Installing Cassandra

Prerequisites

Access as root user or user having root privileges
Latest version of Java 8

Download Java 8 latest version from Oracle official website and install on server

# /opt/jdk1.8.0_241/bin/java -version java version "1.8.0_241" Java(TM) SE Runtime Environment (build 1.8.0_241-b07) Java HotSpot(TM) 64-Bit Server VM (build 25.241-b07, mixed mode)
Latest version of Python 2.7 or Python 3.6+

Python 2.7 is available in the Linux OS repository can be be installed using YUM.

# /usr/bin/python --version Python 2.7.5
Create a new user "cassandra". This user will be used to run cassandra service.
# useradd cassandra
# id cassandra uid=1003(cassandra) gid=1003(cassandra) groups=1003(cassandra)

Install Cassandra

Login as root user or with user having root privileges
Download Cassandra binary tarball from the official website
# curl -OL http://apache.mirror.digitalpacific.com.au/cassandra/4.0.0/apache-cassandra-4.0.0-bin.tar.gz % Total % Received % Xferd Average Speed Time Time Time Current Dload Upload Total Spent Left Speed 100 44.3M 100 44.3M 0 0 3404k 0 0:00:13 0:00:13 --:--:-- 4290k
Extract Cassandra binary tarball in /opt
# tar xfz apache-cassandra-4.0.0-bin.tar.gz -C /opt/
Change ownership of cassandra install directory to cassandra user
# chown -R cassandra:cassandra /opt/apache-cassandra-4.0.0/
Check the extracted contents in /opt
# ls -l /opt/apache-cassandra-4.0.0/ drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 230 Aug 21 12:23 bin -rw-r--r-- 1 cassandra cassandra 4832 Jul 22 17:02 CASSANDRA-14092.txt -rw-r--r-- 1 cassandra cassandra 431737 Jul 22 17:02 CHANGES.txt drwxr-xr-x 3 cassandra cassandra 4096 Aug 21 12:23 conf drwxr-xr-x 3 cassandra cassandra 33 Aug 21 12:23 doc drwxr-xr-x 3 cassandra cassandra 4096 Aug 21 12:23 lib -rw-r--r-- 1 cassandra cassandra 12960 Jul 22 17:02 LICENSE.txt -rw-r--r-- 1 cassandra cassandra 135759 Jul 22 17:02 NEWS.txt -rw-r--r-- 1 cassandra cassandra 349 Jul 22 17:02 NOTICE.txt drwxr-xr-x 3 cassandra cassandra 230 Aug 21 12:23 pylib drwxr-xr-x 4 cassandra cassandra 169 Aug 21 12:23 tools
Create cassandra log directory
# mkdir /var/log/cassandra


Open a new SSH terminal and login as cassandra user
Update cassandra user profile to include PATH for java & cassandra binaries
# vi .bash_profile PATH=$PATH:$HOME/.local/bin:$HOME/bin:/opt/jdk1.8.0_241/bin:/opt/apache-cassandra-4.0.0/bin
Bring the profile changes in effect
# source .bash_profile
Repeat the same step for root user and update the profile to include cassandra and java binary install path

Setup Cassandra as Systemd service

Open a new SSH terminal and login as root user or user having root privileges
Create cassandra service systemd file

Modify the below systemd config file and update the highlighted options with correct binary path for Java and Cassandra. In our case:

Cassandra is installed under /opt/apache-cassandra-4.0.0 and
Java is installed under /opt/jdk1.8.0_241

