How to install ZooKeeper on macOS

ZooKeeper is a distributed coordination service commonly used in distributed systems. In this tutorial, I will walk you through the steps to install ZooKeeper on macOS.

Prerequisites

Before beginning the installation process, make sure you have the following prerequisites:

  • macOS Operating System.
  • Java Development Kit (JDK) installed on your system.

Step 1: Download ZooKeeper

The first step is to download the ZooKeeper package from the official website https://zookeeper.apache.org/.

  1. Open your preferred web browser and navigate to https://zookeeper.apache.org/.

  2. Click on the "Download" button under the release version you want to download.

  3. Download the package of your choice. You can either choose the tarball or zip archive, based on your preference.

Step 2: Install ZooKeeper

Once you have downloaded ZooKeeper, follow these steps to install it on your macOS system:

  1. Open Spotlight by pressing CMD + SPACEBAR and type Terminal. Select the Terminal application that appears.

  2. Navigate to the directory where the ZooKeeper package was downloaded. For instance, if the package is saved in the Downloads directory, execute the following command:

cd ~/Downloads/
  1. Extract the contents of the package. If you downloaded the tarball, run the following command:
tar -xvf {zookeeper-package-name}.tar.gz

If you downloaded the zip archive, execute the following command:

unzip {zookeeper-package-name}.zip
  1. Rename the extracted directory to zookeeper.
mv {zookeeper-package-name} zookeeper
  1. Move the zookeeper directory to /usr/local.
sudo mv ~/Downloads/zookeeper /usr/local

Step 3: Configure ZooKeeper

ZooKeeper requires some configuration before it can be used. Follow these steps to configure it:

  1. Navigate to the ZooKeeper configuration directory:
cd /usr/local/zookeeper/conf
  1. Rename the zoo_sample.cfg file to zoo.cfg.
cp zoo_sample.cfg zoo.cfg
  1. Open the zoo.cfg file in your favorite text editor and make any necessary changes to configure ZooKeeper. The only necessary change is to set the dataDir setting to a directory where ZooKeeper can store data:
dataDir=/usr/local/zookeeper/data

Step 4: Start ZooKeeper

After completing the configuration, you can start ZooKeeper with the following command:

cd /usr/local/zookeeper/
./bin/zkServer.sh start

You can check that ZooKeeper is running correctly by connecting to it with the ZooKeeper command-line interface:

./bin/zkCli.sh

This will start the command-line interface, and you should see the prompt: Connecting to localhost:2181....

Conclusion

You have successfully installed and configured ZooKeeper on your macOS system. You can now use it to coordinate distributed systems.