ScyllaDB Docs ScyllaDB Manual Getting Started Install ScyllaDB 2026.1 Install ScyllaDB Without root Privileges

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Install ScyllaDB Without root Privileges¶

This document covers installing, uninstalling, and upgrading ScyllaDB using Unified Installer. Unified Installer is recommended when you do not have root privileges to the server. If you have root privileges, we recommend installing ScyllaDB with ScyllaDB Web Installer or by downloading the OS-specific packages (RPMs and DEBs) and installing them with the package manager (dnf and apt).

Prerequisites¶

Ensure your platform is supported by the ScyllaDB version you want to install. See OS Support for information about supported Linux distributions and versions.

Download and Install¶

Download the latest tar.gz file for ScyllaDB version (x86 or ARM) from https://downloads.scylladb.com/downloads/scylla/relocatable/scylladb-<version>/.

Example for version 2025.1:
- Go to https://downloads.scylladb.com/downloads/scylla/relocatable/scylladb-2025.1/
- Download the scylla-unified file for the patch version you want to install. For example, to install 2025.1.9 (x86), download scylla-unified-2025.1.9-0.20251010.6c539463bbda.x86_64.tar.gz.
Uncompress the downloaded package.

Example for version 2025.1.9 (x86) (downloaded in the previous step):
```
tar xvfz scylla-unified-2025.1.9-0.20251010.6c539463bbda.x86_64.tar.gz
```
(Root offline installation only) For root offline installation on Debian-like systems, two additional packages, xfsprogs and mdadm, should be installed to be used in RAID setup.
Install ScyllaDB as a user with non-root privileges:
```
./install.sh --nonroot
```

Configure and Run ScyllaDB¶

Run the ScyllaDB setup script:
```
~/scylladb/sbin/scylla_setup
```
Start ScyllaDB:
```
systemctl --user start scylla-server
```
Verify that ScyllaDB is running:
```
systemctl --user status scylla-server
```

Now you can start using ScyllaDB. Here are some tools you may find useful.

Run nodetool:

~/scylladb/bin/nodetool nodetool status

Run cqlsh:

~/scylladb/bin/cqlsh

Note

You can avoid adding the extended prefix to the commands by exporting the binary directories to PATH:

export PATH=$PATH:~/scylladb/python3/bin:~/scylladb/share/cassandra/bin/:~/scylladb/bin:~/scylladb/sbin

Upgrade/ Downgrade/ Uninstall¶

Upgrade¶

The unified package is based on a binary package; it’s not a RPM / DEB packages, so it doesn’t upgrade or downgrade by yum / apt. To upgrade ScyllaDB, run the install.sh script.

Root install:

./install.sh --upgrade

Nonroot install

./install.sh --upgrade --nonroot

Note

The installation script does not upgrade scylla-tools. You will have to upgrade them separately.

Uninstall¶

Root uninstall:

sudo ./uninstall.sh

Nonroot uninstall

./uninstall.sh --nonroot

Downgrade¶

To downgrade to your original ScyllaDB version, use the Uninstall procedure, then install the original ScyllaDB version.

Next Steps¶

Configure ScyllaDB
Manage your clusters with ScyllaDB Manager
Monitor your cluster and data with ScyllaDB Monitoring
Get familiar with ScyllaDB’s command line reference guide.
Learn about ScyllaDB at ScyllaDB University

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