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 Snow Owl Releases 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.

The RPM for Snow Owl can be downloaded from the Downloads section. It can be used to install Snow Owl on any RPM-based system such as OpenSuSE, SLES, CentOS, Red Hat, and Oracle Enterprise.

Download and install

Running Snow Owl with SysV init

Use the chkconfig command to configure Snow Owl to start automatically when the system boots up:

Snow Owl can be started and stopped using the service command:

If Snow Owl fails to start for any reason, it will print the reason for failure to STDOUT. Log files can be found in /var/log/snowowl/.

Running Snow Owl with systemd

To configure Snow Owl to start automatically when the system boots up, run the following commands:

Snow Owl can be started and stopped as follows:

These commands provide no feedback as to whether Snow Owl was started successfully or not. Instead, this information will be written in the log files located in /var/log/snowowl/.

Checking that Snow Owl is running

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

which should give you a response something like this:

Configuring Snow Owl

Snow Owl defaults to using /etc/snowowl for runtime configuration. The ownership of this directory and all files in this directory are set to root:snowowl on package installation and the directory has the setgid flag set so that any files and subdirectories created under /etc/snowowl are created with this ownership as well (e.g., if a keystore is created using the keystore tool). It is expected that this be maintained so that the Snow Owl process can read the files under this directory via the group permissions.

Directory layout of RPM

The RPM places config files, logs, and the data directory in the appropriate locations for an RPM-based system:

The Debian package for Snow Owl can be downloaded from the Downloads section. It can be used to install Snow Owl on any Debian-based system such as Debian and Ubuntu.

Download and install

Running Snow Owl with SysV init

Use the update-rc.d command to configure Snow Owl to start automatically when the system boots up:

Snow Owl can be started and stopped using the service command:

If Snow Owl fails to start for any reason, it will print the reason for failure to STDOUT. Log files can be found in /var/log/snowowl/.

Running Snow Owl with systemd

To configure Snow Owl to start automatically when the system boots up, run the following commands:

Snow Owl can be started and stopped as follows:

These commands provide no feedback as to whether Snow Owl was started successfully or not. Instead, this information will be written in the log files located in /var/log/snowowl/.

Checking that Snow Owl is running

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

which should give you a response something like this:

Configuring Snow Owl

Snow Owl defaults to using /etc/snowowl for runtime configuration. The ownership of this directory and all files in this directory are set to root:snowowl on package installation and the directory has the setgid flag set so that any files and subdirectories created under /etc/snowowl are created with this ownership as well (e.g., if a keystore is created using the keystore tool). It is expected that this be maintained so that the Snow Owl process can read the files under this directory via the group permissions.

Directory layout of Debian package

The Debian package places config files, logs, and the data directory in the appropriate locations for a Debian-based system:

Snow Owl is provided in the following package formats: