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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 17 or later (21 recommended)
  • 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

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

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

Step 4: Clone and Build Stirling-PDF​

cd ~/.git &&\
git clone https://github.com/Stirling-Tools/Stirling-PDF.git &&\
cd Stirling-PDF &&\
chmod +x ./gradlew &&\
./gradlew build

Step 5: Move jar to desired location​

After the build process, a .jar file will be generated in the build/libs directory. 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."

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'

Step 7: Run Stirling-PDF​

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 might 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:

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 $location bootRun &;
Icon=$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