How to Install and configure Sonarqube on Linux (RHEL/Centos/ec2)

Sonarqube is a great tool for source code quality management, code analysis, etc. This is the most widely used tool for code coverage and static code analysis that supports 17 languages.

Install and Configure Sonarqube on Linux

This guide will help you to set up and configure Sonarqube on Linux servers (Redhat/Centos 7 versions) on any cloud platforms like ec2, azure, compute engine, or on-premise data centers. Follow the steps given below for the complete Sonarqube configuration.

Sonarqube System Requirements

Following are the minimum server requirement for running the Sonarqube server.

Server with minimum 2GB RAM and 1 vCPU capacity
PostgreSQL version 9.3 or greater.
OpenJDK 11 or JRE 11
All Sonarquber processes should run as a non-root sonar user.

You can find the official requirement doc here.

Prepare the Server With the Required Software

Redhat/Amazon Linux

If you are using Redhat, Centos, or Amazon Linux-based servers, execute the following commands one by one.

sudo yum update -y
sudo yum install wget unzip -y
sysctl vm.max_map_count
sysctl fs.file-max
ulimit -n
ulimit -u

For Ubuntu/Debian

If you are using Ubuntu or Debian-based server, execute the following commands one by one.

sudo apt update -y
sudo apt install wget unzip -y
sysctl vm.max_map_count
sysctl fs.file-max
ulimit -n
ulimit -u

Setup PostgreSQL 10 For SonarQube

Step 1: Install PostgreSQL 10 repo.

sudo yum install https://download.postgresql.org/pub/repos/yum/10/redhat/rhel-7-x86_64/pgdg-centos10-10-2.noarch.rpm -y

Step 2: Install PostgreSQL 10

sudo yum install postgresql10-server postgresql10-contrib -y

Step 3: Initialize the database.

sudo /usr/pgsql-10/bin/postgresql-10-setup initdb

Step 4: Open /var/lib/pgsql/data/pg_hba.conf file to change the authentication to md5.

sudo vi /var/lib/pgsql/10/data/pg_hba.conf

Find the following lines at the bottom of the file and change peer to trust and idnet to md5

# TYPE  DATABASE        USER            ADDRESS                 METHOD

# "local" is for Unix domain socket connections only
local   all             all                                     peer
# IPv4 local connections:
host    all             all             127.0.0.1/32            ident
# IPv6 local connections:
host    all             all             ::1/128                 ident

Once changed, it should look like the following.

# TYPE  DATABASE        USER            ADDRESS                 METHOD

# "local" is for Unix domain socket connections only
local   all             all                                     trust
# IPv4 local connections:
host    all             all             127.0.0.1/32            md5
# IPv6 local connections:
host    all             all             ::1/128                 md5

Step 5: Start and enable PostgreSQL.

sudo systemctl start postgresql-10
sudo systemctl enable postgresql-10

Step 6: You can verify the installation using the following version select query.

sudo -u postgres /usr/pgsql-10/bin/psql -c "SELECT version();"

Create Sonar User and Database

We need to have a sonar user and database for the sonar application.

Step 1: Change the default password of the Postgres user. All Postgres commands have to be executed by this user.

sudo passwd postgres

Step 2: Login as postgres user with the new password.

su - postgres

Step 3: Log in to the PostgreSQL CLI.

psql

Step 4: Create a sonarqubedb database.

create database sonarqubedb;

Step 5: Create the sonarqube DB user with a strongly encrypted password. Replace your-strong-password with a strong password.

create user sonarqube with encrypted password 'your-strong-password';

Step 6: Next, grant all privileges to sonrqube user on sonarqubedb.

grant all privileges on database sonarqubedb to sonarqube

Step 7: Exit the psql prompt using the following command.

\q

Step 6: Switch to your sudo user using the exit command.

exit

Setup Sonarqube Web Server

Step 1: Download the latest Sonarqube installation file to /opt folder. You can get the latest download link from here.

cd /opt 
sudo wget https://binaries.sonarsource.com/Distribution/sonarqube/sonarqube-7.6.zip

2. Unzip sonarqube source files and rename the folder.

sudo unzip sonarqube-7.6.zip
sudo mv sonarqube-7.6 sonarqube

4. Open /opt/sonarqube/conf/sonar.properties file.

sudo vi /opt/sonarqube/conf/sonar.properties

Uncomment and edit the parameters as shown below. Change the password accordingly. You will find the JDBC parameter under the PostgreSQL section.

sonar.jdbc.username=sonar                                                                                                                     
sonar.jdbc.password=sonar-db-password
sonar.jdbc.url=jdbc:postgresql://localhost/onarqubedb

By default, sonar will run on 9000. If you want on port 80 or any other port, change the following parameters for accessing the web console on that specific port.

sonar.web.host=0.0.0.0
sonar.web.port=80

If you want to access Sonarqube some path like http://url:/sonar, change the following parameter.

sonar.web.context=/sonar

Add Sonar User and Privileges

Create a user named sonar and make it the owner of the /opt/sonarqube directory.

sudo useradd sonar
sudo chown -R sonar:sonar /opt/sonarqube

Start Sonarqube Service

To start sonar service, you need to use the script in sonarqube bin directory.

Step 1: Login as sonar user

sudo su - sonar

Step 2: Navigate to the start script directory.

cd /opt/sonarqube/bin/linux-x86-64

Step 3: Start the sonarqube service.

./sonar.sh start

Now, you should be able to access sonarqube on the browser on port 9000

Step 4: Check the application status. If it is in a running state, you can access the sonarqube dashboard using the DNS name or Ip address of your server.

sudo ./sonar.sh status

Setting up Sonarqube as Systemd Service

Step 1: Create a file /etc/systemd/system/sonarqube.service

sudo vi /etc/systemd/system/sonarqube.service

Step 2: Copy the following content onto the file.

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

[Service]
Type=simple
User=sonarqube
Group=sonarqube
PermissionsStartOnly=true
ExecStart=/bin/nohup java -Xms32m -Xmx32m -Djava.net.preferIPv4Stack=true -jar /opt/sonarqube/lib/sonar-application-7.6.jar
StandardOutput=syslog
LimitNOFILE=65536
LimitNPROC=8192
TimeoutStartSec=5
Restart=always

[Install]
WantedBy=multi-user.target

Step 3: Start and enable sonarqube

sudo systemctl start sonarqube
sudo systemctl enable sonarqube

Step 4: Check the sonarqube status to ensure it is running as expected.

sudo systemctl status  sonarqube

Troubleshooting Sonarqube

All the logs of sonarqube are present in the /opt/sonarqube/logs directory.

cd /opt/sonarqube/logs

You can find the following log files.

es.log
sonar.log
web.log
access.log

Using the tail command you can check the latest logs. For example,

tail -f access.log

For Sonarqube support, visit this link

In this tutorial, we covered how to install and configure Sonarqube on a Linux server. If you face any issues during the setup, please feel free to leave a comment below.