Install Pelican

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

Know what you want? Visit our Downloads Repository .

Before Starting

Pelican is distributed as two separate executables:

Binary	Purpose
`pelican`	Client — download and upload data, manage credentials, submit jobs
`pelican-server`	Server — run an Origin, Cache, Director, or Registry

Most users only need the pelican client. If you intend to run a federation service (Origin, Cache, Director, or Registry), you also need pelican-server. On RPM-based Linux systems both binaries are installed together via the pelican and pelican-server RPM packages. For containerized server deployments we recommend our Pelican Docker images, which ship both binaries.

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 , 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 .

Install Pelican Executable

Linux

Install OSDF or Server Package

Pelican has two special RPM packages: pelican-osdf-compat (for running Pelican in the Open Science Data Federation) and pelican-server (which installs the pelican-server binary needed to run federation services such as an Origin or Cache).

The pelican-server RPM requires the pelican RPM 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.

Are you planning to contribute to the OSDF? Check out the OSDF documentation for system administrators here: osg-htc.org/docs/data/osdf/overview/ .

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

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.
If you installed the pelican-server RPM or a server Docker image, verify the server binary is also available:
- Linux and macOS:
```
which pelican-server
```
- Windows:
```
where pelican-server
```

Test the Client’s functionality by running an object get command that downloads a test file from Open Science Data Federation (OSDF) to your current directory


$ pelican object get pelican://osg-htc.org/pelicanplatform/test/hello-world.txt .
hello-world.txt 27.00b / 27.00b [=============================================================================================] Done!

Server Prerequisites

If you plan to run a Pelican server (Origin, Cache, Director, or Registry), the following prerequisites apply to all server types.

Enable Time Synchronization

Pelican servers use tokens for authorization, and these tokens contain time-sensitive claims (such as iat, the “issued at” time). If your server’s clock is significantly out of sync with the federation’s other services, tokens may be rejected and your server may fail to join the federation.

Ensure that Network Time Protocol (NTP) is enabled and actively synchronizing your server’s clock. If your site has a firewall, make sure outgoing UDP traffic on port 123 (NTP) is permitted.

To check whether your system clock is synchronized, run:


timedatectl status

Look for System clock synchronized: yes and NTP service: active in the output. If NTP is not active, you can enable it with:


timedatectl set-ntp true

If your system uses chrony, you can also check synchronization status with:


chronyc tracking

If your system uses ntpd, you can check synchronization status with:


ntpq -p