MIRC Installation on Macintosh

There have been two main versions of MIRC (which is now called TFS). The newer version, described in the MIRC article, runs as a plugin to an embedded servlet container in the CTP application. The older version, now deprecated, runs on Tomcat, a servlet container deveeloped by the Apache project. This article isintended for administrators installing either version on a Macintosh. Both versions are currently running on Macintosh computers in multiple institutions, but the MIRC development team does not have Macintosh computers on which to test the installation process.

The only caveat for running either version on Mascintosh computers is that MIRC depends on the Java Advanced Imaging ImageIO Tools for parsing images, and since the native extensions of the ImageIO Tools are not available for the Macintosh, some compressed image formats may not be supported. There is no definitive documentation on which formats (if any) are not supported on the Mac. So far, nobody has complained, but if you notice problems with certain formats, that may be the reason. If you suspect a problem in this area, please notify the MIRC developers. For a little more information on the ImageIO Tools, see the Java Advanced Imaging ImageIO Tools article.

1 Running CTP/MIRC on Macintosh

The installation instructions in the MIRC article apply to Macintosh installations. Since there is no Macintosh installer for the ImageIO Tools, however, see the notes below for instructions on how to obtain, unpack, and install them.

2 Running Tomcat/MIRC on Macintosh

These instructions for installing the Tomcat/MIRC site software on Mac OSX have been contributed by Mac users J. Kevin Smith and Allison Zwingenberger.

Java

Verify that your system has Java 5.5 installed.

Java is located on the Macintosh hard drive in:

/system/library/frameworks/JavaVM.framework/versions

If you need to update to 5.5, use the autoupdater in:

system/preferences/autoupdate

JAI ImageIO

Download the Java Advanced Imaging ImageIO Tools from:

http://download.java.net/media/jai-imageio/builds/release/1_0_01/jai_imageio-1_0_01-lib-linux-i586.tar.gz

Unpack and place the files from the lib folder into /System/Library/Java/Extensions

Tomcat

Download the Tomcat 5.5 installer from http://tomcat.apache.org.

Run the installer and put Tomcat in username/.

Catalina.sh

Open /username/apache-tomcat-5.5.15/bin/catalina.sh in a text editor.

Paste the two lines below into the file just after the instruction section and then save the file.

JAVA_OPTS='-Xms256m -Xmx512m'
JAVA_HOME=/System/Library/Frameworks/JavaVM.framework/Versions/1.5/Home

Start Tomcat.

Go to applications/utilities/terminal.

Enter:

cd ~/apache-tomcat-5.5.17/bin
./startup.sh 

Test Tomcat

Open a web browser and enter http://127.0.0.1:8080.

If the Tomcat logo is displayed, Tomcat is running.

Stop Tomcat

Go to applications/utilities/terminal.

Enter:

cd ~/apache-tomcat-5.5.17/bin
./shutdown.sh

More information on Tomcat and Macintosh is available on the Apache wiki:

http://wiki.apache.org/tomcat/TomcatOnMacOS

MIRC

Download and run the MIRC site installer.

Adobe SVG

To be able to annotate images, client machines must have an SVG viewer installed.

Firefox now has a native SVG viewer, so nothing else is required.

Problems have been reported using the Adobe SVG viewer with Safari.