Snow Owl Docs
9.x
9.x
  • Introduction
  • Quick Start
    • Create your first Resource
    • Import SNOMED CT
    • Find concepts by ID or term
    • Find concepts using ECL
    • Next steps
  • Setup and Administration
    • Plan your deployment
      • Technology stack
      • Hardware requirements
      • Software requirements
    • Configuration
      • Release package
      • Folder structure
      • Get SSL certificate (optional)
      • Preload dataset (optional)
      • Configure Elastic Cloud (optional)
      • System settings
      • Spin up the service
    • Upgrade Snow Owl
    • Backup and restore
      • Backup
      • Restore
    • User management
    • Advanced installation methods
      • Install Snow Owl
        • Using an archive
        • Using RPM
        • Using DEB
      • System configuration
        • Disable swapping
        • File descriptors
        • Virtual memory
        • Number of threads
      • Configure Snow Owl
      • Start Snow Owl
      • Stop Snow Owl
    • Advanced configuration
      • Setting JVM options
      • Logging configuration
      • Elasticsearch configuration
      • Security
        • File realm
        • LDAP realm
  • Terminology Standards
    • SNOMED CT
      • Extensions and Snow Owl
      • Scenarios
        • Single Edition
        • Single Extension Authoring
        • Multi Extension Authoring
      • Development
      • Releases
      • Upgrading
    • LOINC
    • Socialstyrelsen Standards
      • ICD-10-SE
      • ICF
      • KVÅ (KKÅ/KMÅ)
  • Content syndication
  • REST APIs
    • FHIR API
      • CodeSystem
      • ValueSet
      • ConceptMap
    • Native API
      • Resource management
      • Content access
      • Content management
      • SNOMED CT API
        • Branching
        • Compare
        • Concepts
        • Reference Sets
  • Release notes
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On this page
  • Download and install the zip package
  • Download and install the .tar.gz package
  • Running Snow Owl from the command line
  • Checking that Snow Owl is running
  • Running in the background
  • Directory layout of .zip and .tar.gz archives:
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  1. Setup and Administration
  2. Advanced installation methods
  3. Install Snow Owl

Using an archive

Last updated 1 year ago

Snow Owl is provided as a .zip and as a .tar.gz package. These packages can be used to install Snow Owl on any system.

The latest stable version of Snow Owl can be found on the page.

Download and install the zip package

The .zip archive for Snow Owl can be downloaded and installed as follows:

wget https://github.com/b2ihealthcare/snow-owl/releases/download/<version>/snow-owl-oss-<version>.zip
wget https://github.com/b2ihealthcare/snow-owl/releases/download/<version>/snow-owl-oss-<version>.zip.sha512
shasum -a 512 -c snowowl-oss-<version>.zip.sha512 # compares the SHA of the downloaded archive, should output: `snowowl-oss-<version>.zip: OK.`
unzip snowowl-oss-<version>.zip
cd snowowl-oss-<version>/ # This directory is known as `$SO_HOME`

Download and install the .tar.gz package

The .tar.gz archive for Snow Owl can be downloaded and installed as follows:

wget https://github.com/b2ihealthcare/snow-owl/releases/download/<version>/snow-owl-oss-<version>.tar.gz
wget https://github.com/b2ihealthcare/snow-owl/releases/download/<version>/snow-owl-oss-<version>.tar.gz.sha512
shasum -a 512 -c snowowl-oss-<version>.tar.gz.sha512 # compares the SHA of the downloaded archive, should output: `snowowl-oss-<version>.tar.gz: OK.` 
tar -xzf snowowl-oss-<version>.tar.gz
cd snowowl-oss-<version>/ # This directory is known as `$SO_HOME`

Running Snow Owl from the command line

Snow Owl can be started from the command line as follows:

./bin/startup

By default, Snow Owl runs in the foreground, prints its logs to the standard output (stdout), and can be stopped by pressing Ctrl-C.

Checking that Snow Owl is running

You can test that your instance is running by sending an HTTP request to Snow Owl's status endpoint:

curl http://localhost:8080/snowowl/info

which should give you a response like this:

{
  "version": "<version_number>",
  "description": "You Know, for Terminologies",
  "repositories": {
    "items": [
      {
        "id": "snomedStore",
        "health": "GREEN"
      }
    ]
  }
}

Running in the background

You can send the Snow Owl process to the background using a combination of nohup and the & character:

nohup ./bin/startup > /dev/null &

Log messages can be found in the $SO_HOME/serviceability/logs/ directory.

To shut down Snow Owl, you can kill the process ID directly:

kill <pid>

or using the provided shutdown script:

./bin/shutdown

Directory layout of .zip and .tar.gz archives:

The .zip and .tar.gz packages are entirely self-contained. All files and directories are, by default, contained within $SO_HOME — the directory created when unpacking the archive.

This is very convenient because you don’t have to create any directories to start using Snow Owl, and uninstalling Snow Owl is as easy as removing the $SO_HOME directory. However, it is advisable to change the default locations of the config directory, the data directory, and the logs directory so that you do not delete important data later on.

Type
Description
Default Location
Setting

home

Snow Owl home directory or $SO_HOME

Directory created by unpacking the archive

bin

Binary scripts including startup/shutdown to start/stop the instance

$SO_HOME/bin

conf

Configuration files including snowowl.yml

$SO_HOME/configuration

data

The location of the data files and resources.

$SO_HOME/resources

path.data

logs

Log files location.

$SO_HOME/serviceability/logs

Snow Owl Releases
SO_PATH_CONF