Operating the server

Learn how to configure and operate the SonarQube server.

Running SonarQube as a service on Windows

Install or uninstall SonarQube as a service

> %SONARQUBE_HOME%\bin\windows-x86-64\SonarService.bat install
> %SONARQUBE_HOME%\bin\windows-x86-64\SonarService.bat uninstall

Start or stop the service

> %SONARQUBE_HOME%\bin\windows-x86-64\SonarService.bat start

By default, the service will use the Java executable available on the Windows PATH. This setting can be changed by setting the environmental variable SONAR_JAVA_PATH. See more in Install the server.

> %SONARQUBE_HOME%\bin\windows-x86-64\SonarService.bat stop

> %SONARQUBE_HOME%\bin\windows-x86-64\SonarService.bat stop does a graceful shutdown where no new analysis report processing can start, but the tasks in progress are allowed to finish. The time a stop will take depends on the processing time of the tasks in progress. You’ll need to kill all SonarQube processes manually to force a stop.

Service status

Check if the SonarQube service is running:

> %SONARQUBE_HOME%\bin\windows-x86-64\SonarService.bat status

Running SonarQube manually on Linux

Start or stop the instance

Start:
$SONARQUBE_HOME/bin/linux-x86-64/sonar.sh start

Graceful shutdown:
$SONARQUBE_HOME/bin/linux-x86-64/sonar.sh stop

Hard stop:
$SONARQUBE_HOME/bin/linux-x86-64/sonar.sh force-stop

Stop does a graceful shutdown where no new analysis report processing can start, but the tasks in progress are allowed to finish. The time a stop will take depends on the processing time of the tasks in progress. Use force stop for a hard stop.

Running SonarQube as a service on Linux with SystemD

On a Unix system using SystemD, you can install SonarQube as a service. You cannot run SonarQube as root in Unix systems. Ideally, you will have created a new account dedicated to the purpose of running SonarQube. Let’s suppose:

• The user used to start the service is sonarqube

• The group used to start the service is sonarqube

• The Java Virtual Machine is installed in /opt/java/

• SonarQube has been unzipped into /opt/sonarqube/

Then create the file /etc/systemd/system/sonarqube.service based on the following:

[Unit]
Description=SonarQube service
After=syslog.target network.target

[Service]
Type=simple
User=sonarqube
Group=sonarqube
PermissionsStartOnly=true
ExecStart=/bin/nohup /opt/java/bin/java -Xms32m -Xmx32m -Djava.net.preferIPv4Stack=true -jar /opt/sonarqube/lib/sonar-application-9.9.1.69595.jar
StandardOutput=syslog
LimitNOFILE=131072
LimitNPROC=8192
TimeoutStartSec=5
Restart=always
SuccessExitStatus=143

[Install]
WantedBy=multi-user.target

• Because the sonar-application jar name ends with the version of SonarQube, you will need to adjust the ExecStart command accordingly on install and at each upgrade.

• All SonarQube directories should be owned by the sonarqube user.

• If you have multiple Java versions, you will need to modify the java path in the ExecStart command. This also means SONAR_JAVA_PATH will not work with SonarQube as a service.

Once your sonarqube.service file is created and properly configured, run:

sudo systemctl enable sonarqube.service
sudo systemctl start sonarqube.service

Running SonarQube as a service on Linux with initd

The following has been tested on Ubuntu 20.04 and CentOS 6.2.

You cannot run SonarQube as root in ’nix systems. Ideally, you will have created a new account dedicated to the purpose of running SonarQube. Let’s suppose the user used to start the service is sonarqube. Then create the file/etc/init.d/sonar based on the following:

#!/bin/sh
#
# rc file for SonarQube
#
# chkconfig: 345 96 10
# description: SonarQube system (www.sonarsource.org)
#
### BEGIN INIT INFO
# Provides: sonar
# Required-Start: $network
# Required-Stop: $network
# Default-Start: 3 4 5
# Default-Stop: 0 1 2 6
# Short-Description: SonarQube system (www.sonarsource.org)
# Description: SonarQube system (www.sonarsource.org)
### END INIT INFO
 
su sonarqube -c "/usr/bin/sonar $*"

Register SonarQube at boot time (RedHat, CentOS, 64 bit):

sudo ln -s $SONARQUBE_HOME/bin/linux-x86-64/sonar.sh /usr/bin/sonar
sudo chmod 755 /etc/init.d/sonar
sudo chkconfig --add sonar

Register SonarQube at boot time (Ubuntu, 64 bit):

sudo ln -s $SONAR_HOME/bin/linux-x86-64/sonar.sh /usr/bin/sonar
sudo chmod 755 /etc/init.d/sonar
sudo update-rc.d sonar defaults

Once registration is done, run:

sudo service sonar start

Securing the server behind a proxy

This section helps you configure the SonarQube Server if you want to run it behind a proxy. This can be done for security concerns or to consolidate multiple disparate applications. To run the SonarQube server over HTTPS, see the HTTPS Configuration section below.

For security reasons, we recommend only giving external access to the main port.

Using an Apache Proxy

We assume that you’ve already installed Apache 2 with module mod_proxy, that SonarQube is running and available on http://private_sonar_host:sonar_port/, and that you want to configure a Virtual Host for www.public_sonar.com.

At this point, edit the HTTPd configuration file for the www.public_sonar.com virtual host. Include the following to expose SonarQube via mod_proxy at http://www.public_sonar.com/

ProxyRequests Off
ProxyPreserveHost On
<VirtualHost *:80>
  ServerName www.public_sonar.com
  ServerAdmin [email protected]
  ProxyPass / http://private_sonar_host:sonar_port/
  ProxyPassReverse / http://www.public_sonar.com/
  ErrorLog logs/somecompany/sonar/error.log
  CustomLog logs/somecompany/sonar/access.log common
</VirtualHost>

Apache configuration is going to vary based on your own application’s requirements and the way you intend to expose SonarQube to the outside world. If you need more details about Apache HTTPd and mod_proxy, please see http://httpd.apache.org.

