SAP ABAP Platform 1909, Developer Edition – on Ubuntu

[shankar_gomare]

In this article, we will install SAP ABAP Platform 1909, Developer Edition in Ubuntu.



The minimum system configuration required for Linux system is as follows:

• Quad core CPU


• 16GB RAM


• 150GB Disk

I'm running Intel Core i9 with 48 GB RAM and yet the whole installation process took more than an hour.

Also, the docker hub image is about 23 GB, so this requires high speed internet connection or else download will take a few hours or worst days.

Moving on, the first step in the installation process is to update apt package index using following command.

sudo apt update

Next, we need to install Docker container environment, if it is not already installed.

Docker CE requires following prerequisites, so we need to install these packages first.

sudo apt-get install \

    apt-transport-https \

    ca-certificates \

    curl \

    gnupg-agent \

    software-properties-common

Now, we will add Docker's official GPG Key and verify using last 8 chars:

curl -fsSL https://download.docker.com/linux/ubuntu/gpg | sudo apt-key add -

sudo apt-key fingerprint 0EBFCD88

Next, Add Docker's stable repository to apt package manager using following command

sudo add-apt-repository "deb [arch=amd64] https://download.docker.com/linux/ubuntu \

   $(lsb_release -cs) stable"

We need to update apt package index one more times, since we made changes to apt repositories.

Now we are good to install docker, docker-cli and containerd with following commands.

sudo apt-get update

sudo apt-get install docker-ce docker-ce-cli containerd.io

If you would like to use Docker without root privileges, consider adding user to "docker" group as follows:

sudo usermod -aG docker <username>

That's it, we have docker container environment, verify Docker Engine is installed properly by running hello-world container.

docker run hello-world

In case if you see an error on this step, you might need to consider restarting the system.

Next, we need to login in Docker hub to pull ABAP trial image because it is not available to download as anonymous user.

docker login

Next, we need to update kernel parameters before we deploy our Developer Edition container in host system as well as in docker container.

We will update kernel parameters in the host operating system by running following commands.

echo 'vm.max_map_count=2147483647' | sudo tee -a sudo /etc/sysctl.conf

echo 'fs.file-max=20000000' | sudo tee -a sudo /etc/sysctl.conf

echo 'fs.aio-max-nr=18446744073709551615' | sudo tee -a sudo /etc/sysctl.conf

These parameters are not available in the current session, unless we restart the system or we can make them available by running following command.

sudo sysctl -p

Next, deploy our container using following command.

Note: This step requires about an hour or more based on internet connection speed, if you have slower connection and you are using SSH in remote system, consider some fail-safe else you might have to start over on disconnection.

You be warned the Developer Edition Docker image is about 23 GB. 

The following command will pull Docker image from Docker Hub repository and it will deploy container in interactive mode, notice argument "-i"

docker run \

      --stop-timeout 3600 \

      --sysctl kernel.shmmax=21474836480 \

      --sysctl kernel.shmmni=32768 \

      --sysctl kernel.shmall=5242880 \

      --sysctl kernel.msgmni=1024 \

      --sysctl kernel.sem="1250 256000 100 8192" \

      --ulimit nofile=1048576:1048576 \

      -i --name a4h -h vhcala4hci \

      -p 3200:3200 \

      -p 3300:3300 \

      -p 8443:8443 \

      -p 30213:30213 \

      -p 50000:50000 \

      -p 50001:50001 store/saplabs/abaptrial:1909

You need to accept Terms and Conditions once Docker image download is complete.

In the end, after about an hour, you will see a refreshing message "Have fun!", that means we have successfully completed installation.

I have local domain configured at home, so I will use my local domain to connect in SAP GUI, you can use IP address of the system or VM where docker container is deployed.

That's it, Congratulations! you have got yourself a personal Netweaver ABAP 1909 version to play around.

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