Installing Riak CS

Riak CS is supported on a variety of operating systems, including Ubuntu, CentOS, Fedora, Solaris, SmartOS, FreeBSD, and OS X. Riak CS is not supported on Microsoft Windows.

You can install Riak CS on a single node (for development purposes) or using an automated deployment tool. Any Riak CS installation involves three components, all of which must be installed separately:

Riak KV and Riak CS must be installed on each node in your cluster. Stanchion, however, needs to be installed on only one node.

Version Compatibility

We strongly recommend using one of the documented version combinations when installing and running Riak CS.

Installing Riak KV

Before installing Riak CS, Riak KV must be installed on each node in your cluster. You can install Riak KV either as part of an OS-specific package or from source.

Riak is also officially supported on the following public cloud infrastructures:

Remember that you must repeat this installation process on each node in your cluster. For future reference, you should make note of the Riak KV installation directory.

If you want to fully configure Riak KV prior to installing Riak CS, see our documentation on configuring Riak KV for CS.

Installing Riak CS on a Node

Riak CS and Stanchion packages are available on the Download Riak CS page. Similarly, Riak packages are available on the Download Riak KV page.

After downloading Riak CS, Stanchion, and Riak, install them using your operating system’s package management commands.

Note on Riak CS and public ports

Riak CS is not designed to function directly on TCP port 80, and it should not be operated in a manner that exposes it directly to the public internet. Instead, consider a load-balancing solution such as a dedicated device HAProxy or Nginx between Riak CS and the outside world.

Installing Riak CS on Mac OS X

To install Riak CS on OS X, first download the appropriate package from the downloads page:

curl -O http://s3.amazonaws.com/downloads.basho.com/riak-cs/1.5/2.1.0/osx/10.8/riak-cs-2.1.0-OSX-x86_64.tar.gz

Then, unpack the downloaded tarball:

tar -xvzf riak-cs-2.1.0-OSX-x86_64.tar.gz

At this point, you can move on to configuring Riak CS.

Installing Riak CS on Debian or Ubuntu

On Debian and Ubuntu, Riak CS packages are hosted on packagecloud.io. Instructions for installing via shell scripts, manual installation, Chef, and Puppet can be found in packagecloud’s installation docs.

Platform-specific pages are linked below:

Advanced apt Installation

For the simplest installation process on LTS (Long-Term Support) releases, use apt-get. First, you must retrieve the signing key:

curl https://packagecloud.io/gpg.key | sudo apt-key add -

Second, you must install the apt-transport-https package in order to be able to fetch packages over HTTPS:

sudo apt-get install -y apt-transport-https

With HTTPS enabled, we recommend adding the desired Riak CS package to your .list file. packagecloud can autogenerate such a file on the basis of a name that you specify, e.g. a hostname, and the desired operating system and distribution. The following example script would store your hostname in the variable HOSTNAME, send that information to packagecloud to autogenerate a .list file, and then store the return value in a file called basho.list, which is stored in the /etc/apt/sources.list.d directory. This example script is specific to the Precise Ubuntu distribution:

#!/bin/bash

HOSTNAME=`hostname -f`
FILENAME=/etc/apt/sources.list.d/basho.list
OS=ubuntu
DIST=precise
PACKAGE_CLOUD_RIAK_CS_DIR=https://packagecloud.io/install/repositories/basho/riak-cs
curl "${PACKAGE_CLOUD_RIAK_CS_DIR}/config_file.list?os=${OS}&dist=${DIST}&name=${HOSTNAME}" > $FILENAME

The name that you submit to packagecloud can be anything you like. The HOSTNAME used above was for example purposes. The resulting file should hold contents like the following:

# this file was generated by packagecloud.io for
# the repository at https://packagecloud.io/basho/riak

deb https://packagecloud.io/basho/riak-cs/ubuntu/ precise main
deb-src https://packagecloud.io/basho/riak-cs/ubuntu/ precise main

With your basho.list file populated, you can update your apt sources list:

sudo apt-get update

Now install the riak-cs package:

sudo apt-get install riak-cs

Installing Riak CS on RHEL or CentOS

On RHEL or CentOS, Riak CS packages are hosted on packagecloud.io. Instructions for installing via shell scripts, manual installation, Chef, and Puppet can be found in packagecloud’s installation docs.

