Forum: Installation

Post: Installation on OS X 10.5 Issues

Installation on OS X 10.5 Issues
Mar 29, 2010
While OS X 10.6 (with the developer tools installed) should have all of the things needed to run VoltDB pre-installed, getting VoltDB running on 10.5 can be a little tricky.

VoltDB has some fundamental requirements. First, it's 64-bit only. Second, it needs Java 1.6 (64-bit). I'm not 100% sure if you need the developer tools installed to write Java stored procedures for VoltDB; all of my machines have the tools installed.

How to tell if you have a 64-bit mac? If it's intel-based and it's anything but a "Core Duo" or "Core Solo", you're probably good. "Core 2" chips are all 64-bit friendly. Note, OS X 10.5 uses a 32-bit kernel that can still run 64-bit software if the chip is capable.

Java 1.6 is a bit trickier. The default is Java 1.5 32-bit, so you'll need to run software update to get the 64-bit 1.6 version. This will only be an option if you have a 64-bit mac too. If you don't see the update, but you know you have a 64-bit mac, make sure you've installed all of the OS updates as well.

Once Java 1.6 64-bit is installed, you need to make sure VoltDB is using it. Simply installing the new Java will not make it the default Java. There are many ways to do this and if you do a lot of Java development, you probably have a particular way in mind. I'll tell you what I did; just know it's one of many solutions.

First, I ran "/Applications/Utilities/Java Preferences" and moved "Java SE 6 64-bit" to the top of the "Java Applications" list.

Second I changed the symlink at "/System/Library/Frameworks/JavaVM.framework/CurrentJDK" to point to "/System/Library/Frameworks/JavaVM.framework/Versions/1.6.0". This should make 1.6 the default in all those hard to reach places that "Java Preferences" misses. I think you can get the same effect by setting "JAVA_HOME" in a profile script, but this is how I'm doing it.

So now if you run "java -version" from a terminal, you should see the 1.6 version notice.


*** Note: The current versions of VoltDB are really only qualified to be deployed on Sun's JDK 1.6 update 18, and even then with some specific options. We provide mac builds for testing and procedure development, not for production.