Install Pelican
This document lists the operating system requirements for Pelican and explains how a user can download and install Pelican.
Before Starting
Pelican executables can run as a client or a server.
To use the client for interacting with data, download and install the Pelican package or Pelican Binary following the instructions below.
For server usage, such as serving your data to a Pelican data federation or to start a new Pelican data federation, you need to run Pelican using Pelican Docker images. It is not recommended to run Pelican server with a binary. Although technically possible, additional software dependencies and configurations are required to make the binary functional for server usage.
Supported Operating Systems
Pelican supports the following operating systems, when running as a client:
- Red Hat Enterprise Linux (CentOS, Fedora, Alma, Rocky, or openSUSE)
- Debian or Ubuntu
- Alpine Linux
- macOS
- Windows
Note: Installation of Pelican on other operating systems is possible, but not recommended or supported.
Download Pelican Binary
Download the binary based on your operating system and CPU architecture. For instructions on how to install the binary, refer to the next section.
What version should I download?
Our versions are built like so: For example: 7.1.2
- 7 represents the major version release
- 1 represents feature releases
- 2 represents a bug fix/patch release
The download table above includes Pelican versions as old as 7.6.x
To download older versions, please refer to the GitHub release page (opens in a new tab).
Install Pelican Binary
Linux
- Install Pelican on Red Hat Enterprise Linux (CentOS, Fedora, Alma, Rocky, or openSUSE)
- Install Pelican on Debian or Ubuntu
- Install Pelican on Alpine Linux
- Install Pelican as a standalone binary
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 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 instructions above.
The server components require xrootd-server >= 5.6.3
because of some of the patches Pelican needs. For Ubuntu users, it is required to install Pelican server package on Ubuntu 24.04
("noble") and above.
Verify Pelican Is Installed
If you installed Pelican as a standalone binary, or if you installed Pelican on macOS or Windows operating systems, you need to add Pelican to your
PATH
environment variable before proceeding. Follow the instructions for Linux, macOS, and Windows.
-
Run the following command after you installed Pelican
-
Linux and macOS:
which pelican
It should output something similar to
/bin/pelican
-
Windows:
where pelican
It should output something similar to
C:\Program Files\Pelican\pelican.exe
-
-
Test Pelican client function 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!