Install the server

Overview

This section describes a single-node SonarQube instance. For details on clustered setup, see Install the server as a cluster.

Instance components

A SonarQube instance comprises three components:

1. The SonarQube server running the following processes:
   • A web server that serves the SonarQube user interface.
   • A search server based on Elasticsearch.
   • The compute engine in charge of processing code analysis reports and saving them in the SonarQube database.
2. The database to store the following:
   • Metrics and issues for code quality and security generated during code scans.
   • The SonarQube instance configuration.
3. One or more scanners running on your build or continuous integration servers to analyze projects.

Hosts and locations

For optimal performance, the SonarQube server and database should be installed on separate hosts, and the server host should be dedicated. The server and database hosts should be located on the same network.

All hosts must be time-synchronized.

Installing the database

Several external database engines are supported. Be sure to follow the requirements listed for your database. They are real requirements not recommendations.

Create an empty schema and a sonarqube user. Grant this sonarqube user permissions to create, update, and delete objects for this schema. 

SELECT is_read_committed_snapshot_on FROM sys.databases WHERE name='YourSonarQubeDatabase';

ALTER DATABASE YourSonarQubeDatabase SET READ_COMMITTED_SNAPSHOT ON WITH ROLLBACK IMMEDIATE;

sonar.jdbc.url=jdbc:sqlserver://localhost;databaseName=sonar;integratedSecurity=true

sonar.jdbc.url=jdbc:sqlserver://localhost;databaseName=sonar
sonar.jdbc.username=sonarqube
sonar.jdbc.password=mypassword

ALTER USER mySonarUser SET search_path to mySonarQubeSchema

Installing SonarQube from the ZIP file

First, check the requirements. Then download and unzip the distribution (do not unzip into a directory starting with a digit).

SonarQube cannot be run as root on Unix-based systems, so create a dedicated user account for SonarQube if necessary.

<SONARQUBE_HOME> (below) refers to the path to the directory where the SonarQube distribution has been unzipped.

Setting access to the database

Edit <SONARQUBE_HOME>/conf/sonar.properties to configure the database settings. Templates are available for every supported database. Just uncomment and configure the template you need and comment out the lines dedicated to H2:

# Example for PostgreSQL with default "public" schema and default TCP port 5432
sonar.jdbc.username=sonarqube
sonar.jdbc.password=mypassword
sonar.jdbc.url=jdbc:postgresql://localhost/sonarqube

Adding the JDBC driver

Drivers for the supported databases (except Oracle) are already provided. Do not replace the provided drivers; they are the only ones supported.

For Oracle, copy the JDBC driver into <SONARQUBE_HOME>/extensions/jdbc-driver/oracle.

Configuring the Elasticsearch storage path

By default, Elasticsearch data is stored in <SONARQUBE_HOME>/data, but this is not recommended for production instances. Instead, you should store this data elsewhere, ideally in a dedicated volume with fast I/O. Beyond maintaining acceptable performance, doing so will also ease the upgrade of SonarQube.

Edit <SONARQUBE_HOME>/conf/sonar.properties to configure the following settings:

sonar.path.data=/var/sonarqube/data
sonar.path.temp=/var/sonarqube/temp

The user used to launch SonarQube must have read and write access to those directories.

Starting the web server

The default port is 9000 and the context path is /. These values can be changed in <SONARQUBE_HOME>/conf/sonar.properties:

sonar.web.host=192.168.0.1
sonar.web.port=80
sonar.web.context=/sonarqube

Execute the following script to start the server:

• On Linux: <SONARQUBE_HOME>/bin/linux-x86-64/sonar.sh start
• On macOS: <SONARQUBE_HOME>/bin/macosx-universal-64/sonar.sh start
• On Windows: <SONARQUBE_HOME>/bin/windows-x86-64/StartSonar.bat

You can now browse SonarQube at http://localhost:9000 (the default system administrator credentials are admin/admin).

Adjusting the Java installation

By default, the scripts will use the Java executable available in the PATH. If there are multiple versions of Java installed on your server, you may need to explicitly define which version of Java is used.

It is possible to overwrite the default Java executable by setting the environmental variable SONAR_JAVA_PATH.

Advanced installation features

• Running SonarQube as a service on Windows or Linux
• Running SonarQube behind a proxy
• Monitoring and adjusting Java process memory

Installing SonarQube from the Docker image

SonarQube docker images support running both on the amd64 architecture and on arm64-based Apple Silicon.

We recommend using Docker Engine version 20.10 and above.

Follow these steps for your first installation:

1. Creating the following volumes helps prevent the loss of information when updating to a new version or upgrading to a higher edition:
   • sonarqube_data: contains data files, such as Elasticsearch indexes
   • sonarqube_logs: contains SonarQube logs about access, web process, CE process, and Elasticsearch
   • sonarqube_extensions: will contain any plugins you install and the Oracle JDBC driver if necessary.

