Defining a JWT token

Optional pre-installation step to keep user sessions alive during startup in SonarQube Server 2026.4.

By default, users are logged out and sessions closed when server is restarted. If you prefer keeping user sessions open, a secret should be defined. Value is HS256 key encoded with base64. It must be unique for each installation of SonarQube Server.

The following examples illustrate how to generate a HS256 key encoded with base64, where your_secret and your_key are arbitrary strings that can be modified.

WINDOWS SYSTEM WITH POWERSHELL

$message = 'your_secret'
$secret = 'your_key'

$hmacsha = New-Object System.Security.Cryptography.HMACSHA256
$hmacsha.key = [Text.Encoding]::ASCII.GetBytes($secret)
$signature = $hmacsha.ComputeHash([Text.Encoding]::ASCII.GetBytes($message))
$signature = [Convert]::ToBase64String($signature)

echo $signature

UNIX SYSTEM

echo -n "your_secret" | openssl dgst -sha256 -hmac "your_key" -binary | base64