Using Nginx

We assume that you’ve already installed Nginx, that you are using a Virtual Host for www.somecompany.com and that SonarQube is running and available on http://sonarhost:sonarport/.

At this point, edit the Nginx configuration file. Include the following to expose SonarQube at http://www.somecompany.com/:

# the server directive is Nginx's virtual host directive
server {
  # port to listen on. Can also be set to an IP:PORT
  listen 80;
  # sets the domain[s] that this vhost server requests for
  server_name www.somecompany.com;
  location / {
    proxy_pass http://sonarhost:sonarport;
  }
}

Nginx configuration will vary based on your own application’s requirements and the way you intend to expose SonarQube to the outside world. If you need more details about Nginx, please see https://www.nginx.com/resources/admin-guide/reverse-proxy/.

Note that you may need to increase the max URL length since SonarQube requests can have URLs longer than 2048.

Using IIS on Windows

Using IIS on Windows, you can create a website that acts as a reverse proxy and access your SonarQube instance over SSL.

The setup described here is not appropriate for SAML through IIS.

For help with IIS and SAML Authentication, please review this Community guide for additional steps.

Prerequisites

• Internet Information Services (IIS) enabled. In the following example, IIS is enabled on the same machine as the SonarQube instance.

• The Url Rewrite extension for IIS

• The Application Based Routing extension for IIS

• A self-signed SSL certificate, or a real one

To make sure the extensions are enabled, restart your IIS Manager after you install them.

Creating an IIS website

1. In the IIS Manager, select Your machine > Sites > Add Website…

2. Under Site name, enter a name for your website.

3. Under Content Directory > Physical path, select a physical path for your website’s folder. Based on the default IIS website, we recommend creating a %SystemDrive%\inetpub\wwwroot_sonarqube folder and using it as a physical path.

4. In Binding, select Type > https.

5. Under SSL certificate, select an SSL certificate.

6. Click OK.

Using your IIS website as a reverse proxy

Once you’ve created your website using the IIS Manager, you can use the URL Rewrite extension to use that website as a reverse proxy.

1. From the IIS Manager home page, select your website and open URL Rewrite.

2. Click Add Rule(s) to create a new rule.

3. Select Reverse Proxy from the list of templates.

4. Enter the destination server URL. It can be http://localhost:9000 or a remote server.

5. Click OK to create the rule.

The URL Rewrite page now displays a reverse proxy inbound rule.

Adding the X_FORWARDED_PROTO server variable

Using the URL Rewrite module, you can create a server variable to handle the X-Forwarded-Proto header and pass it to SonarQube. See the HTTPS Configuration section on this page for more information on that server variable.

From the URL Rewrite page:

1. Click View Server Variables. This opens the Allowed Server Variables page.

2. To add a server variable, click Add…, enter X_FORWARDED_PROTO in the field and click OK. The server variable is now displayed on the Allowed Server Variables page.

3. Click Back to Rules to go to the URL Rewrite rules list.

4. Select the reverse proxy inbound rule for your website. Under Inbound Rules, click Edit.

5. Expand the Server variables section of the rule definition.

6. Add the X_FORWARDED_PROTO server variable and give it the value https.

7. Apply the changes.

SonarQube can now be accessed over SSL.

Checking that the connection is enabled

With your SonarQube instance and your IIS website running, open the IIS Manager and click the link under Your website > Browse Website > Browse, or enter the website’s URL in a browser. You should see the login or home page of your SonarQube instance.

Next steps

You can configure your SonarQube instance to only accept traffic from your reverse proxy, by adding the following line to the sonar.properties file:

sonar.web.host=127.0.0.1

Another option is to use the Windows Firewall to only accept traffic from localhost.

Resources

The setup described here is inspired by this Configure SSL for SonarQube on Windows blog post.

HTTPS configuration

# the server directive is Nginx's virtual host directive
server { 
 # port to listen on. Can also be set to an IP:PORT 
 listen 443 ssl;
 ssl_certificate ${path_to_your_certificate_file}
 ssl_certificate_key ${path_to_your_certificate_key_file}
 location / {
   proxy_pass ${address_of_your_sonarqube_instance_behind_proxy}
   proxy_set_header Host $host;
   proxy_set_header X-Forwarded-For $remote_addr;
   proxy_set_header X-Forwarded-Proto https;
 }
}

Forward SonarQube custom headers

SonarQube adds custom HTTP headers. The reverse proxy should be configured to forward the following headers:

• SonarQube-Authentication-Token-Expiration This header is added to a web service response when using Generating and using tokens to authenticate. Forwarding this header is not required for the SonarQube features to work properly.

• Sonar-MD5 This header is used to verify the integrity of the plugins downloaded by the scanner. You must forward this header to successfully execute analyses that use plugins.

Secure your network

To further lock down the communication in between the reverse proxy and SonarQube, you can define the following network rules:

Protocol	Source	Destination	Port	default
TCP	Reverse Proxy	SonarQube	sonar.web.port	9000
TCP	SonarQube	SonarQube	sonar.search.port	9001
TCP	SonarQube	SonarQube	sonar.es.port	random

You can further segment your network configuration if you specify a frontend network and keep Elasticsearch restricted to the loopback NiC.

Network	Parameter	Description	default
Frontend	sonar.web.host	Frontend HTTP Network	0.0.0.0
Elasticsearch	sonar.search.host	Elasticsearch Network	127.0.0.1