Operating the 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

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

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-8.5.jar
StandardOutput=syslog
LimitNOFILE=131072
LimitNPROC=8192
TimeoutStartSec=5
Restart=always
SuccessExitStatus=143

[Install]
WantedBy=multi-user.target

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.

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 admin@somecompany.com
  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

See: http://blog.jessehouwing.nl/2016/02/configure-ssl-for-sonarqube-on-windows.html

Note that the setup described in this blog post is not appropriate for SAML through IIS.

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 tokens to authenticate. Forwarding this header is not required for the SonarQube features to work properly.

Secure your network

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

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