Setting up Dispatcher on Mac OS X

Setting up a dispatcher is one of the most common things we do in AEM projects. Sometimes developers face issues in configuring it on Mac OS X. 

You can follow the below steps and get a basic dispatcher setup done. 

Step 1: Install Apache Server on your machine. Verify the version by running.

sudo httpd -version

Step 2: Download Dispatcher Module and sample files as per OS and apache version

Link to download dispatcher Module

Step 3: Extract the downloaded dispatcher module file and copy file "dispatcher-apache<x.y>-<rel-nr>.so" to directory /usr/libexec/apache2/

You can rename the copied file to mod_dispatcher.so 

Step 4: Open httpd.conf from /private/etc/apache2/

Step 5: Add the following configurations after the last load module. ( it should be around line 170 in default in httpd.conf).

LoadModule dispatcher_module libexec/apache2/mod_dispatcher.so

<IfModule disp_apache2.c>

  DispatcherConfig /etc/apache2/conf/dispatcher.any

  DispatcherLog    /etc/apache2/logs/dispatcher.log

  DispatcherLogLevel 3

  DispatcherDeclineRoot 0

  DispatcherUseProcessedURL 0

  DispatcherPassError 0

  DispatcherKeepAliveTimeout 60

</IfModule>

<Directory />

  <IfModule disp_apache2.c>

    SetHandler dispatcher-handler

    ModMimeUsePathInfo On

  </IfModule>

  Options FollowSymLinks

  AllowOverride None

</Directory>

Step 6: Copy dispatcher.any from downloaded dispatcher module and paste it to /etc/apache2/conf/dispatcher.any

Step 7: Open dispatcher.any and find docroot in the configurations and change the location to match the document root of httpd.conf

/docroot "/Library/WebServer/Documents"

Step 8: Run the following command to verify configurations. You should get Syntax OK in response.

sudo apachectl start

sudo apachectl configtest

Step 9: Restart apache 

sudo apachectl restart

Step 10: Start author instance on port 4502 and navigate to http://localhost:80 and it should redirect you to author instance.

You can find the cached file at "/Library/WebServer/Documents"

For any issues, you can tail apache and dispatcher log
/private/var/log/apache2/
/etc/apache2/logs/dispatcher.log

Note: This is the basic configuration for author instance using out of the box files available. For more details refer adobe doc [0][1]

[0] https://helpx.adobe.com/experience-manager/dispatcher/using/dispatcher-install.html

[1] https://helpx.adobe.com/experience-manager/dispatcher/user-guide.html