Installation

Choose a method

In every case, plan for 2 CPUs and 4 GB of memory for a team (as a guide), 10 GB of disk plus the size of your documents, and port 8080 or a reverse proxy for HTTPS.

Docker Compose

Two containers, the application and PostgreSQL 18. The docker-compose.yml file is published with each release of Lore:

curl -LO https://github.com/dada-core/lore/releases/latest/download/docker-compose.yml
echo "DB_PASSWORD=$(openssl rand -base64 24)" > .env
docker compose up -d

Invoke-WebRequest https://github.com/dada-core/lore/releases/latest/download/docker-compose.yml -OutFile docker-compose.yml
Set-Content .env "DB_PASSWORD=choose-a-long-password"
docker compose up -d

On Windows and macOS, this installation is fine for a trial. In production, prefer a Linux server.

The .env file holds the database password. Keep it with your secrets: you also need it to restore a backup.

On a server, add to this file the address your team will use to open Lore, replacing lore.example.com, then restart the containers. This address appears in invitation links. See Environment variables.

echo "LORE_PUBLIC_URL=https://lore.example.com" >> .env
docker compose up -d

The downloaded file describes both containers and their volumes:

# Lore and its PostgreSQL database.
#
#   echo "DB_PASSWORD=$(openssl rand -base64 24)" > .env
#   docker compose up -d
#
# Then open http://localhost:8080: the setup code is in the logs (docker compose logs lore).

services:
  lore:
    image: ghcr.io/dada-core/lore:0.1
    ports:
      - "8080:8080"
    environment:
      # The address your team will use to open Lore: it appears in invitation links.
      LORE_PUBLIC_URL: ${LORE_PUBLIC_URL:-http://localhost:8080}
      LORE_DB_PASSWORD: ${DB_PASSWORD:?Set DB_PASSWORD in the .env file next to docker-compose.yml}
    volumes:
      - files:/var/lib/lore/files
    depends_on:
      postgres:
        condition: service_healthy
    restart: unless-stopped

  postgres:
    image: pgvector/pgvector:pg18
    environment:
      POSTGRES_DB: lore
      POSTGRES_USER: lore
      POSTGRES_PASSWORD: ${DB_PASSWORD:?Set DB_PASSWORD in the .env file next to docker-compose.yml}
    volumes:
      - db:/var/lib/postgresql
    healthcheck:
      test: ["CMD", "pg_isready", "-U", "lore", "-d", "lore"]
      interval: 5s
      timeout: 3s
      retries: 10
    restart: unless-stopped

volumes:
  files:
  db:

To check that both containers are running:

docker compose ps

.deb and .rpm packages

The package holds Lore and its own Java runtime: there is nothing else to install but PostgreSQL 18. It creates the lore system user and the lore service, without starting it.

Supported distributions

Continuous integration tests the package installation on each of these distributions on amd64 (x86_64), and on Ubuntu 22.04, Debian 13, AlmaLinux 8 and 10 on arm64 (aarch64).

1. Install PostgreSQL 18

Lore needs PostgreSQL 18 or later, with the unaccent extension, which ships with PostgreSQL. The database may also run on another server.

sudo apt install postgresql-18

sudo apt install postgresql-common gnupg
sudo /usr/share/postgresql-common/pgdg/apt.postgresql.org.sh
sudo apt install postgresql-18

sudo dnf install https://download.postgresql.org/pub/repos/yum/reporpms/EL-8-$(uname -m)/pgdg-redhat-repo-latest.noarch.rpm
sudo dnf -qy module disable postgresql
sudo dnf install postgresql18-server postgresql18-contrib
sudo /usr/pgsql-18/bin/postgresql-18-setup initdb
sudo systemctl enable --now postgresql-18

sudo dnf module enable postgresql:18
sudo dnf install postgresql-server postgresql-contrib
sudo postgresql-setup --initdb
sudo sed -i 's/ident$/scram-sha-256/' /var/lib/pgsql/data/pg_hba.conf
sudo systemctl enable --now postgresql

sudo dnf install postgresql18-server postgresql18-contrib
sudo postgresql-setup --initdb
sudo sed -i 's/ident$/scram-sha-256/' /var/lib/pgsql/data/pg_hba.conf
sudo systemctl enable --now postgresql

The RHEL commands also apply to Rocky Linux and AlmaLinux. On RHEL 9 and 10, the sed command replaces the ident authentication of local connections with a password, the one Lore uses.

Then create Lore’s role and database:

sudo -u postgres createuser --pwprompt lore
sudo -u postgres createdb --owner lore lore

2. Install Lore

curl -LO https://github.com/dada-core/lore/releases/download/v0.1.0/lore_0.1.0_amd64.deb
sudo apt install ./lore_0.1.0_amd64.deb

curl -LO https://github.com/dada-core/lore/releases/download/v0.1.0/lore-0.1.0-1.x86_64.rpm
sudo dnf install ./lore-0.1.0-1.x86_64.rpm

On an arm64 server, take lore_0.1.0_arm64.deb or lore-0.1.0-1.aarch64.rpm.

3. Configure and start

In /etc/lore/lore.env, set Lore’s address (LORE_PUBLIC_URL) and the database password you chose (LORE_DB_PASSWORD). Then:

sudo systemctl enable --now lore
sudo journalctl -u lore | grep -A 3 "setup code"

The second command shows the initial setup code. On RHEL, open the port if the firewall is on: sudo firewall-cmd --permanent --add-port=8080/tcp, then sudo firewall-cmd --reload.

File locations

Universal archive

The archive runs on any system with Java 21 or later (Eclipse Temurin, for example) and a PostgreSQL 18 database, prepared as for the packages.

curl -LO https://github.com/dada-core/lore/releases/download/v0.1.0/lore-0.1.0.tar.gz
tar xzf lore-0.1.0.tar.gz
cd lore-0.1.0
cp conf/lore.env.example conf/lore.env
bin/lore

Invoke-WebRequest https://github.com/dada-core/lore/releases/download/v0.1.0/lore-0.1.0.zip -OutFile lore-0.1.0.zip
Expand-Archive lore-0.1.0.zip .
cd lore-0.1.0
Copy-Item conf\lore.env.example conf\lore.env
bin\lore.cmd

Before you start Lore, set Lore’s address and the database access in conf/lore.env. Lore then runs in the foreground and prints the initial setup code in the terminal. For a permanent service on Linux, prefer the packages.

The lore command

The lore command administers Lore on the server: lore help lists the commands, lore reset-password <email> prints a password reset link for an account.

Uninstall

Make a backup first.