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Windows Installation

This page describes how to install Stardog on Windows.

Page Contents
  1. Overview
  2. Install as a Windows Service
    1. Troubleshooting
      1. Insufficient Permissions
      2. Unable to find a valid license
  3. What’s Next?

Overview

Windows users can install and run Stardog as a Windows Service. Stardog on Windows is not recommended for production use.

Before continuing with the installation guide, please review the System Requirements for running Stardog.

Install as a Windows Service

  1. Install Java if you have not already.

    Stardog supports Java version 11.

  2. Download the distribution.

  3. Unzip the file and place it in your desired installation location.

    We will place our installation in a new folder called stardogs for our user. In this tutorial, our user is named stardog, so the directory is D:\Users\stardog\stardogs.

  4. Set up STARDOG_HOME.

    The most important piece of configuration to complete before you start the Stardog server is setting the STARDOG_HOME environment variable. This is the directory where all the Stardog databases and other files will be stored. If STARDOG_HOME is not defined, Stardog will use the Java user.dir property value.

    You can set STARDOG_HOME to any directory, but this directory should be kept separate from the Stardog distribution.

    1. Create your STARDOG_HOME directory in the Command Prompt.

      The directory can be created with the following command:

       mkdir D:\Users\stardog\stardog_home

    2. Set the STARDOG_HOME environment variable to the directory we just created:

      We will do this by setting it in Control Panel. Launch “Control Panel” > “System and Security” > “System” > “Advanced system settings” > Switch to “Advanced” tab > “Environment variables…” > Choose “New” > Enter STARDOG_HOME for the variable and provide the path to the newly created directory as the value.

      windows env vars

      You can also set the environment variable via Command Prompt, however this will only persist as long as the command prompt session. This can be done with the following command:

       set STARDOG_HOME=D:\Users\stardog\stardog_home

  5. Copy your Stardog license into the STARDOG_HOME directory:

    If you do not have a license, you can obtain one on the Stardog website:

    Once you have a license, copy or move your license key to your STARDOG_HOME directory created in the previous step.

     COPY /B stardog-license-key.bin %STARDOG_HOME%

    By default, Stardog will recognize your license key if its name follows the pattern stardog*.bin (i.e., stardog, followed by anything, and ending with .bin) and it resides in your home directory. You can specify a different location for the license file or a name that uses a different pattern by setting the environment variable STARDOG_LICENSE_PATH.

  6. Optionally, place the bin folder of the unzipped Stardog distribution on your PATH so the stardog.bat and stardog-admin.bat scripts can be used regardless of the current working directory.

    Launch “Control Panel” > “System” > “Advanced system settings” > Switch to “Advanced” tab > “Environment variables” > Select the entry containing Path, Choose “Edit”:

    windows env vars

    Choose “New” and enter the full path to the bin directory within the unzipped Stardog distribution as a new entry on the Path.

    windows env vars

    or set an environment variable through the command line.

    Like setting the environment variable for STARDOG_HOME, you can set a temporary environment variable from the command line, but it will only last as long as your command prompt session. The command is:

     SET PATH=%PATH%;D:\Users\stardog\stardogs\stardog-7.4.0\bin

    We now can use the stardog and stardog-admin CLI commands regardless of our current working directory.

  7. Set up JAVA_HOME.

    Setting the JAVA_HOME environment variable is necessary to run Stardog as a Windows service (covered in the next step).

    1. You must set it to the directory where you installed Java. For example, if you installed Microsoft OpenJDK 11 in C:\Program Files\Microsoft\jdk-11.0.18.10-hotspot, you would set JAVA_HOME=C:\Program Files\Microsoft\jdk-11.0.18.10-hotspot\.

    2. You can follow the same process you took to make STARDOG_HOME an environment variable (see step 4b).

  8. Execute the provided batch script install-service.bat in the bin directory to install Stardog as a Windows service.

     .\install-service.bat

    You should see output in your prompt indicating the service was successfully installed:

     AMD64 Architecture detected

 The following parameters will be set for the service

 Stardog installation directory is D:\Users\stardog\stardogs\stardog-7.4.0
 STARDOG_HOME is D:\Users\stardog\stardog_home
 Stardog server will use 2048 MB
 Server logs will be written to D:\Users\stardog\stardogs\stardog-7.4.0\logs

 Installing Service "Stardog Server"

 Successfully installed "Stardog Server"

    At this point you can control Stardog via the Windows Services App.

    Stardog Windows Service

Troubleshooting

If the service does not successfully install or startup, you should inspect the stderr logs in the logs directory within the Stardog distribution.

Insufficient Permissions

The service may fail to install if the current Windows user does not have sufficient permissions to install a service. You may see the following in your command prompt after executing the install-service.bat script:

D:\Users\stardog\stardogs\stardog-7.4.0\bin>.\install-service.bat
AMD64 Architecture detected

The following parameters will be set for the service

Stardog installation directory is D:\Users\stardog\stardogs\stardog-7.4.0
STARDOG_HOME is D:\Users\stardog\stardog_home
Stardog server will use 2048 MB
Server logs will be written to D:\Users\stardog\stardogs\stardog-7.4.0\logs

Installing Service "Stardog Server"

Failed to install "Stardog Server"
Inspect D:\Users\stardog\stardogs\stardog-7.4.0\logs for more details

In the stderr log within the logs directory (as shown in the above output) you should see the error:

Access is denied.
Failed to install service

In order to work around this, you may need to contact your system administrator with “Administrator” privileges, or if you’re able to, start up a new Command Prompt session as an Administrator. See below for how to access this option from “Control Panel”:

Command Prompt as Administrator

After opening this command prompt as an Administrator, proceed to re-install the service in step 5.

.\install-service.bat

Unable to find a valid license

The service may fail to start up if you do not have a valid license. In the stderr logs in <stardog-distribution>\logs directory you would see a message like so:

2020-10-06 11:26:47 Commons Daemon procrun stderr initialized
ERROR StatusLogger No log4j2 configuration file found. Using default configuration: logging only errors to the console. Set system property 'org.apache.logging.log4j.simplelog.StatusLogger.level' to TRACE to show Log4j2 internal initialization logging.
A valid Stardog license was not found. Please visit https://stardog.com for more information.

If you have a valid license, copy or move the license to your STARDOG_HOME directory.

  COPY /B stardog-license-key.bin %STARDOG_HOME%

If you do not have a license, you can obtain one by speaking with a Stardog sales representative. If you do not want to manage your own Stardog license, you can simply sign up for a free account with Stardog Cloud.

Once you’ve obtained a valid license, try starting up the Stardog service as shown in step 8.

What’s Next?

Access your server through the CLI or the Stardog Applications (Stardog Studio, Stardog Explorer, and Stardog Designer).

Check out our additional Getting Started Resources for some introductory blog posts, tutorials, video trainings, and more.