Getting Started with ClickHouse: Install and Run on Linux, macOS, or FreeBSD

  

ClickHouse is a fast open-source column-oriented database management system optimized for real-time analytical queries. Whether you're running Linux, macOS, or FreeBSD, setting up ClickHouse is quick and easy using a single binary download.

 

This guide walks you through the steps to install ClickHouse on your machine, try it out with clickhouse-local, and optionally run the full ClickHouse server for persistent storage.

 

Installation and Getting Started Steps

Step 1: Download ClickHouse Binary

Open your terminal and run the following command to download ClickHouse for your system.

curl https://clickhouse.com/ | sh

Step 2: Run the following command to start clickhouse-local.

 

./clickhouse

$./clickhouse
....
ClickHouse local version 25.5.1.1919 (official build).

:)

  You can execute the command ‘SHOW DATABASES;’ to list all the databases of Clickhouse.

 

:) SHOW DATABASES;

SHOW DATABASES

Query id: 7f24112f-2266-48ba-b2ea-46d42fd5ccad

   ┌─name───────────────┐
1. │ INFORMATION_SCHEMA │
2. │ default            │
3. │ information_schema │
4. │ system             │
   └────────────────────┘

4 rows in set. Elapsed: 0.004 sec. 

:)

Execute the command quit to exit from the Clickhouse interactive shell.

 

:) quit
Bye.

   

clickhouse-local is a lightweight version of ClickHouse, designed for developers to quickly process local and remote files using SQL without needing to install a full database server. It’s included with the clickhouse-client package, making it easy to get started with SQL queries for development and testing.

 

However, clickhouse-local is not intended for production environments or serving end-users. For large-scale analytical workloads, high-performance queries, and production deployments, the full open-source ClickHouse database is recommended, as it supports features like replication, sharding, and high availability to handle large datasets and ensure scalability.

 

Table data in clickhouse-local is stored temporarily, so after a restart, any previously created tables are no longer accessible.

 

Step 3: Start ClickHouse Server (For Persistent Usage)

As an alternative to clickhouse-local, we can run the clickhouse server as well. To run a persistent ClickHouse server on your system, execute following command.

 

./clickhouse server

   

Upon starting the server successfully, you can see following folders/files are added to your current directory.

 

$ ls -lart
total 922576
drwxr-xr-x  24 krishna  demo        768  4 May 18:56 ..
-rwxr-xr-x   1 krishna  demo  472346800  4 May 18:58 clickhouse
drwxr-x---   3 krishna  demo         96  4 May 19:05 preprocessed_configs
-rw-r-----   1 krishna  demo         59  4 May 19:05 status
-rw-r-----   1 krishna  demo         36  4 May 19:05 uuid
drwxr-x---   2 krishna  demo         64  4 May 19:05 tmp
drwxr-x---   2 krishna  demo         64  4 May 19:05 flags
drwxr-x---   2 krishna  demo         64  4 May 19:05 user_files
drwxr-x---   2 krishna  demo         64  4 May 19:05 metadata_dropped
drwxr-x---   2 krishna  demo         64  4 May 19:05 format_schemas
drwxr-x---   3 krishna  demo         96  4 May 19:05 data
drwxr-xr-x@ 14 krishna  demo        448  4 May 19:05 .
drwxr-x---   3 krishna  demo         96  4 May 19:05 store
drwxr-x---   6 krishna  demo        192  4 May 19:05 metadata

   

Data is stored in your current directory (./data/ by default). When you start Clickhouse like this, the tables and data remain even after you stop and restart the server.

 

You can pass a custom configuration file using -C option.

./clickhouse server -C config.xml

Step 4: Connect to Server Using ClickHouse Client

Open a new terminal and connect to the server.

 

./clickhouse client

$ ./clickhouse client
ClickHouse client version 25.5.1.1919 (official build).
Connecting to localhost:9000 as user default.
Connected to ClickHouse server version 25.5.1.

Warnings:
 * Maximum number of threads is lower than 30000. There could be problems with handling a lot of simultaneous queries.

krishna :)

   

Once Client connected successfully, you can now write and execute SQL queries on the running server.

 

krishna :) SHOW DATABASES;

SHOW DATABASES

Query id: 9485c36b-a250-4142-b880-106e75e177fe

   ┌─name───────────────┐
1. │ INFORMATION_SCHEMA │
2. │ default            │
3. │ information_schema │
4. │ system             │
   └────────────────────┘

4 rows in set. Elapsed: 0.002 sec.

 

 

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