to install Tomcat on the Mac OS-X
- How to add DimensioneX into Tomcat so that you have a multiplayer game server up and running
Installing Tomcat
Open Terminal first and type
java -version
The prerequisite is to have at least Java 1.6.0 installed so if you get an error here or you have an old version installed, you need to get and install Java from Oracle’s Java Download page (Java SE 7 is recommended).
Download the so-called binary distribution (that is, ready to run) of Tomcat, the core module. What you need is a file named something like apache-tomcat-7.0.**.tar.gz which should be available here. Look under Binary Distributions -> Core
Update (2023): it seems that only Tomcat 8 is available from here.
Unpack this archive by double-clicking it. You should have now a folder (mine was named apache-tomcat-7.0.55/ )
Back to the Terminal window, rename this folder to simply “tomcat” then move it inside the /usr/local/ folder of your mac, creating it if it not exists. Here is a sample command sequence to do this (adapt to your own case):
sudo mkdir -p /usr/local
sudo cd ~/Downloads/
sudo mv apache-tomcat-7.0.55 tomcat
sudo mv tomcat /usr/local
Now let’s make all the scripts executable:
cd /usr/local/tomcat/binsudo chmod +x *.sh
Starting Up Tomcat
Do it first from the Terminal window:
/usr/local/tomcat/bin/startup.sh
then open your browser at http://localhost:8080/ – it should look as follows (see figure)
Hooray!
You can shut down Tomcat with:
/usr/local/tomcat/bin/shutdown.sh
In order to make life easier, however, I recommend to download and use this little free utility Tomcat Controller, so that you can start/stop from a nice interface and even change the path to Tomcat should you update it.
Just access its Preferences menu to set correct paths.
Installing DimensioneX
Download from our Download page the WAR version of DimensioneX. You will get a ZIP file which, again, you will unpack by double-clicking. You have now got a dimx.war file (war is the short for WebARchive) which is ready to install on your Tomcat.
For this, we need to gain access to Tomcat’s builtin “manager” application.
Therefore, open Terminal and type:
cd /usr/local/tomcat/confsudo nano tomcat-users.xml
Copy-paste (or move, because they should be already in the file) the following text lines outside of the <!– –> comments delimiters, othewise they will be ignored.
<role rolename=”manager-gui”/> <user username=”tomcat” password=”s3cret” roles=”manager-gui”/>
please customize the “s3cret” string with a password of your choice, using the default password may leave your Tomcat server open to external access control, which of course you want to avoid.
Type CTRL-X to exit and then Y for Yes to confirm the file save.
Now it’s time to open again your browser at
http://localhost:8080/manager/html/
After entering your tomcat manager credentials:
user: tomcat
password: s3cret (or better the password you’ve just chosen)
you are now at the Tomcat’s manager screen. Scroll down to the Deploy section, then click Browse button and select the dimx.war file you have just unpacked some minute ago.
click Deploy
Verify that now dimx is in the applications list and, what’s more important, that you can access your brand new DimensioneX multiplayer game server at:
http://localhost:8080/dimx/
Have a nice play at our demo games… this tutorial is over!
Credits
Thanks Wolf Paulus for his tutorial on the topic http://wolfpaulus.com/jounal/mac/tomcat7/