This post is older than a year. Consider some information might not be accurate anymore.
A long time ago (seems like ages to me) I have programming in Java and let my projects analyze with Sonarqube. I always remembered that every Sonarqube upgrade wasn’t quick to made. Since Docker I now have the possibility to run the latest stable Sonarqube version. No manual upgrades anymore. Sounds wonderful. Following installation was made on my Linux Box running Ubuntu 16.04.01 LTS with Docker 1.11.2 and PostgreSQL 9.5.
PostgreSQL Installation
First I need PostgreSQL for Sonar to store its data.
sudo apt-get install postgresql
Initial setup
Login as postgres user and alter the password for the database user
sudo -u postgres psql template1
ALTER USER postgres WITH PASSWORD 'fancypassword';
Move data directory
As default the data directory is defined in /var/lib/postgresql/9.5/main. This is my SSD. Data can be stored on my regular HDD. Therefore move it to /home/postgresql.
This step is not necessary 
.
Create database
We need a user for Sonarqube. I just named it sonar.
sudo -u postgres createuser -D -P sonar
The options explained:
* `-D` → The new user will not be allowed to create databases
* `-P` → Password prompt
Now we create the database for sonar and assign the encoding and user. I just choose the innovative name sonar 
.
sudo -u postgres createdb sonar --encoding=UTF-8 --owner=sonar
Sonarqube with Docker
Now we need to pull the Docker image from https://hub.docker.com/_/sonarqube/. I chose the image variant lts-alpine. This image is based on the popular Alpine Linux project, available in the alpine official image. Alpine Linux is much smaller than most distribution base images (~5MB), and thus leads to much slimmer images in general.
sudo docker pull sonarqube:lts-alpine
Testing and troubleshooting
If we run it interactively with the settings for PostgreSQL:
$ docker run -it --name sonarqube \
-p 9000:9000 -p 9092:9092 \
-e SONARQUBE_JDBC_USERNAME=sonar \
-e SONARQUBE_JDBC_PASSWORD=sonar \
-e SONARQUBE_JDBC_URL=jdbc:postgresql://localhost/sonar \
sonarqube:lts-alpine
We get an error :-o
2016.09.26 20:19:45 INFO web[o.sonar.db.Database] Create JDBC data source for jdbc:postgresql://localhost:5432/sonar
Caused by: org.postgresql.util.PSQLException: Connection refused. Check that the hostname and port are correct and that the postmaster is accepting TCP/IP connections.
Fixing connection problem
The connection between Docker and PostgreSQL doesn’t work. Docker has its own interface with IP assigned.
tan@omega:~$ ifconfig
docker0 Link encap:Ethernet HWaddr 02:42:3d:4c:f3:00
inet addr:172.17.0.1 Bcast:0.0.0.0 Mask:255.255.0.0
inet6 addr: fe80::42:3dff:fe4c:f300/64 Scope:Link
UP BROADCAST RUNNING MULTICAST MTU:1500 Metric:1
RX packets:18707 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
TX packets:18753 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
collisions:0 txqueuelen:0
RX bytes:8669821 (8.6 MB) TX bytes:9622716 (9.6 MB)
Therefore PostgreSQL has to allow this IP range. Add the line for 172.17.x.x in /etc/postgresql/9.5/main/pg_hba.conf:
# IPv4 local connections:
host all all 127.0.0.1/32 md5
host all all 172.17.0.0/16 md5
Now we need to apply the changes, either with a simple reload
sudo -u postgres /usr/lib/postgresql/9.5/bin/pg_ctl -D /home/postgresql/9.5/main reload
or just simply restart the service. Basically it isn’t necessary. But since it is a local non-shared installation:
/etc/init.d/postgresql restart
Tuning docker run
The official run command has some flaws. For portability you shouldn’t use localhost. You can add the option --add-host=database to expose your database host IP to docker.
