<IfDefine>Having completed the configuration portion of the RedHat ColdFusion Express configuration, you will be prompted to hit enter to finish the install. After doing so the process proceeds very quickly and you are typically presented with a screen suggesting you check the README file under the newly created /opt/coldfusion/webserver/apache directory, and if all goes well the script tells you that the ColdFusion servers have been started and that the install was successful.

One hurdle you might face however is that you will be informed that the necessary mod_coldfusion file could not be built due to the scripts inability to find the necessary apxs utility. This is where reading the aptly named README file pays off.

This file tells you that the software comes with a prebuilt module for Apache/ColdFusion interoperability but that it has only been tested for Apache versions 1.3.6 and 1.3.9. Even in instances where I've been informed the install succeeded, I've tried to use this prebuilt module and Apache 1.3.27 did not like it at all.

So regardless of having reached this point from a successful or unsuccessful install you will want to perform the following step. The difference is that if you were initially informed the install was NOT successful, after the following you will want to go back to running the cfinstall script and go through all the prompts again.

The README is a good starting point as to how re-build the so called mod_coldfusion.so file for use on other Apache 1.3.x versions. However, it leaves out what I've found to be the simplest solution.

You are already in /opt/coldfusion/webserver/apache reading the README (this is the same directory where the pre-built but useless mod_coldfusion.so file is). Just change into the src subdirectory and there resides the necessary apxs file, or in this case more specifically apxs.redhat.

From the shell prompt within the src directory, where you should additionally see a file named mod_coldfusion.c, all that is required is that you invoke the make script by issuing the aptly named command make. The README actually tells you to run make install, but doing this will again automatically try to configure your Apache configuration which we had previously decided to do manually. The output from from make install (which I know from previous attempts) does however inform you of a couple of other commands that need to be issued from the shell prompt:

cp mod_coldfusion.so /usr/lib/apache/mod_coldfusion.so chmod 755 /usr/lib/apache/mod_coldfusion.so

Now we are ready to set up Apache to use this file to deliver ColdFusion content, assuming you don't have to go back and run cfinstall again. Configuring Apache requires editing the file /etc/httpd/conf/httpd.conf with the editor of your choice. I've done this from a console so I've used VI, but if you are using a graphical desktop enviroment you can you use one of the available graphical text editors.

IMPORTANT: Backup your existing httpd.conf file particularly if you know that your Apache webserver is already running properly. Just copy it with a name such as httpd.conf.bak. Then if the changes below do not work for whatever reason, you can always copy your backup as the original httpd.conf file.

First you will want to find a series of lines within httpd.conf. that begin with the LoadModule directive, perhaps within <IfDefine> tags. At the bottom of the existing entries insert the following:

LoadModule coldfusion_module modules/mod_coldfusion.so

Note this is somewhat different than the instructions in the README which instead refer to libexec/mod_coldfusion.so. Though this could indeed be appropriate depending on your Apache configuration.

Also note that if you allowed ColdFusion to automatically configure Apache, the LoadModule/coldfusion_module line may have got put in the wrong place. The one time I tried this it got put inside one of the <IfDefine> blocks for another module that did not exist, therefore ColdFusion did not run because the condition IfDefine returned false. If you encounter this, cut the LoadModule/coldfusion_module line out and paste it at the bottom of the series of LoadModule entries, WITHOUT any surrounding <IfDefine> tags.