The 5.7 branch of Magnolia reached End-of-Life on December 31, 2023, as specified in our End-of-life policy. This means the 5.7 branch is no longer maintained or supported. Please upgrade to the latest Magnolia release. By upgrading, you will get the latest release of Magnolia featuring significant improvements to the author and developer experience. For a successful upgrade, please consult our Magnolia 6.2 documentation. If you need help, please contact info@magnolia-cms.com.

This page provides instructions on how to do a basic installation of Magnolia using the Magnolia CLI. You should do this before starting the Hello Magnolia for front-end developers tutorial.

Related topics:

Install Java

Magnolia needs at least a Java Runtime Environment (JRE) to run. See the Certified stack page to confirm the latest supported Java version. Type java -version in a terminal or command prompt. If the system reports a version number, Java is installed on your computer.
$ java -version
java version "10.0.1" 2018-04-17
Java(TM) SE Runtime Environment 18.3 (build 10.0.1+10)

If you don't have Java, install it:

Java is not pre-installed on Mac OS X 10.7 and later. Download the latest Java from Oracle.

On Windows you need a Java SE Development Kit (JDK). The Java Runtime Environment (JRE) is not enough because the Tomcat application server does not recognize it.

What is the difference?

  • JRE is for users who run Java programs on their computer.
  • JDK is for developers who write Java-based applications.

Download and install JDK. By default JDK is installed in C:\Program Files\Java\jdk-10.0.xx\. You can choose another location.

Check JAVA_HOME environment variable

  1. Open the command prompt.
  2. Type set and press ENTER.
  3. Find JAVA_HOME in the command output and verify that the path points to your JDK installation directory, for example C:\Program Files\Java\jdk-10.0.xx.
  4. If JAVA_HOME is missing or it points to the wrong directory, see Set JAVA_HOME environment variable below.

Set JAVA_HOME environment variable

  1. Right-click My Computer and select Properties.
  2. Go to the Advanced tab. 
    (In Windows 7+, right-click Computer and select Advanced System Settings, then Environment variables.)
  3. If the JAVA_HOME environment variable does not exist in User variables or System variables, create it:
    • User variables apply to the currently signed-in user only. Create JAVA_HOME here if you want it to apply only to the currently logged in user. These variables take precedence over system variables.
    • System variables apply to all users. Create JAVA_HOME here if you want it to apply to all users. You must be an administrator to modify a system environment variable. 
  4. Set the value of JAVA_HOME to the path of your JDK installation directory, for example C:\Program Files\Java\jdk-10.0.xx.
  5. Optional step: Add the Magnolia bin directory to the PATH variable, for example C:\Program Files\magnolia\apache-tomcat-x.y\bin. Setting the PATH allows you to issue the Magnolia start and stop commands from anywhere without navigating to the installation directory first. Separate the path from existing paths with a semicolon ( ; ). If you do this, you also need to add CATALINA_HOME to environment variables. Set the value of CATALINA_HOME to the Tomcat installation directory, for example C:\Program Files\magnolia\apache-tomcat-x.y
  6. Click OK.
  7. Go back to Check JAVA_HOME environment variable above and test that the variable is found and has the correct value. You need to open a new command prompt since environment variables are session specific.

Alternatively you can set JAVA_HOME with a batch file. Add this line to /apache-tomcat/bin/magnolia_control.bat:

set JAVA_HOME=C:\Program Files\Java\jdk-10.0.xx

The set command creates the JAVA_HOME environment variable and sets its value to the JDK directory. The command is executed when Magnolia starts.

Download the latest Java from Oracle. The installation directory varies from one Linux system to another. For example, on Ubuntu Linux 10 the OpenJDK Runtime Environment is installed in /usr/lib/jvm/java-10-openjdk/jre by default.

Download the latest Java from Oracle. You can install it in any directory such as /usr/java .

Install Node.js

Magnolia CLI is an npm package providing a command line interface (CLI) tool to set up and facilitate light development with Magnolia. The Magnolia CLI tool runs on Node.js. If you do not have Node.js installed, go to Node.js and download and install the latest LTS version. 

