I've recently posted some more tips on using Cassandra on Mac OSX:
Cassandra on Mac
If you don't already have homebrew then install it from
here.
Then it as simple as:
brew install cassandra
This doesn't install the python driver for the cqlsh command line tool. To do this install it first install python if you haven't got it already:
brew install python
This should have also installed pip - the python package manager - so you can then install the cql python module:
pip install cql
Now try and start cqlsh
You might get this:
Python CQL driver not installed, or not on PYTHONPATH.
You might try "easy_install cql".
One second didn't I just install the cql module?
This could be because the Python in your path is the Mac OS X version. Not the version you installed with home brew that has cql. I fixed this by adding /usr/local/bin to the start of my PATH as that is where the brew Python executable lives:
export PATH=/usr/local/bin/:$PATH
Unless you've started cassandra the next time you try cqlsh you'll get:
cqlshConnection error: Could not connect to localhost:9160
Now if you do a brew info on cassandra:
brew info cassandra
To have launchd start cassandra at login:
ln -sfv /usr/local/opt/cassandra/*.plist ~/Library/LaunchAgents
Then to load cassandra now:
launchctl load ~/Library/LaunchAgents/homebrew.mxcl.cassandra.plist
Unless you are going to use cassandra a lot I wouldn't set it to load on startup as it does use a reasonable amount of memory. Instead to just start it off:
launchctl load /usr/local/opt/cassandra/homebrew.mxcl.cassandra.plist
Finally cqlsh should connect to cassandra:
cqlshConnected to Test Cluster at localhost:9160.
[cqlsh 3.0.2 | Cassandra 1.2.5 | CQL spec 3.0.0 | Thrift protocol 19.36.0]
Use HELP for help.cqlsh>
Or if you prefer the older cassandra-cli interface to cassandra:
cassandra-cliConnected to: "Test Cluster" on 127.0.0.1/9160
Welcome to Cassandra CLI version 1.2.5
Type 'help;' or '?' for help.
Type 'quit;' or 'exit;' to quit.
[default@unknown
All done.