Installing on Ubuntu and Debian

Danger

• Ubuntu ISO can be downloaded from https://ubuntu.com/download/server. Please choose a Server LTS version.
• Debian ISO can be downloaded from https://www.debian.org/download.

Tip

This installation guide works for other Ubuntu / Debian-based distributions such as Linux Mint.

This guide has been validated with the following:

• Ubuntu 24.04 LTS
• Debian 13

Caution

If you use a proxy to access the Internet, please look at Using the installer.

Preliminaries

Ensure you have enough disk space to install OpenKM and to store the document repository:

$ df -h

Once verified, create the “openkm” user:

$ adduser openkm

If Java 17 is still not installed, please install the following:

$ apt install openjdk-17-jre

Caution

If Java 17 packages are unavailable in your distro repositories, you must download and install them from Eclipse Temurin.

Caution

OpenKM currently only works with Java 17, so once the installation process is complete, verify the default version is Java 17:

$ java -version
openjdk version "17.0.18" 2026-01-20
OpenJDK Runtime Environment (build 17.0.18+8-Ubuntu-124.04.1)
OpenJDK 64-Bit Server VM (build 17.0.18+8-Ubuntu-124.04.1, mixed mode, sharing)

Otherwise, set Java 8 as the default one:

$ update-alternatives --config java

If you prefer a different database, we suggest installing MariaDB:

$ apt install mariadb-server

After that, check if the MariaDB service has already started:

$ systemctl status mariadb

Installing OpenKM

You can choose between installing OpenKM in “/home/openkm” or “/opt”. In any case, go to the selected path and download the installer.

It’s a text-based installer, so you must execute it from the console as root. This is because it needs to install package dependencies and configure OpenKM as a service:

$ java -jar OKMInstaller.jar

Remember to check Using the installer if you are using a proxy to access the Internet.

Caution

The installer will ask for an authorized user and password. If you don’t already have this information, please open a support ticket or contact your sales agent.

When the installation process has finished, please ensure that Java 17 is the default one:

$ java -version

Otherwise, set it as default:

$ update-alternatives --config java

Once verified, start the required services:

$ systemctl start xvfb openkm

You can verify the status of these services this way:

$ systemctl status xvfb openkm

Post-installation checklist

To verify the installation was successful, please use this checklist:

• Verify the default Java is Java 17.
• Verify you can access OpenKM from another computer.
• Try to log in with the default okmAdmin / admin user and password.
• Upload a Word document and check if the thumbnail is generated and the preview is shown.

Troubleshooting

If you have a problem with thumbnail generation, please verify that you have the ImageMagick package installed and that the “convert” application works.

Download a sample image from Sample PNG Image and try to generate a thumbnail:

$ wget https://www.sample-videos.com/img/Sample-png-image-1mb.png
$ convert -thumbnail '80x80>' -background 'white' -flatten Sample-png-image-1mb.png sample-output.png