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Unix Installation

To run the application without Docker/Podman, you will need to manually install all dependencies and build the necessary components.

Note that some dependencies might not be available in the standard repositories of all Linux distributions, and may require additional steps to install.

The following guide assumes you have a basic understanding of using a command line interface in your operating system.

It should work on most Linux distributions and MacOS. For Windows, you might need to use Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL) for certain steps. The amount of dependencies is to actually reduce overall size, ie installing LibreOffice sub components rather than full LibreOffice package.

You could theoretically use a Distrobox/Toolbox, if your Distribution has old or not all Packages. But you might just as well use the Docker Container then.

Step 1: Prerequisites

Install the following software, if not already installed:

  • Java 21 or later
  • Gradle 7.0 or later (included within repo so not needed on server)
  • Git
  • Python 3.8 (with pip)
  • Make
  • GCC/G++
  • Automake
  • Autoconf
  • libtool
  • pkg-config
  • zlib1g-dev
  • libleptonica-dev

sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install -y git automake autoconf libtool \
    libleptonica-dev pkg-config zlib1g-dev make g++ \
    openjdk-21-jdk python3 python3-pip

sudo dnf install -y git automake autoconf libtool \
    leptonica-devel pkg-config zlib-devel make gcc-c++ \
    java-21-openjdk python3 python3-pip

nix-channel --update
nix-env -iA nixpkgs.jdk21 nixpkgs.git nixpkgs.python38 \
    nixpkgs.gnumake nixpkgs.libgcc nixpkgs.automake \
    nixpkgs.autoconf nixpkgs.libtool nixpkgs.pkg-config \
    nixpkgs.zlib nixpkgs.leptonica

Step 2: Clone and Build jbig2enc (Only required for certain OCR functionality)

mkdir ~/.git
cd ~/.git &&\
git clone https://github.com/agl/jbig2enc.git &&\
cd jbig2enc &&\
./autogen.sh &&\
./configure &&\
make &&\
sudo make install

mkdir ~/.git
cd ~/.git &&\
git clone https://github.com/agl/jbig2enc.git &&\
cd jbig2enc &&\
./autogen.sh &&\
./configure &&\
make &&\
sudo make install

nix-env -iA nixpkgs.jbig2enc

Step 3: Install Additional Software

Next we need to install LibreOffice for conversions, tesseract for OCR, and opencv for pattern recognition functionality.

Install the following software:

  • libreoffice (libreoffice-core libreoffice-common libreoffice-writer libreoffice-calc libreoffice-impress)
  • python3-uno
  • unoserver
  • pngquant
  • tesseract
  • opencv-python-headless

sudo apt-get install -y libreoffice-writer libreoffice-calc libreoffice-impress tesseract-ocr
pip3 install uno opencv-python-headless unoserver pngquant WeasyPrint --break-system-packages

sudo dnf install -y libreoffice-writer libreoffice-calc libreoffice-impress tesseract
pip3 install uno opencv-python-headless unoserver pngquant WeasyPrint

nix-env -iA nixpkgs.libreoffice nixpkgs.tesseract nixpkgs.poppler_utils
pip3 install uno opencv-python-headless unoserver pngquant WeasyPrint

Step 4: Grab latest Stirling-PDF Jar

The JAR can be downloaded in two versions, normal and security

Example for the "normal" version 

sudo wget https://files.stirlingpdf.com/Stirling-PDF.jar
sudo chmod +x Stirling-PDF.jar

Step 5: Move jar to desired location

You can move this file to a desired location, for example, /opt/Stirling-PDF/. You must also move the Script folder within the Stirling-PDF repo that you have downloaded to this directory. This folder is required for the python scripts using OpenCV.

sudo mkdir /opt/Stirling-PDF &&\
sudo mv ./build/libs/Stirling-PDF-*.jar /opt/Stirling-PDF/ &&\
sudo mv scripts /opt/Stirling-PDF/ &&\
echo "Scripts installed."

sudo mkdir /opt/Stirling-PDF &&\
sudo mv ./build/libs/Stirling-PDF-*.jar /opt/Stirling-PDF/ &&\
sudo mv scripts /opt/Stirling-PDF/ &&\
echo "Scripts installed."

mv ./build/libs/Stirling-PDF-*.jar ./Stirling-PDF-*.jar

Step 6: OCR Language Support

If you plan to use the OCR (Optical Character Recognition) functionality, you might need to install language packs for Tesseract if running non-english scanning.

sudo apt update &&\
# All languages
# sudo apt install -y 'tesseract-ocr-*'

# Find languages:
apt search tesseract-ocr-

# View installed languages:
dpkg-query -W tesseract-ocr- | sed 's/tesseract-ocr-//g'

# All languages
# sudo dnf install -y tesseract-langpack-*

# Find languages:
dnf search -C tesseract-langpack-

# View installed languages:
rpm -qa | grep tesseract-langpack | sed 's/tesseract-langpack-//g'

nix-env -iA nixpkgs.tesseract
Note: Nix Package Manager pre-installs almost all the language packs when tesseract is installed. 1. Download the desired language pack(s) by selecting the .traineddata file(s) for the language(s) you need. 2. Place the .traineddata files in the Tesseract tessdata directory: /usr/share/tessdata 3. Please view tesseract install guide for more info.

