Documentation for FishEye 3.0.x. Documentation for other versions is available too.

Hey! We're going to install FishEye on Windows. There are a few steps involved, but we think you'll find it easy to follow along. If you are upgrading an existing installation, please refer to the FishEye upgrade guide instead.

1. Check supported platforms

Better check the Supported platforms page first; it lists the application servers, databases, operating systems, web browsers and JDKs that we have tested FishEye with, and that we recommend.

Atlassian only officially supports FishEye running on x86 hardware and 64-bit derivatives of x86 hardware.

2. Create a dedicated FishEye user (recommended)

For production installations, we recommend that you create a new dedicated Windows user that will run FishEye on your system. This user:

  • Should not have admin privileges.
  • Should be a non-privileged user with read, write and execute access on the FishEye home (install) directory and instance (data) directory. These directories are described below.
  • Should only have read access to your repositories. 

If you created a dedicated FishEye user, ensure you are logged in as this user to complete the remaining instructions.

3. Check your version of Java

In a command prompt, run this:

java -version

The version of Java should be 1.6.0 or higher. If you intend to run FishEye as a Windows Service, using the Java Service Wrapper, you should use 32-bit Java (even on a 64-bit machine), and the JDK rather than the JRE (so as to take advantage of the -server parameter).

Download and install the Java Platform JDK from Oracle's website.

(warning) We recommend that the Java install path should not contain spaces, so don't install into C:\Program Files\Java\. Instead, use a path like C:\Java.

Now try running 'java -version' again to check the installation. The version of Java should be 1.6.0 or higher.

4. Check that Windows can find Java

Windows uses the JAVA_HOME environment variable to find Java. To check that, in a new command prompt, run:

echo %JAVA_HOME%

You should see a path to the Java install location. We recommend that this path does not contain spaces, and that JAVA_HOME should point to the Java executable in your PATH.

  • If you see a path with spaces, like  C:\Program Files\Java\, then sorry, but go back to 3. and reinstall Java to a location that doesn't have spaces.

  • If you don't see a path at all, or if you just see %JAVA_HOME%, then set JAVA_HOME as follows:

For Windows 7:

  1. Go to Start, search for "sys env" and choose Edit the system environment variables.
  2. Click Environment Variables, and then New under 'System variables'.
  3. Enter "JAVA_HOME" as the Variable name, and the absolute path to where you installed the Java executable as the Variable value, that is, something like C:\Java\bin. Don't use a trailing backslash. We recommend that JAVA_HOME should point to the Java executable specified in your PATH variable.
  4. Now, in a new command prompt,  try running '%JAVA_HOME%\java -version'. You should see the same version of Java as you saw above.

5. Now it's time to get FishEye

Download FishEye from the Atlassian download site.

Extract the downloaded file to an install location:

  • Folder names in the path to your FishEye executable should not have spaces in them. The path to the extracted directory is referred to as the <FishEye home directory> in these instructions.
  • If you expect to have a large number of users for this FishEye installation, and FishEye will be connected to an external database, consider installing FishEye on a different server from the one running the external database, for improved performance.

6. Tell FishEye where to store your data  

The FishEye instance directory is where your FishEye data is stored.

(warning) You should not locate your FishEye instance directory inside the <FishEye home directory> — they should be entirely separate locations. If you do put the  instance directory in the <FishEye home directory> it will be overwritten, and lost, when FishEye gets upgraded. And by the way, you'll need separate FishEye instance directories if you want to run multiple copies of FishEye.

Create your FishEye instance directory, and then tell FishEye where you created it by setting a FISHEYE_INST  environment variable, as follows:

For Windows 7:

  1. Go to Start, search for "sys env" and choose Edit the system environment variables.
  2. Click Environment Variables, and then New under 'System variables'.
  3. Enter "FISHEYE_INST" as the Variable name, and the absolute path to your new FishEye instance directory as the Variable value. Don't use a trailing backslash.
  4. Now copy the newly extracted <FishEye home directory> /config.xml file to the root of your new FishEye instance directory.

(info) Note that if FishEye is run as a Windows service using the Java Service Wrapper, FishEye-specific environment variables such as FISHEYE_INST are ignored – these must be set in the wrapper.conf file. See Running FishEye as a Windows service .

If you have a large number of repositories, we recommend you increase the default number of files that FishEye is allowed to open. See the following knowledge base article for more info: Subversion Indexer Paused with "Too many open files" Error.

7. Start FishEye!

In a command prompt, change directory to <FishEye home directory> and run this:

bin\start.bat

After a few moments, in a web browser on the same machine, go to http://localhost:8060/ (or, from another machine, type http://hostname:8060/, where hostname is the name of the machine where you installed FishEye).

Enter your license, then an admin password, to finish the setup. Note that this password is for the 'built-in' FishEye admin user. You can log in as this user, if necessary, by clicking the Administration link in the page footer. See also How to reset the Administration Page password in Fisheye or Crucible.

You can postpone setting up JIRA integration until later if you wish; see Configuring JIRA integration in the Setup Wizard.

8. Add repositories

Now you can tell FishEye about any existing repositories you have. Please read Starting to use FishEye for the details.

FishEye will perform an initial index of your repositories, during which it accesses, indexes and organizes a view of your repositories (including all historical items) back to the earliest commits. If you are evaluating FishEye, we suggest that you index a single project, so you can use FishEye as soon as possible. If you choose to index your entire repository, be aware that this can take a long time (possibly days) for massive or complex repositories and can be more complex to set up (especially for Subversion). The basic process is slightly different for each SCM type.

9. Add users and groups

You will want to set up your users and groups in FishEye. You can add users directly to FishEye, or connect to an external user directory. Please read Starting to use FishEye for an introduction.

10. Set up your mail server

Configure the FishEye email server so that users can get notifications from FishEye. See Configuring SMTP.

11. Connect to an external database (recommended)

If you intend to use this FishEye installation in a production environment, it is highly recommended that you use one of the supported external databases. See Migrating to an external database.

If you are evaluating FishEye, or don't wish to do this now, FishEye will happily use its embedded HSQL database, and you can easily migrate later.  

12. Stop FishEye (optional)

In a command prompt, change directory to <FishEye home directory> and run this:

bin\stop.bat

13. Tuning FishEye performance

To get the best performance from your new FishEye installation, please consult Tuning FishEye performance.

  • No labels

2 Comments

  1. So.....If I already have applications running on Java, in it's default install directory, I have to re configure all of my other applications and reinstall Java to another path because you can't write a program to deal with spaces?

    1. Hi James,

      The tone in those sentences may have been a little strong; I've changed them a bit. Nevertheless, the intention is to help people avoid issues associated with paths containing spaces, particularly on Windows. If you experience issues, please consider raising a Support ticket.

      regards, Paul