Software Requirements

Note: The system requirements listed below apply to the BI Suite. The BI Suite graphical installation utility, however, will only work on Windows or Linux.

In terms of operating systems, Windows (XP SP2, 2003, Vista, 7) modern Linux distributions (SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop and Server 10 and Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5 are officially supported, but most others should work), Solaris 10, and Mac OS X 10.5 are all officially supported.

No matter which operating system you use, you must have the Sun Java Runtime Environment (JRE) version 1.5 or 1.6 (sometimes referenced as version 5.0 or 6.0, respectively) installed. 1.4.2 and previous versions will not work, and Pentaho does not officially support them.

Note: The GNU Compiler for Java, or GCJ for short, interferes with the way many native Java programs work on Linux, including some of the components of the Pentaho BI Suite. If you are using a Linux distribution that installs GCJ by default (which includes all of the most popular distros), then before you begin installation you must remove, disable, or circumvent GCJ. If you cannot remove it, you can simply ensure that your PENTAHO_JAVA_HOME variable is properly set (instructions for this are below), and add the Java Runtime Environment's /bin/ directory to the beginning of your PATH variable in ~/.bashrc or /etc/environment, then relog before continuing.

Workstations will need to have reasonably modern Web browsers to access Pentaho's Web interface. Internet Explorer 6 or higher; Firefox 3.6 or higher (or the Mozilla or Netscape equivalent); and Safari 2.0.3 or higher will all work.

Your environment can be either 32-bit or 64-bit as long as it meets the above requirements.

The aforementioned configurations are officially supported by Pentaho. Other operating systems such as FreeBSD and OpenBSD; other Java virtual machines like Blackdown; other application servers such as Liferay and Websphere; and other Web browsers like Opera may work without any problems. However, the Pentaho support team will probably not be able to help you if you have trouble installing or using the BI Suite under these conditions.

Note: Some Pentaho client tools, such as Metadata Editor, Aggregation Designer, Pentaho Data Integration, and Design Studio, require that the Eclipse SWT JAR be in your Java classpath. This can be an issue in scenarios where standalone client tools are installed onto a machine that does not also have the BI Server installed, particularly on platforms other than Windows and Linux.
Note: The Pentaho Reporting engine requires a graphical environment in order to create charts. If you are installing the BI Server onto a headless Linux, BSD, or Solaris server and do not have X11R6 on it, you should install the Xvfb package on your server to satisfy the charting dependency.