Installing the binary tarball

You can use the binary tarball to install Cassandra on any Linux-based platform including Mac OS X and platforms without package support or if you do not want a root installation:

1. Download the Apache Cassandra 3.0.9 binary tarball from the following:

http://www.apache.org/dyn/closer.lua/cassandra/3.0.9/apache-cassandra-3.0.9-bin.tar.gz.

1. Use the following command to untar:

        $ tar -xvzf apache-cassandra-3.0.9-bin.tar.gz

1. To configure Cassandra, go to the $INSTALL_LOCATION/conf directory and make the relevant changes. You can do this once you get an idea of Cassandra internals later in the book. INSTALL_LOCATION in this case will be $CURRENT_DIRECTORY/apache-cassandra-3.0.9/.

1. Start Cassandra:

        $ cd apache-cassandra-3.0.9/
        $ bin/cassandra # Use -f to start Cassandra in the foreground

1. Verify that Cassandra is running:

        $ bin/nodetool status

You might want to add CASSANDRA_HOME=$INSTALL_LOCATION and PATH=$PATH:$INSTALL_LOCATION/bin in the .bashrc or .bash_profile files so every time you open a new terminal, you can simply launch cassandra, nodetool, or cqlsh by entering the command on terminal without changing directory every time.