Installing Pelican
Linux Standalone Binary

Install Pelican as unprivileged Linux user

This document explains how to install Pelican on a Linux operating system as a standalone binary without any special administrator privileges.

Quickstart

To download the latest version of Pelican and unpack it into the default location for user binaries on most Linux hosts, copy/paste the following into a terminal:

wget -O - "https://dl.pelicanplatform.org/latest/pelican_$(uname -s)_$(uname -m).tar.gz" | tar zx -C ~/.local/bin/ --strip-components=1

To test the binary, execute:

pelican --version

If a version number did not print, then you may have a special platform or configuration on your host; follow the subsequent sections. Otherwise, you're done and may follow the Next Steps.

Download Pelican Binary

  1. Navigate to the Pelican download page to select the Pelican standalone binary you want to install.

  2. In Operating System section, select Linux. In Architectures section, select X86_64 or ARM64 depending on the architecture of your machine.

  3. In the list of candidates, copy the link to pelican_Linux_x86_64.tar.gz or pelican_Linux_arm64.tar.gz, as appropriate.

  4. Change the following command with the link to the binary you copied in the previous step and run the command

    wget <replace-with-the-link-you-copied>
mkdir -p ~/.local/bin
tar -zxvf -C ~/.local/bin/ --strip-components=1 pelican_Linux_$(uname -m).tar.gz

    Note: The shell should expand $(uname -m) with the machine's hardware platform. If it fails, you may need to replace the filename with pelican_Linux_x86_64.tar.gz with pelican_Linux_arm64.tar.gz, as appropriate.

    Example to install Pelican standalone binary on an X86_64 machine:

    $ wget https://dl.pelicanplatform.org/latest/pelican_Linux_x86_64.tar.gz
$ mkdir -p ~/.local/bin
$ tar -zxvf -C ~/.local/bin/ --strip-components=1 pelican_Linux_x86_64.tar.gz

Make Pelican Binary Available

The above command extracted the binary from the tar file and placed it inside .local/bin/ in your home directory. On most Linux distributions, this makes the binary automatically available.

You may test this by running:

command -v pelican

If it outputs a path like this example:

$ command -v pelican
/home/username/.local/bin/pelican

then you may skip this section. If not, you need to alter the PATH environment variable that controls which directories are searched for binaries.

Add Pelican binary to your PATH for the current terminal

To change the PATH variable for only the currently-running terminal session, execute the following line:

export PATH="$HOME/.local/bin/:$PATH"

Example outputs:

$ export PATH="$HOME/.local/bin/:$PATH" # Add ~/.local/bin/ to the PATH
$ pelican --version # Run Pelican binary
 
Version: 7.12.0
Build Date: 2025-01-14T21:33:23Z
Build Commit: 57748c37af7574ec182e5a21db741c4c5a1e61a8
Built By: goreleaser

Add Pelican binary to your PATH permanently

To add the ~/.local/bin/ directory to your PATH variable permanently, execute the following line (assuming you are using the 'bash' shell):

echo "export PATH="\$HOME/.local/bin/:\$PATH" >> ~/.bashrc

Example outputs:

$ echo "export PATH=\$HOME/.local/bin:\$PATH" >> ~/.bashrc # Add the .local/bin folder to your .bashrc file
$ source ~/.bashrc # Apply the change
$ pelican --version # Run Pelican binary
 
Version: 7.12.0
Build Date: 2025-01-14T21:33:23Z
Build Commit: 57748c37af7574ec182e5a21db741c4c5a1e61a8
Built By: goreleaser

Next steps

Alpine LinuxmacOS