Quick start

The quickest way to get running is to download a pre-built release binary, available on the GitHub releases page. Once installed, you can start a single rqlite node like so:

$ rqlited -node-id=1 data1

Once launched rqlite will be listening on http://localhost:4001.

Docker

docker run -p 4001:4001 rqlite/rqlite

macOS

brew install rqlite

Inserting records

Let’s insert some records using the rqlite shell, using standard SQLite commands.

$ rqlite
127.0.0.1:4001> CREATE TABLE foo (id INTEGER NOT NULL PRIMARY KEY, name TEXT)
1 row affected (0.000668 sec)
127.0.0.1:4001> .schema
+-----------------------------------------------------------------------------+
| sql                                                                         |
+-----------------------------------------------------------------------------+
| CREATE TABLE foo (id INTEGER NOT NULL PRIMARY KEY, name TEXT)               |
+-----------------------------------------------------------------------------+
127.0.0.1:4001> INSERT INTO foo(name) VALUES("fiona")
1 row affected
127.0.0.1:4001> SELECT * FROM foo
+----+-------+
| id | name  |
+----+-------+
| 1  | fiona |
+----+-------+

Forming a cluster

While not strictly necessary to run rqlite, running multiple nodes means you’ll have a fault-tolerant cluster. Start two more nodes, allowing the cluster to tolerate failure of a single node, like so:

$ rqlited -node-id 2 -http-addr localhost:4003 -raft-addr localhost:4004 -join localhost:4002 data2
$ rqlited -node-id 3 -http-addr localhost:4005 -raft-addr localhost:4006 -join localhost:4002 data3

This demonstration shows all 3 nodes running on the same host. In reality you probably wouldn’t do this, and then you wouldn’t need to select different -http-addr and -raft-addr ports for each rqlite node. Consult the Clustering Guide for more details.

With just these few steps you’ve now got a fault-tolerant, distributed relational database. Running on each rqlite node will be a fully-replicated copy of the SQLite database. Any data you insert will be replicated across the cluster, in a durable and fault-tolerant manner.

Next steps

Take a look at the Developer Guide, and check out the detailed guides for clustering and Kubernetes.