Start Apache Tomcat at boot on Mac OS X

StartTomcat.txt

This is for installing tomcat as a daemon on port 8080 but enable also port 80 by using a firewall redirection. 

Edit /Library/Tomcat/conf/server.xml and add proxyport="80" URIEncoding="UTF-8" inside <Connector .../>.
    
     <Connector proxyport="80" URIEncoding="UTF-8" />
     
Assign enough memory to the Java machine or you may be in trouble later. Inside /Library/Tomcat/conf/local.env
    
      export JAVA_JVM_VERSION=CurrentJDK
      export JAVA_OPTS="-Xmx3000M -Xms3000M -Djava.awt.headless=true -Duser.timezone=UTC"
      
In my example I allocated ~3Gb or RAM but you can adapt this, anyway don't put less than 1GB if you are running hudson inside tomcat.

Running as a service

Run sudo nano /Library/LaunchDaemons/org.apache.tomcat.plist and paste the code below:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<!DOCTYPE plist PUBLIC "-//Apple Computer//DTD PLIST 1.0//EN"     "http://www.apple.com/DTDs/PropertyList-1.0.dtd">
<plist version="1.0">
<dict>
    <key>Disabled</key>
    <false/>
    <key>Label</key>
    <string>org.apache.tomcat</string>
    <key>ProgramArguments</key>
    <array>
            <string>/Library/Tomcat/bin/catalina.sh</string>
            <string>run</string>
    </array>
    <key>RunAtLoad</key>
    <true/>
</dict>
</plist>

Check that launchd detected you new daemon, if not reboot :(

         launchctl list|grep tomcat

Start tomcat manually.

        launchctl start org.apache.tomcat
        
If the status is something else than -, you have a problem and you should investigate it: launchctl log level debug and check /var/log/system.log.