Installing Pelican

Install Pelican

This document lists Pelican's operating system requirements and explains how you can download and install the correct Pelican executable.

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Know what you want? Visit our Downloads Repository (opens in a new tab).

Before Starting

Pelican executables can run as a client or a server, and both are packaged in the same executable. However, if you intend to run a server, some non-RPM installations may require additional package dependencies. For this use case (hosting an Origin/Cache, starting your own federation Central Services) we recommend using a containerized version of Pelican from our Pelican Docker images.

Supported Operating Systems

Pelican supports the following operating systems, when running as a client:

Note: Installation of Pelican on other operating systems is possible, but not recommended or supported.

Determine Which Executable To Download

Each section of the following chart contains a link to a specific Pelican executable based on your operating system and CPU architecture. If you don't know your computer's architecture, refer to any specific instructions for your operating system under Install Pelican Executable. The vast majority of non-MacOS operating systems will use an x86_64 architecture.

Once you've determined which executable to use, copy the provided link and continue to Install Pelican Executable.

What Version Should I Download?

In most cases, you should use the highest version of Pelican available because it will contain our latest features and bug fixes. This is the default link provided unless you specify otherwise.

If you need a specific version that isn't the latest, you can select it using the chart's "Version" dropdown. Pelican follows the semantic versioning scheme (opens in a new tab), so, for example, 7.10.5 means:

  • 7 represents the major release (changes in this number represent large changes that may break backwards compatibility)
  • 10 represents feature releases (each increment within the same major release represents new, backward-compatible functionality)
  • 5 represents a bug fix/patch release

The download table above includes Pelican versions as old as v7.6.x To download older versions, please refer to our GitHub release archive (opens in a new tab).

Install Pelican Executable

Linux

MacOS

Windows

Install OSDF or Server Package

Pelican has two special packaging, OSDF and Server. The OSDF packaging, i.e. pelican-osdf-compat, is for running Pelican in the Open Science Data Federation (OSDF). The Server packaging, i.e. pelican-server is for running Pelican services, e.g., an Origin or a Cache.

Both of the packages require Pelican package to be installed first. You may get the following error message if you only install the special package:

Problem: conflicting requests
  - nothing provides pelican needed by pelican-osdf-compat-7.8.5-1.aarch64 from @commandline

To fix the issue, install the Pelican package first by following the preceding instructions.

Verify Pelican Is Installed

If you installed Pelican as a standalone executable, or if you installed Pelican on MacOS or Windows operating systems, you need to add Pelican to your PATH environment variable before proceeding. See instructions for your operating system under the os-specific installation instructions section

  1. Run the following command after you installed Pelican

    • Linux and macOS:

      which pelican

    • Windows:

      where pelican

    If this command outputs a filepath, Pelican is installed correctly. If no output is returned, revisit instructions for your operating system.

  2. Test the Client's functionality by running an object get command that downloads a test file from Open Science Data Federation (OSDF) (opens in a new tab) to your current directory

    $ pelican object get pelican://osg-htc.org/ospool/uc-shared/public/OSG-Staff/validation/test.txt .
test.txt 14.00b / 14.00b [=============================================================================================] Done!

Next Steps

Core ConceptsCentOS, Fedora, or openSUSE