Installing Crowd and CrowdID

The instructions below tell you how to install the Crowd distribution (not EAR-WAR), which includes Apache Tomcat. If you wish to deploy a WAR distribution of Crowd or CrowdID on your own existing application server instead, read the instructions on the Crowd WAR distribution.

Crowd versions 1.1 and later include CrowdID. Installing Crowd, as described below, will also install CrowdID.

On this page:

1. Prerequisites

• Java. You will need to install a Java Development Kit (JDK) on your operating system before before proceeding with a Crowd installation. Please note that Crowd requires the full installation of a JDK. It is not enough to run Crowd on a Java Runtime Environment (JRE) alone. For instructions on installing the Sun JDK and setting JAVA_HOME, please refer to Supported Platforms.

2. Install Crowd

1. Download Crowd (not the EAR-WAR distribution).
2. Please check your unzip program before extracting the downloaded archive – see the note on the Crowd installation front page.
3. Unzip the download archive into a directory of your choice. Note: Do not specify directory names that contain spaces.
   We'll refer to this installation directory as {CROWD_INSTALL}.
   
   
4. Specify your Crowd Home directory by editing the configuration file at: {CROWD_INSTALL}\crowd-webapp\WEB-INF\classes\crowd-init.properties. The Crowd Home directory is where Crowd will store its configuration information. If you are using the embedded HSQL database, supplied for evaluation purposes, Crowd will also store its database in this directory. (Note however that the CrowdID database will be in the installation directory, not the Home directory.) To specify the Crowd Home directory:
   • Open the crowd-init.properties file. This is found at <crowd_install_directory>/crowd-webapp/WEB-INF/classes/crowd-init.properties
   • Choose the appropriate line in the file, depending upon your operating system (see below).
   • Remove the # at the beginning of the line.
   • Enter the name of the directory you want Crowd to use as its Home directory. For example,

     • On Windows:

       crowd.home=c:/data/crowd-home
       

       Note: On Windows, make sure you use forward slashes as shown above, not backward slashes.

     • On Mac and UNIX-based systems:

       crowd.home=/var/crowd-home
       

       Important

       Please, ensure that the Crowd Home directory will not match the Crowd installation directory AND it is writable by the user executing the initialization script.

   • Save the crowd-init.properties file.

3. Prepare your Database

If you wish to set up Crowd and/or CrowdID with an external database, see:

• Connecting Crowd to a Database
• Connecting CrowdID to a Database

4. Start Crowd and Complete the Setup Wizard

1. Run the start-up script, found in your {CROWD_INSTALL} directory:
   • start_crowd.bat for Windows.
   • start_crowd.sh for Mac and Unix-based systems.
2. Point a web browser at http://localhost:8095/crowd where you will see the Crowd Setup Wizard. Follow the instructions in the Wizard. You can also read more information about the Setup Wizard.

Next Steps

• If you are running Crowd on UNIX/Linux, consider setting Crowd to run automatically on startup and use an unprivileged system user.
• If you are running Crowd on Windows, consider setting Crowd to run automatically on startup.

RELATED TOPICS

• Supported Platforms
• Installing Crowd and CrowdID
• Running the Setup Wizard
• Configuring Crowd