Furthermore we need to map the declared volumes for data and extensions. Otherwise all changes or installed plug-ins are gone after the docker container stops. I decided to put everything in home directory.
mkdir -p sonar/data sonar/extensions
sudo docker rm sonarqube && sudo docker run -d --name sonarqube \
-p 9000:9000 -p 9092:9092 \
-v /home/tan/sonar/data:/opt/sonarqube/data \
-v /home/tan/sonar/extensions:/opt/sonarqube/extensions \
-e SONARQUBE_JDBC_USERNAME=sonar \
-e SONARQUBE_JDBC_PASSWORD=sonar \
-e SONARQUBE_JDBC_URL=jdbc:postgresql://192.168.1.123:5432/sonar \
--add-host=database:192.168.1.123 \
sonarqube:lts-alpine
If we run it interactively again, we see that the connection is ok and sonar creates some tables.
2016.09.26 20:22:49 INFO web[o.sonar.db.Database] Create JDBC data source for jdbc:postgresql://192.168.1.123:5432/sonar
..
2016.09.26 20:22:57 INFO web[DbMigration] == InitialSchema: migrating ==================================================
2016.09.26 20:22:57 INFO web[DbMigration] -- create_table(:projects, {})
Some tables shown in DataGrip. 
Check Docker container
If the container is running, docker ps shows you the information you need.
tan@omega:~$ sudo docker ps
CONTAINER ID IMAGE COMMAND CREATED STATUS PORTS NAMES
44a2292b59a6 sonarqube:lts-alpine "./bin/run.sh" 17 minutes ago Up 17 minutes 0.0.0.0:9000->9000/tcp, 0.0.0.0:9092->9092/tcp sonarqube
The wide output isn’t much readable, therefore we can format it more human readable.
tan@omega:~$ sudo docker ps --format 'CONTAINER ID: {{.ID}}\nIMAGE: {{.Image}}\nCOMMAND: {{.Command}}\nCREATED: {{.CreatedAt}}\nSTATUS: {{.Status}}\nPORTS: {{.Ports}}\nNAMES: {{.Names}}'
CONTAINER ID: 44a2292b59a6
IMAGE: sonarqube:lts-alpine
COMMAND: "./bin/run.sh"
CREATED: 2016-09-26 22:30:14 +0200 CEST
STATUS: Up 23 minutes
PORTS: 0.0.0.0:9000->9000/tcp, 0.0.0.0:9092->9092/tcp
NAMES: sonarqube
Check if the docker container listens on the Sonar ports.
tan@omega:~$ netstat -na | grep ':9000\|:9092'
tcp6 0 0 :::9092 :::* LISTEN
tcp6 0 0 :::9000 :::* LISTEN
Setup Sonar
Now we a running sonar instance, we need some plugins for code inspection. Go to http://localhost:9000 with your browser and login with the defaults admin/admin.
Go to Administration → Update Center and install all the plugins you need, in my case:
* Java
* Checkstyle
* Findbugs
* PMD
You need to restart the Sonar server, which can be done within the Administration web GUI.
Analyze Maven Project
If you use maven for a java project, you add the maven sonar plugin to your build section:
<build>
<plugins>
<plugin>
<groupId>org.apache.maven.plugins</groupId>
<artifactId>maven-compiler-plugin</artifactId>
<version>3.5.1</version>
<configuration>
<source>1.8</source>
<target>1.8</target>
</configuration>
</plugin>
<plugin>
<groupId>org.sonarsource.scanner.maven</groupId>
<artifactId>sonar-maven-plugin</artifactId>
<version>3.1.1</version>
</plugin>
</plugins>
</build>
Run code inspection
mvn sonar:sonar
It defaults to localhost:9000. At the bottom of the Maven output you will see some INFO messages.
[INFO] Analysis report generated in 69ms, dir size=46 KB
[INFO] Analysis reports compressed in 31ms, zip size=23 KB
[INFO] Analysis report uploaded in 385ms
[INFO] ANALYSIS SUCCESSFUL, you can browse http://localhost:9000/dashboard/index/net.cinhtau:ssh-demo
Shutdown Sonar
If you don’t need sonar simply stop your sonar container:
sudo docker stop sonarqube