# vi /etc/init.d/cassandra #!/bin/bash # # /etc/init.d/cassandra # # Startup script for Cassandra # # chkconfig: 2345 80 20 # description: Starts and stops Cassandra # pidfile: /var/run/cassandra/cassandra.pid ### BEGIN INIT INFO # Provides: cassandra # Required-Start: $remote_fs $network $named $time # Required-Stop: $remote_fs $network $named $time # Should-Start: ntp mdadm # Should-Stop: ntp mdadm # Default-Start: 2 3 4 5 # Default-Stop: 0 1 6 # Short-Description: distributed storage system for structured data # Description: Cassandra is a distributed (peer-to-peer) system for # the management and storage of structured data. ### END INIT INFO . /etc/rc.d/init.d/functions export CASSANDRA_HOME=/opt/apache-cassandra-4.0.0 export CASSANDRA_CONF=/opt/apache-cassandra-4.0.0/conf export CASSANDRA_INCLUDE=$CASSANDRA_HOME/bin/cassandra.in.sh export CASSANDRA_OWNR=cassandra NAME="cassandra" log_file=/var/log/cassandra/cassandra.log pid_file=/var/run/cassandra/cassandra.pid lock_file=/var/lock/subsys/$NAME CASSANDRA_PROG=/opt/apache-cassandra-4.0.0/bin/cassandra # The first existing directory is used for JAVA_HOME if needed. JVM_SEARCH_DIRS="/opt/jdk1.8.0_241 /usr/lib/jvm/jre /usr/lib/jvm/jre-1.8.* /usr/lib/jvm/java-1.8.*/jre" # Read configuration variable file if it is present [ -r /etc/default/$NAME ] && . /etc/default/$NAME # If JAVA_HOME has not been set, try to determine it. if [ -z "$JAVA_HOME" ]; then # If java is in PATH, use a JAVA_HOME that corresponds to that. This is # both consistent with how the upstream startup script works, and with # the use of alternatives to set a system JVM (as is done on Debian and # Red Hat derivatives). java="`/usr/bin/which java 2>/dev/null`" if [ -n "$java" ]; then java=`readlink --canonicalize "$java"` JAVA_HOME=`dirname "\`dirname \$java\`"` else # No JAVA_HOME set and no java found in PATH; search for a JVM. for jdir in $JVM_SEARCH_DIRS; do if [ -x "$jdir/bin/java" ]; then JAVA_HOME="$jdir" break fi done # if JAVA_HOME is still empty here, punt. fi fi JAVA="$JAVA_HOME/bin/java" export JAVA_HOME JAVA case "$1" in start) # Cassandra startup echo -n "Starting Cassandra: " [ -d `dirname "$pid_file"` ] || \ install -m 755 -o $CASSANDRA_OWNR -g $CASSANDRA_OWNR -d `dirname $pid_file` runuser -u $CASSANDRA_OWNR -- $CASSANDRA_PROG -p $pid_file > $log_file 2>&1 retval=$? chown root.root $pid_file [ $retval -eq 0 ] && touch $lock_file echo "OK" ;; stop) # Cassandra shutdown echo -n "Shutdown Cassandra: " runuser -u $CASSANDRA_OWNR -- kill `cat $pid_file` retval=$? [ $retval -eq 0 ] && rm -f $lock_file for t in `seq 40`; do status -p $pid_file cassandra > /dev/null 2>&1 retval=$? if [ $retval -eq 3 ]; then echo "OK" exit 0 else sleep 0.5 fi; done # Adding a sleep here to give jmx time to wind down (CASSANDRA-4483). Not ideal... # Adam Holmberg suggests this, but that would break if the jmx port is changed # for t in `seq 40`; do netstat -tnlp | grep "0.0.0.0:7199" > /dev/null 2>&1 && sleep 0.1 || break; done sleep 5 status -p $pid_file cassandra > /dev/null 2>&1 retval=$? if [ $retval -eq 3 ]; then echo "OK" else echo "ERROR: could not stop $NAME" exit 1 fi ;; reload|restart) $0 stop $0 start ;; status) status -p $pid_file cassandra exit $? ;; *) echo "Usage: `basename $0` start|stop|status|restart|reload" exit 1 esac exit 0
Make the systemd file executable
# chmod 755 /etc/init.d/cassandra
For RHEL7 add the service under systemctl
# systemctl daemon-reload

Start Cassandra Service

Start cassandra service using systemd
# systemctl start cassandra
Check Status of Cassandra Service
Run systemd status command to check status of cassandra service
# /systemctl status cassandra cassandra.service - LSB: distributed storage system for structured data Loaded: loaded (/etc/rc.d/init.d/cassandra; bad; vendor preset: disabled) Active: active (running) since Sun 2021-08-22 19:48:19 EDT; 26s ago Docs: man:systemd-sysv-generator(8) Process: 7040 ExecStop=/etc/rc.d/init.d/cassandra stop (code=exited, status=0/SUCCESS) Process: 7127 ExecStart=/etc/rc.d/init.d/cassandra start (code=exited, status=0/SUCCESS) Main PID: 7212 (java) CGroup: /system.slice/cassandra.service 7212 /opt/jdk1.8.0_241/bin/java -ea -da:net.openhft... -XX:+UseThreadPriorities -XX:+HeapDumpOnOutOfMemoryError -Xss256k... Aug 22 19:48:18 cassandra.linuxtechspace.com systemd[1]: Starting LSB: distributed storage system for structured data... Aug 22 19:48:19 cassandra.linuxtechspace.com runuser[7135]: pam_unix(runuser:session): session opened for user cassandra by (uid=0) Aug 22 19:48:19 cassandra.linuxtechspace.com cassandra[7127]: Starting Cassandra: OK Aug 22 19:48:19 cassandra.linuxtechspace.com systemd[1]: Started LSB: distributed storage system for structured data.
Check status using nodetool command
# /opt/apache-cassandra-4.0.0/bin/nodetool status Datacenter: datacenter1 ======================= Status=Up/Down |/ State=Normal/Leaving/Joining/Moving -- Address Load Tokens Owns (effective) Host ID Rack UN 127.0.0.1 133.03 KiB 16 100.0% 4c2e6eea-65b6-4baa-bf5f-7df7368a01fa rack1
Cassandra install is complete. This is only a basic install.