To check the version of your node installation run the following command in a shell:

node -v

Install Magnolia CLI

Run the following command in a shell to install Magnolia CLI:
npm install @magnolia/cli -g

Depending on your permissions and the location where you have installed Node.js, you may have to execute the command above with root permissions. Without installation permissions you will notice messages such as npm ERR! in the shell.

On Linux or Mac OS X to run this command as root use:

sudo npm install @magnolia/cli -g

If the installation is successful, you see the following or a similar output in the shell:

/usr/bin/mgnl -> /usr/lib/node_modules/@magnolia/cli/bin/mgnl.js

> spawn-sync@1.0.15 postinstall /usr/lib/node_modules/@magnolia/cli/node_modules/spawn-sync
> node postinstall

+ @magnolia/cli@2.2.0
added 209 packages in 11.40

If you already installed Magnolia CLI, update to the latest version:

npm update @magnolia/cli -g

Once you have installed Magnolia CLI, test the installation by running the following command in the shell:

mgnl help 

  Usage: mgnl <command> [options]

  A tool to setup and facilitate light development with Magnolia CMS

  Options:

    -V, --version  output the version number
    -h, --help     output usage information

  Commands:

    jumpstart               download and setup a Magnolia CMS instance for development.
    start                   start up a Magnolia CMS instance. To stop it, enter CTRL+C
    add-availability        add component availability.
    build                   scan a node_modules folder for npm packages with the keyword "magnolia-light-module" (in package.json) and extract them to a directory of choice.
    create-component        create a component and optionally add availability for it.
    create-light-module     create a light module.
    create-page             create a page template.
    customize-local-config  extract "mgnl-cli-prototypes" folder and "mgnl-cli.json" file to customize CLI configuration.
    install                 install a light module from npm to the local Magnolia instance.
    search                  search for a light module on npm.
    tab-completion          install tab autocomplete feature for Bash, zsh or PowerShell
    help [cmd]              display help for [cmd]

  mgnl: 2.2.0 node: v6.11.0 os: darwin

Install Magnolia

Use the jumpstart command to install Magnolia. This command downloads, unpacks and pre-configures a Magnolia bundle of your choice. 

The jumpstart command automatically creates a light modules directory for you in the current folder. If you already have a different directory that you want to use for light modules, use the -p option with the jumpstart command to specify the path to your existing light modules folder. For example: mgnl jumpstart -p /Users/<username>/<shared-projects>/light-modules/

To install Magnolia:

  1. Change to the directory to where you want to install the Magnolia bundle. For example:

    cd /Users/<username>/dev/

  2. Execute the Magnolia CLI jumpstart command:

    mgnl jumpstart

  3. Choose the magnolia-community-demo-webapp containing Magnolia Community Edition bundled with the Travel Demo and a Tomcat server. It creates folders for the Tomcat server and for the light modules according to the CLI configuration. 

    Once the setup operation is complete, you should see a message similar to this one:

    info Magnolia has been successfully setup for light development!
info You can now open a new terminal tab or window and start it up with the CLI command 'mgnl start'
info Magnolia will be ready after a few seconds at localhost:8080/magnoliaAuthor. Username and password is superuser

    The following files and folders are created:

    dev/
├── apache-tomcat/
│   ├── bin/
│   ├── conf/ll
│   ├── lib/
│   ├── logs/
│   ├── temp/
│   └── webapps/
├── light-modules/                
└── downloads


Start Magnolia

Go to the parent directory of the apache-tomcat directory and execute the Magnolia CLI start command:
mgnl start

When starting for the first time, Magnolia runs a web update and automatically installs all its modules.

Log in

Go to http://localhost:8080/magnoliaAuthor and sign in as:
  • Username: superuser
  • Password: superuser

The app launcher is displayed and Magnolia is ready to use.

(info) superuser is a system administrator account that has permissions to do everything. It is useful for testing.


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