This post is a followup to my previous guide to installing ColdFusion 9 on Ubuntu. While that post was all about the specifics to getting ColdFusion up and running on Ubuntu, this post is all about CentOS. The overall process is the same and I'm covering all the same steps, but the commands in this post are specific to the CentOS operating system. So why I'm writing this?
Overall, installing ColdFusion isn't that big of a deal. But I've yet to see a guide or blog post that outlines all the other topics related to getting a decent ColdFusion server on CentOS up and running. That's why I wrote this super guide, to outline what I believe is important to know about installing ColdFusion. Of course, I'm not covering every single possible detail, but I believe I've hit on all the major topics. Along the way I sprinkle in my own ideas, thoughts, and what I believe are best practices. After you read this post and walk through all the instructions you should have a very solid ColdFusion / Apache set up on CentOS Linux.
There are two important things to note, so please read on.
Everything you will read, all paths, and every setup aspect is written specifically for CentOS. I've tested these instructions on CentOS 5.5, but they should be applicable to other recent versions. If you need instructions for Ubuntu, please read that guide here.
Secondly, and this is extremely important, all commands throughout this post are assumed to be run as root. Some of the commands can be run without root, but most of them cannot. So please, log into your CentOS server using the root account, put sudo in front of every command, or run the su - root command (under a non-root account) before walking through the instructions.
Before we get going, here's a list of what I'll be covering:
- Creating a Linux user for ColdFusion
- Disabling SSH and FTP login for the coldfusion user account
- Installing the required libstdc++.so.5 C++ Library
- Running the ColdFusion installer
- Starting ColdFusion for the first time
- Installing the ColdFusion 9.0.1 updater
- Verifying the installation of 9.0.1
- Creating a new ColdFusion instance for general use
- Tweaking the JVM memory settings
- Hooking Apache and ColdFusion together
- Getting the Apache Connector running with selinux
- Locking down Apache
- Configuring ColdFusion to start on system boot
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