Platform-specific pages are linked below:

Advanced rpm Installation

For the simplest installation process on LTS (Long-Term Support) releases, use yum. First, you must install the pygpgme package, which enables yum to handle GPG signatures:

sudo yum install pygpgme

If you wish to install using a .repo file, packagecloud can generate one for you on the basis of a name that you specify, e.g. a hostname, and the desired operating system and distribution. The following example script would store your hostname in the variable HOSTNAME, send that information to packagecloud to generate a .repo file, and then store the return value in a file called basho.repo, which is stored in the /etc/yum.repos.d directory:

#!/bin/bash

HOSTNAME=`hostname -f`
FILENAME=/etc/yum.repos.d/basho.repo
OS=el
DIST=5
PACKAGE_CLOUD_RIAK_CS_DIR=https://packagecloud.io/install/repositories/basho/riak-cs
curl "${PACKAGE_CLOUD_RIAK_CS_DIR}/config_file.repo?os=${OS}&dist=${DIST}&name=${HOSTNAME}" > $FILENAME

The name that you submit to packagecloud can be anything you like. The HOSTNAME used above was for example purposes. The resulting file should hold contents like the following:

[basho_riak-cs]
name=basho_riak-cs
baseurl=https://packagecloud.io/basho/riak-cs/el/5/$basesearch
repo_gpgcheck=1
gpgcheck=0
enabled=1
gpgkey=https://packagecloud.io/gpg.key
sslverify=1
sslcacert=/etc/pki/tls/certs/ca-bundle.crt

With your basho.repo file populated, you can update your rpm sources list.

Installing Stanchion on a Node

Stanchion is an application that manages globally unique entities within a Riak CS cluster. It performs actions such as ensuring unique user accounts and bucket names across the whole system. Riak CS cannot be used without Stanchion.

All Riak CS nodes must be configured to communicate with a single Stanchion node. Although multiple Stanchion instances may be installed and running within a cluster, even one on each node, only one may be actively used by the cluster. Running multiple instances of Stanchion simultaneously can produce a variety of problems such as the inability to create user accounts and buckets or the inability to enforce their uniqueness.

Because only one Stanchion instance can be used at any given time, it’s not uncommon for a load balancer to be used to handle Stanchion failover in the event that the primary Stanchion node becomes unavailable. You can achieve this by specifying a load balancer IP as the Stanchion IP in each Riak CS node’s riak-cs.conf. This load balancer must be configured to send all requests to a single Stanchion node, failing over to a secondary Stanchion node if the primary is unavailable. More details can be found in Specifying the Stanchion Node.

Installing Stanchion on Mac OS X

First, download the appropriate package from the downloads page.

curl -O http://s3.amazonaws.com/downloads.basho.com/stanchion/1.4/1.4.3/osx/10.8/stanchion-2.0.0-OSX-x86_64.tar.gz

Then, unpack the downloaded tarball:

stanchion-2.0.0-OSX-x86_64.tar.gz

At this point, you can move on to configuring Riak CS.

Installing Stanchion on Debian or Ubuntu

On Debian or Ubuntu, you can either use apt or install the .deb package manually.

First, install the signing key:

curl http://apt.basho.com/gpg/basho.apt.key | sudo apt-key add -

If the signing key and apt repository have already been added, add the Basho repository to your apt sources list (and update them):

sudo bash -c "echo deb http://apt.basho.com $(lsb_release -sc) main > /etc/apt/sources.list.d/basho.list"
sudo apt-get update

Now, install the stanchion package:

sudo apt-get install stanchion

At this point, you can move on to configuring Riak CS.

sudo dpkg -i <stanchion-package.deb>

Replace <riak-cs-package.deb> with the actual filename for the package you are installing.

At this point, you can move on to configuring Riak CS.

Installing Stanchion on RHEL or CentOS

On RHEL or CentOS, you can either use yum or install the .rpm package manually.

For CentOS/RHEL 6:

sudo yum install http://yum.basho.com/gpg/basho-release-6-1.noarch.rpm

For CentOS/RHEL 5:

sudo yum install http://yum.basho.com/gpg/basho-release-5-1.noarch.rpm

Once the .rpm package has been installed, install Stanchion:

sudo yum install stanchion

At this point, you can move on to configuring Riak CS.

sudo rpm -Uvh <stanchion-package.rpm>

Replace <stanchion-package.rpm> with the actual filename for the package you are installing.

At this point, you can move on to configuring Riak CS.

Note on SELinux

CentOS enables Security-Enhanced Linux (SELinux) by default. If you encounter errors during installation, try disabling SELinux.

What’s Next?

Once you’ve completed installation of Riak CS and Riak, you’re ready to learn more about configuring Riak CS.