Getting Looker up and running in local environment

Mithun Khatri

Mithun Khatri

Software Engineer

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Introduction

Business intelligence software and big data analytics platform that helps you explore, analyze and share real-time business analytics easily.


Getting Started

Required tools

  1. Ubuntu environment. (VirtualBox or Docker image should work)
  2. Looker jar downloaded with valid license
  3. Looker startup script (Download link mentioned in step 6 below)

Steps to setup Ubuntu on VirtualBox

  1. Download virtual box : https://www.virtualbox.org/wiki/Downloads
  2. Download Ubuntu Desktop Image (latest version) : https://www.ubuntu.com/download/desktop
  3. Create new virtual machine on VirtualBox and use the downloaded Ubuntu Desktop image
  4. During installation of Ubuntu, enter user name as looker and password of your choice. Note: other user name can also be used but that require granting access or changes in the startup script. Creating looker with root permissions is the easy way.
  5. Once Ubuntu is ready, open terminal and check java version : java -version โ†’ 1.8 or above is required
  6. Open browser in the Ubuntu and follow further steps as mentioned here : https://docs.looker.com/setup-and-management/on-prem-install/installation You can directly jump to step 4 in the installation page. After step 13, Looker should be up and running on port 9999 in the VM.
  7. ./looker start

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  1. Now in order to access Looker (installed on the VM) from local machine, port forwarding will be required.
Locate the VM in VirtualBox application
Goto Settings โ†’ Network โ†’ Adapter 1 (make sure its attached to NAT)
โ†’ expand Advanced option
โ†’ Click on Port Forwarding to map VMโ€™s port 9999 to some port of your localhost as below example.
  1. Create Ubuntu VM with below configuration

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  1. Goto Networks

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  1. Add Port Forwarding

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  1. Now try accessing Looker from local machine at : http://localhost:19999 (http://localhost:19999/) It will render a registration page to create looker account. It can be anything. Next time when you start Looker, it will take you to the login page as below
  2. Login โ†’ Connect to a data source and explore

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References

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