How to install Hudson as a service on OS X?

Question

Running hudson it is easy but currently the documentation is missing the tutorial for installing an running hudson as a daemon/service on OS X.

When you switch to p

Answer 1

The tiny solution I had (which also starts at login) was this: First run hudson manually once (so it builds it's .hudson dir). create a hudson.command file somewhere on your machine in OSX with content a little like this:

nohup java -jar .hudson/hudson.war --httpPort=8080 &

Then, open up system preferences, select your user, and then Login Items. Click the "+" button, and you'll be able to select the command with finder.

Next time you log in, hudson will have started.

Disadvantages:

• Hudson has no specific user - it's just you
• hudson is on port 8080
• Hudson restarts mean finding the process, killing it and starting the hudson.command file again.
• Hudson starts only once a user has logged in.

Answer 2

The correct solution is to install hudson inside tomcat and make tomcat run as daemon

This will also meet the security requirements and allow you to upgrade hudson with ease.

Here is the full guide for OS X 10.6: https://serverfault.com/questions/183496/full-guide-for-installing-tomcat-on-os-x/183527#183527

Answer 3

If you want a local Hudson to run on your Mac whenever you log in, try this.

You'll want to set up a launchctl plist for it; that should look something like this:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<!DOCTYPE plist PUBLIC "-//Apple//DTD PLIST 1.0//EN" "http://www.apple.com/DTDs/PropertyList-1.0.dtd">
<plist version="1.0">
<dict>
 <key>UserName</key>
 <string>yourid</string>
 <key>Label</key>
 <string>Hudson</string>
 <key>EnvironmentVariables</key>
   <dict>
     <key>HUDSON_HOME</key>
     <string>/Users/yourid/.hudson</string>
   </dict>
 <key>ProgramArguments</key>
 <array>
 <string>/usr/bin/java</string>
 <string>-jar</string>
 <string>/Users/yourid/Hudson/hudson.war</string>
 </array>
 <key>RunAtLoad</key>
 <true/>
</dict>
</plist>

This assumes you've downloaded hudson.war to your home directory under ~/Hudson, and that you want to run it as yourself (probably the best decisions.) Be sure that you define the <UserName> key or it will run as root!

Starting on login

1. Save the above as /Library/LaunchAgents/hudson.plist

2. Start it the first time with

   sudo launchctl load -w /Library/LaunchAgents/hudson.plist

or log out and back in, which will do the same thing automatically.

Starting on reboot

1. Save the above as /Library/LaunchDaemons/hudson.plist

2. Start it the first time with

   sudo launchctl load -w /Library/LaunchDaemons/hudson.plist

or reboot your machine, which will do the same thing automatically.

Restarting Hudson

Hudson can't automatically restart under OS X, so if you need to stop it, issue the restart command

launchctl unload -w path_to_plist

I have found that sometimes it doesn't stop on the first execution of launchctl unload; in those cases just issue the command again.

This will run under port 8080 as if you had run the command from the command line yourself, using the Winstone server built in to the .war file.

I realize this doesn't specifically answer the "run it on port 80" question, but for development on your own laptop, I suggest that this is a better option.