**IMPORTANT:** DO NOT REMOVE EXISTING `eng.traineddata`, IT'S REQUIRED.

Step 7: Run Stirling-PDF

java -jar /opt/Stirling-PDF/Stirling-PDF-*.jar

java -jar /opt/Stirling-PDF/Stirling-PDF-*.jar

java -jar /opt/Stirling-PDF/Stirling-PDF-*.jar
Since libreoffice, soffice, and conversion tools have their dbus_tmp_dir set as dbus_tmp_dir="/run/user/$(id -u)/libreoffice-dbus", you get the following error: [Thread-7] INFO s.s.SPDF.utils.ProcessExecutor - mkdir: cannot create directory '/run/user/1501': Permission denied To resolve this, use: bash mkdir temp export DBUS_SESSION_BUS_ADDRESS="unix:path=./temp"

Step 8: Adding a Desktop Icon

This will add a modified Appstarter to your Appmenu.

location=$(pwd)/gradlew
image=$(pwd)/docs/stirling-transparent.svg

cat > ~/.local/share/applications/Stirling-PDF.desktop <<EOF
[Desktop Entry]
Name=Stirling PDF;
GenericName=Launch StirlingPDF and open its WebGUI;
Category=Office;
Exec=xdg-open http://localhost:8080 && nohup $location java -jar /opt/Stirling-PDF/Stirling-PDF-*.jar &;
Icon=$image;
Keywords=pdf;
Type=Application;
NoDisplay=false;
Terminal=true;
EOF

Note: Currently the app will run in the background until manually closed.

Optional: Changing the Host and Port

To override the default configuration, you can add the following to /.git/Stirling-PDF/configs/custom_settings.yml file:

server:
  host: 0.0.0.0
  port: 3000

For systemd add in the .env file (see run as service for setting environment variables):

SERVER_HOST="0.0.0.0"
SERVER_PORT="3000"

Note: The file custom_settings.yml is created after the first application launch. To have it before that, you can create the directory and add the file yourself.

Optional: Run Stirling-PDF as a service (requires root).

First create a .env file, where you can store environment variables:

touch /opt/Stirling-PDF/.env

In this file you can add all variables, one variable per line, as stated in the main readme (for example SYSTEM_DEFAULTLOCALE="de-DE").

Create a new file where we store our service settings and open it with nano editor:

nano /etc/systemd/system/stirlingpdf.service

Paste this content, make sure to update the filename of the jar-file. Press Ctrl+S and Ctrl+X to save and exit the nano editor:

[Unit]
Description=Stirling-PDF service
After=syslog.target network.target

[Service]
SuccessExitStatus=143

User=root
Group=root

Type=simple

EnvironmentFile=/opt/Stirling-PDF/.env
WorkingDirectory=/opt/Stirling-PDF
ExecStart=/usr/bin/java -jar Stirling-PDF-0.17.2.jar
ExecStop=/bin/kill -15 $MAINPID

[Install]
WantedBy=multi-user.target

Notify systemd that it has to rebuild its internal service database (you have to run this command every time you make a change in the service file):

sudo systemctl daemon-reload

Enable the service to tell the service to start it automatically:

sudo systemctl enable stirlingpdf.service

See the status of the service:

sudo systemctl status stirlingpdf.service

Manually start/stop/restart the service:

sudo systemctl start stirlingpdf.service
sudo systemctl stop stirlingpdf.service
sudo systemctl restart stirlingpdf.service

Starting unoserver alongside Stirling PDF

To ensure that unoserver is running alongside Stirling PDF, you need to start it with the following command:

unoserver --port 2003 --interface 0.0.0.0

You can add this command to your startup script or systemd service file to ensure it starts automatically with Stirling PDF.

Customizing Paths in settings.yml

If the install path is different, it can be customized in settings.yml:

system:
  customPaths:
    pipeline:
      watchedFoldersDir: "" #Defaults to /pipeline/watchedFolders
      finishedFoldersDir: "" #Defaults to /pipeline/finishedFolders
    operations:
      weasyprint: "" #Defaults to /opt/venv/bin/weasyprint
      unoconvert: "" #Defaults to /opt/venv/bin/unoconvert