Can't run Sonar Server caused by Elasticsearch cannot running as root

Question

I'm trying to install SonarQube : i ve followed those steps :

Setting up SOnarQube Tuto : here

To summarize it :

• Downloading Sonar and moving it to /opt/sonar

• adding those coonfig steps to /opt/sonar/conf/sonar.properties :

  sonar.jdbc.username=sonar sonar.jdbc.password=sonar

sonar.jdbc.url=jdbc:mysql://localhost:3306/sonar?useUnicode=true&characterEncoding=utf8&rewriteBatchedStatements=true&useConfigs=maxPerformance

and

sonar.web.host=127.0.0.1
sonar.web.context=/sonar
sonar.web.port=9000

• implementing sonar as a service:

sudo cp /opt/sonar/bin/linux-x86-64/sonar.sh /etc/init.d/sonar

sudo gedit /etc/init.d/sonar

Insert two new lines:

SONAR_HOME=/opt/sonar
PLATFORM=linux-x86-64
Modify the following lines:

WRAPPER_CMD="${SONAR_HOME}/bin/${PLATFORM}/wrapper"
WRAPPER_CONF="${SONAR_HOME}/conf/wrapper.conf"

...

PIDDIR="/var/run"
Register as a Linux service:

sudo update-rc.d -f sonar remove
sudo chmod 755 /etc/init.d/sonar
sudo update-rc.d sonar defaults

After those steps : i ve tried to run Sonar from : localhost:9000/sonar and after executing : sudo /etc/init.d/sonar start ` Strangely , it didsn't run .

SO when i run `sudo /etc/init.d/sonar status , i discover that it goes steps after few seconds , and it throws some error in it log file , like the following :

es.log:

2017.12.09 18:05:14 ERROR es[][o.e.b.Bootstrap] Exception
java.lang.RuntimeException: can not run elasticsearch as root
    at org.elasticsearch.bootstrap.Bootstrap.initializeNatives(Bootstrap.java:106) ~[elasticsearch-5.6.3.jar:5.6.3]
    at org.elasticsearch.bootstrap.Bootstrap.setup(Bootstrap.java:195) ~[elasticsearch-5.6.3.jar:5.6.3]
    at org.elasticsearch.bootstrap.Bootstrap.init(Bootstrap.java:342) [elasticsearch-5.6.3.jar:5.6.3]
    at org.elasticsearch.bootstrap.Elasticsearch.init(Elasticsearch.java:132) [elasticsearch-5.6.3.jar:5.6.3]
    at org.elasticsearch.bootstrap.Elasticsearch.execute(Elasticsearch.java:123) [elasticsearch-5.6.3.jar:5.6.3]
    at org.elasticsearch.cli.EnvironmentAwareCommand.execute(EnvironmentAwareCommand.java:70) [elasticsearch-5.6.3.jar:5.6.3]
    at org.elasticsearch.cli.Command.mainWithoutErrorHandling(Command.java:134) [elasticsearch-5.6.3.jar:5.6.3]
    at org.elasticsearch.cli.Command.main(Command.java:90) [elasticsearch-5.6.3.jar:5.6.3]
    at org.elasticsearch.bootstrap.Elasticsearch.main(Elasticsearch.java:91) [elasticsearch-5.6.3.jar:5.6.3]
    at org.elasticsearch.bootstrap.Elasticsearch.main(Elasticsearch.java:84) [elasticsearch-5.6.3.jar:5.6.3]
2017.12.09 18:05:14 WARN  es[][o.e.b.ElasticsearchUncaughtExceptionHandler] uncaught exception in thread [main]
org.elasticsearch.bootstrap.StartupException: java.lang.RuntimeException: can not run elasticsearch as root
    at org.elasticsearch.bootstrap.Elasticsearch.init(Elasticsearch.java:136) ~[elasticsearch-5.6.3.jar:5.6.3]
    at org.elasticsearch.bootstrap.Elasticsearch.execute(Elasticsearch.java:123) ~[elasticsearch-5.6.3.jar:5.6.3]
    at org.elasticsearch.cli.EnvironmentAwareCommand.execute(EnvironmentAwareCommand.java:70) ~[elasticsearch-5.6.3.jar:5.6.3]
    at org.elasticsearch.cli.Command.mainWithoutErrorHandling(Command.java:134) ~[elasticsearch-5.6.3.jar:5.6.3]
    at org.elasticsearch.cli.Command.main(Command.java:90) ~[elasticsearch-5.6.3.jar:5.6.3]
    at org.elasticsearch.bootstrap.Elasticsearch.main(Elasticsearch.java:91) ~[elasticsearch-5.6.3.jar:5.6.3]
    at org.elasticsearch.bootstrap.Elasticsearch.main(Elasticsearch.java:84) ~[elasticsearch-5.6.3.jar:5.6.3]
Caused by: java.lang.RuntimeException: can not run elasticsearch as root
    at org.elasticsearch.bootstrap.Bootstrap.initializeNatives(Bootstrap.java:106) ~[elasticsearch-5.6.3.jar:5.6.3]
    at org.elasticsearch.bootstrap.Bootstrap.setup(Bootstrap.java:195) ~[elasticsearch-5.6.3.jar:5.6.3]
    at org.elasticsearch.bootstrap.Bootstrap.init(Bootstrap.java:342) ~[elasticsearch-5.6.3.jar:5.6.3]
    at org.elasticsearch.bootstrap.Elasticsearch.init(Elasticsearch.java:132) ~[elasticsearch-5.6.3.jar:5.6.3]
    ... 6 more

Any suggestions ??

Answer 1

Change the root access to the sonar file. Try running in normal user access.

chown <another user>:<user group> sonar.sh

Answer 2

SonarSource has upgraded the Elasticsearch tool used as a part of the latest SonarQube LTS version. As a result SonarQube cannot be run as a root. See this blog and the SonarQube 6.6 upgrade notes and this SO question.

Answer 3

I was facing the same issue and spend good amount of time before getting the solution.

Error was same as

2017.12.09 18:05:14 ERROR es[][o.e.b.Bootstrap] Exception
java.lang.RuntimeException: can not run elasticsearch as root
    at org.elasticsearch.bootstrap.Bootstrap.initializeNatives(Bootstrap.java:106) ~[elasticsearch-5.6.3.jar:5.6.3]
    at org.elasticsearch.bootstrap.Bootstrap.setup(Bootstrap.java:195) ~[elasticsearch-5.6.3.jar:5.6.3]

Solution Create a ‘sonar’ user using adduser command //I was using linux system chown -R sonar sonar-install-folder/ Edit the sonar.sh file sonar-install-folder/bin/linux-x86-6 in start script and change the #RUN_AS_USER to be RUN_AS_USER=sonar

And then use below commands

./sonar.sh stop

Gracefully stopping SonarQube... SonarQube was not running.

./sonar.sh start

Starting SonarQube... Started SonarQube.

./sonar.sh status

SonarQube is running (22100).

So, basically elastic search doesnt require to be run by root user. By default the RUN_AS_USER was commented in the startup script which was picking my current user which was root, and then some linux permission rules come into picture due to which elasticsearch process was not getting up and which was causing sonar process to go down as well.

It was evident from sonar.log

[1]: max virtual memory areas vm.max_map_count [65530] is too low, increase to at least [262144]
2020.05.08 06:36:36 WARN  app[][o.s.a.p.AbstractManagedProcess] Process exited with exit value [es]: 78
2020.05.08 06:36:36 INFO  app[][o.s.a.SchedulerImpl] Process[es] is stopped
2020.05.08 06:36:36 INFO  app[][o.s.a.SchedulerImpl] SonarQube is stopped