xwiki install on Windows

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1

Hello community, I have been trying to install XWiki on Windows for ages. Unfortunately, I can’t get it to work because I always get an error message. I tried to install it as shown in the YouTube video, but unfortunately without success. Is there a newer installation guide for Windows available? I don’t mind the database either. My English is not very good, so a translation program wrote this text. Thank you very much.

2

You shouldn’t have any problems if you follow the official XWiki documentation.

Know about possible permission issues

If you install Tomcat or the XWiki permanent directory in these locations:

  • %USERS%
  • %PROGRAMFILES%
  • %PROGRAMFILES(x86)%

Please check the folder permissions — remove the Read-only attribute if set.

Install Java JDK

Install Java JDK 17 or higher:

XWiki 17.x requires at least Java 17 – Java 21 is recommended.

Install Apache Tomcat

Download and install Tomcat 9 or Tomcat 10.
For XWiki 17.x+, you must use Tomcat 10:

  • Tomcat 10 move to jakarta.* package naming means that it’s impossible to use it with a version of XWiki lower than 17.0.0. It also means that XWiki 17.0.0 only works with at least Tomcat 10.

Unzip it to a folder of your choice, like C:\tomcat.

Choose and Configure a Database

Pick a database engine. Make sure it’s a supported version (don’t use old version of DB): XWiki Database Support Strategy

Setup guides:

Download the XWiki WAR File

Download the latest XWiki 17.x WAR file from:

Unzip the WAR content into the webapps/xwiki folder inside your Tomcat directory.

Configure XWiki Files

Edit the following configuration files located in WEB-INF:

  • xwiki.cfg
  • xwiki.properties
  • hibernate.cfg.xml
  • you may also change some Tomcat files if you want (by default Tomcat will record daily server logs and access logs such as catalina.2025-04-04, localhost.2025-04-04, localhost_access_log.2025-04-04)

Start Tomcat

Launch Tomcat and open this URL in your browser: http://localhost:8080/xwiki/bin/view/Main/

Follow the UI and create your main admin user. Enjoy XWiki!

Docker Install

Alternative if you don’t want to perform above actions, you can install Docker Desktop on Windows OS and use 2 images: one is DB image (i.e postgres - Official Image | Docker Hub use latest and second one XWiki with Tomcat and configuration to DB that you pulled (i.e in case of PostgreSQL you need to use xwiki - Official Image | Docker Hub 17.2.0-postgres-tomcat). Run DB image, then execute XWiki image - access localhost (default port for Desktop Docker will be differ compare to Tomcat).

In case of usage Docker Desktop, note that you won’t have issue with its installation and execution on W10 Pro or W11 Pro. But in case of W10 Home, you may need manually to install WSL system component from hidden system apps and upgrade it to WSL2 from Windows PowerShell. In any case, you will find detailed documentation on official page.

3

Thank you very much for your response.
Unfortunately, I am having issues connecting to the Postgres database.
I tried the installation on Debian, and it worked without any problems.
Since I am operating system independent, I will use XWiki on Debian. Nevertheless, thank you for your help!

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