This site contains the documentation that is relevant to older WSO2 product versions and offerings.
For the latest WSO2 documentation, visit https://wso2.com/documentation/.

Installing on Linux or OS X

Follow the instructions below to install WSO2 Identity Server on Linux or Mac OS X.

Before you begin:

  • See the known incompatibilities section to find out if this version of the product has issues running on your OS due to the JDK version.
  • See the compatibility matrix to find out if this version of the product is fully tested on your operating system.

Installing the required applications

  1. Log in to the command line (Terminal on Mac).
  2. Ensure that your system meets the Installation PrerequisitesJava Development Kit (JDK) is essential to run the product. 

Installing the Identity Server

  1. Download the latest version of the Identity Server from http://wso2.com/products/identity-server/.
  2. Extract the archive file to a dedicated directory for the Identity Server, which will hereafter be referred to as <IS_HOME>.

Setting up JAVA_HOME

You must set your JAVA_HOME environment variable to point to the directory where the Java Development Kit (JDK) is installed on the computer.

Environment variables are global system variables accessible by all the processes running under the operating system.

  1. In your home directory, open the BASHRC file (.bash_profile file
 on Mac) using editors such as vi, emacs, pico, or mcedit.
  2. Assuming you have JDK 1.8.0_141 in your system, add the following two lines at the bottom of the file, replacing /usr/java/jdk1.8.0_141 with the actual directory where the JDK is installed.

    On Linux:
    export JAVA_HOME=/usr/java/jdk1.8.0_141
    export PATH=${JAVA_HOME}/bin:${PATH}
     
    On OS X:
    export JAVA_HOME=/Library/Java/JavaVirtualMachines/jdk1.8.0_141/Contents/Home
  3. Save the file.

    If you do not know how to work with text editors in a Linux SSH session, run the following command: cat >> .bashrc. Paste the string from the clipboard and press "Ctrl+D."

  4. To verify that the JAVA_HOME variable is set correctly, execute the following command:

    On Linux:
    echo $JAVA_HOME
     
    On OS X:
    which java
    
    If the above command gives you a path like /usr/bin/java, then it is a symbolic link to the real location. To get the real location, run the following:
    ls -l `which java`
  5. The system returns the JDK installation path.

Setting system properties

If you need to set additional system properties when the server starts, you can take the following approaches:

  • Set the properties from a script: Setting your system properties in the startup script is ideal, because it ensures that you set the properties every time you start the server. To avoid having to modify the script each time you upgrade, the best approach is to create your own startup script that wraps the WSO2 startup script and adds the properties you want to set, rather than editing the WSO2 startup script directly.
  • Set the properties from an external registry: If you want to access properties from an external registry, you could create Java code that reads the properties at runtime from that registry. Be sure to store sensitive data such as username and password to connect to the registry in a properties file instead of in the Java code and secure the properties file with the secure vault.

When using SUSE Linux, it ignores /etc/resolv.conf and only looks at the /etc/hosts file. This means that the server will throw an exception on startup if you have not specified anything besides localhost. To avoid this error, add the following line above 127.0.0.1 localhost in the /etc/hosts file: <ip_address>  <machine_name> localhost

You are now ready to run the product.