Create the volumes with the following commands: 

$> docker volume create --name sonarqube_data
$> docker volume create --name sonarqube_logs
$> docker volume create --name sonarqube_extensions

Drivers for supported databases (except Oracle) are already provided. If you're using an Oracle database, you need to add the JDBC driver to the sonar_extensions volume. To do this:

 a. Start the SonarQube container with the embedded H2 database:

$ docker run --rm \
    -p 9000:9000 \
    -v sonarqube_extensions:/opt/sonarqube/extensions \
    <image_name>

b. Exit once SonarQube has started properly.

c. Copy the Oracle JDBC driver into sonarqube_extensions/jdbc-driver/oracle.

3. Run the image with your database properties defined using the -e environment variable flag:

$> docker run -d --name sonarqube \
    -p 9000:9000 \
    -e SONAR_JDBC_URL=... \
    -e SONAR_JDBC_USERNAME=... \
    -e SONAR_JDBC_PASSWORD=... \
    -v sonarqube_data:/opt/sonarqube/data \
    -v sonarqube_extensions:/opt/sonarqube/extensions \
    -v sonarqube_logs:/opt/sonarqube/logs \
    <image_name>

For docker-based setups, environment variables supersede all parameters that were provided with properties. See Docker environment variables.

There is more information about installing and updating SonarQube plugins inside your Docker volume found on the Install a plugin page.

Example Docker Compose configuration

If you're using Docker Compose, use the following example as a reference when configuring your .yml file. Click the heading below to expand the .yml file.

version: "3"

services:
  sonarqube:
    image: sonarqube:community
    depends_on:
      - db
    environment:
      SONAR_JDBC_URL: jdbc:postgresql://db:5432/sonar
      SONAR_JDBC_USERNAME: sonar
      SONAR_JDBC_PASSWORD: sonar
    volumes:
      - sonarqube_data:/opt/sonarqube/data
      - sonarqube_extensions:/opt/sonarqube/extensions
      - sonarqube_logs:/opt/sonarqube/logs
    ports:
      - "9000:9000"
  db:
    image: postgres:12
    environment:
      POSTGRES_USER: sonar
      POSTGRES_PASSWORD: sonar
    volumes:
      - postgresql:/var/lib/postgresql
      - postgresql_data:/var/lib/postgresql/data

volumes:
  sonarqube_data:
  sonarqube_extensions:
  sonarqube_logs:
  postgresql:
  postgresql_data:

Next steps

Once your server is installed and running, you may also want to install a plugin. Then you're ready to begin analyzing source code.

Troubleshooting

Failed to connect to the marketplace via proxy

Double-check that settings for proxy are correctly set in <SONARQUBE_HOME>/conf/sonar.properties. Note that if your proxy username contains a backslash, then it should be escaped; a username domain\user in the file should look like this example:

http.proxyUser=domain\\user

For some proxies, the exception java.net.ProtocolException: Server redirected too many times might mean an incorrect username or password has been configured.

Exception java.lang.RuntimeException: cannot run elasticsearch as root

SonarQube starts an Elasticsearch process, and the same account that is running SonarQube itself will be used for the Elasticsearch process. Since Elasticsearch cannot be run as root, that means SonarQube can't be either. You must choose some other, non-root account with which to run SonarQube, preferably an account dedicated to the purpose.

SonarQube DNS cache

When reporting Quality Gate status to DevOps platforms, SonarQube uses a DNS cache time to live policy of 30 seconds. If necessary, you can change this setting in your JVM:

echo "networkaddress.cache.ttl=5" >> "${JAVA_HOME}/conf/security/java.security" 

Please be aware that low values increases the risk of DNS spoofing attacks.

Self Signed Certificates of DevOps platforms

When running in an environment where the DevOps platform or other related tooling is secured by self-signed certificates, the CA needs to be added to the java truststore of SonarQube.

certutil -addstore -f "ROOT" <path/to/certificate>

keytool -import -storetype PKCS12 -alias sonar -keystore truststore.p12 -file server.pem -storepass "<a password>"

docker pull sonarsource/sonar-scanner-cli
docker run \
    --rm \
     -v ${DIR_WITH_TRUSTSTORE_DOT_P12}:/opt/sonar-scanner/.sonar/ssl \ 
    -v ${YOUR_CACHE_DIR}:/opt/sonar-scanner/.sonar/cache \
    -v ${YOUR_REPO}:/usr/src \
    -e SONAR_HOST_URL="http://${SONARQUBE_URL}" \
    sonarsource/sonar-scanner-cli \
    -Dsonar.scanner.truststorePassword=<a password> // Not needed if the password is "sonar"

If you deploy SonarQube on Kubernetes using the official Helm Chart, you can create a new secret containing your required certificates and reference this via:

caCerts:
  enabled: true
  image: adoptopenjdk/openjdk11:alpine
  secret: your-secret