Configure JIRA as service on Mac OS X

If you want to run JIRA as a server on OSX, you will need to configure it to load as a userdaemon. OSX has migrated configuration scripts from services such as cron, rc, or init.d to the launchd utility. There are some good introductory and in-depth explanations of it's function on the web. You can find out more about launchd here:

http://developer.apple.com/macosx/launchd.html

It's easier to use Lingon (http://lingon.sourceforge.net/) to define your plist xml definitions for import into launchd; although because launchd does not permit forking of processes you will need to call $TOMCAT_HOME/bin/catalina.sh directly.

<?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>Label</key>
         <string>com.atlassian.jira</string>
         <key>ProgramArguments</key>
         <array>

<string>/usr/local/apache-tomcat-5.5.23/bin/catalina.sh</string>
                 <string>run</string>
         </array>
         <key>RunAtLoad</key>
         <true/>
         <key>ServiceDescription</key>
         <string>JIRA autoloaded as a service</string>
         <key>UserName</key>
         <string>pw</string>
</dict>
</plist>

I'd advise adding the <UserName> tag to tell OSX which user to run Tomcat under, eg running Tomcat under root is not recommended. JAVA_HOME will be inherited as an environment variable for whichever user you define in the XML definition - so configure it for that user's .profile in their home directory.

If you wanted to run JIRA as a WAR web-archive, and use OSX's factory install of Tomcat, please see the JIRA WAR installation instructions.