Chesar 3.4 Desktop (standalone) installation manual.
Date: 2018-12-06
Institutions: European Chemicals Agency
Subjects: European Chemicals Agency, administrative formalities, chemical product, information technology user, software, user guide

Chesar 3.4 Desktop 
(standalone) installation 
manual 

 
 
 
 
 
 
Chesar 3.4 Desktop (standalone) 
installation manual 

2 

Changes to this document 

Date 

Modification 

23/05/2017 

First version. 

14/11/2017 

Section 8 on establishing ECHA Cloud connection via company proxy 
added, update Chesar 3.2 to Chesar 3.3. 

05/11/2018 

Update to Chesar 3.4 

Annankatu 18, P.O. Box 400, FI-00121 Helsinki, Finland | Tel. +358 9 686180 | Fax +358 9 68618210 | echa.europa.eu 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
Chesar 3.4 Desktop (standalone) 
installation manual 

Disclaimer 

3 

The information contained in this manual does not constitute legal advice. The European 
Chemicals Agency does not accept any liability with regard to the contents of this document. 
The European Chemicals Agency is entitled to modify or revise the document at any time with 
or without notice and with or without cause. 

Chesar 3.4 Desktop (standalone) installation manual 

ECHA ref:  

ISBN:   

ECHA-18-R-16-EN 

978-92-9020-843-3     

Catalogue number:    

ED-03-18-351-EN-N 

DOI:    

10.2823/40763 

Publication date: 

 November 2018 

Language: 

 en 

© European Chemicals Agency, 2018 

Cover page © European Chemicals Agency 

Reproduction is authorised provided the source is fully acknowledged in the form  

“Source: European Chemicals Agency, http://echa.europa.eu/”, and provided written 
notification is given to the ECHA Communication Unit (publications@echa.europa.eu). 

ECHA invites interested parties to submit comments on this document which may be 
incorporated in future updates. These can be submitted via the Contact ECHA page at: 
https://echa.europa.eu/contact 

European Chemicals Agency 

Mailing address: P.O. Box 400, FI-00121 Helsinki, Finland 

Visiting address: Annankatu 18, Helsinki, Finland 

Annankatu 18, P.O. Box 400, FI-00121 Helsinki, Finland | Tel. +358 9 686180 | Fax +358 9 68618210 | echa.europa.eu 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
Chesar 3.4 Desktop (standalone) 
installation manual 

4 

Table of Contents 

Changes to this document .............................................................................................. 2 

Table of Contents .......................................................................................................... 4 

1. 

2. 

Introduction ......................................................................................................... 5 

Prerequisites ........................................................................................................ 5 

2.1.  Hardware requirements ............................................................................................ 5 

2.2.  Software requirements ............................................................................................. 5 

2.3.  Security ............................................................................................................... 6 

3. 

4. 

5. 

6. 

7. 

8. 

Install Chesar 3.4 desktop version ........................................................................... 6 

Running Chesar 3.4 Desktop ................................................................................... 6 

Upgrade from Chesar 3.0 / 3.1 / 3.2 / 3.3 to Chesar 3.4 ............................................ 8 

Regular backups.................................................................................................... 8 

Reporting issues ................................................................................................... 9 

Establishing ECHA Cloud connection via company proxy ............................................. 9 

Annankatu 18, P.O. Box 400, FI-00121 Helsinki, Finland | Tel. +358 9 686180 | Fax +358 9 68618210 | echa.europa.eu 

 
 
 
 
Chesar 3.4 Desktop (standalone) 
installation manual 

5 

1.  Introduction 
Thank you for choosing to install the Chesar 3 application. Chesar is an application developed 
by the European Chemicals Agency (ECHA) to help companies carry out their chemical safety 
assessments (CSAs) and prepare their chemical safety reports (CSRs) and exposure scenarios 
(ES) for communication in the supply chain. This document will guide you through the steps 
required to install and configure Chesar 3.4 desktop version, and covers 2 situations: 

•  You do not have any version of Chesar installed, and you want to install Chesar 3.4. 
•  You already have Chesar 3.0 / 3.1 / 3.2 / 3.3 installed, and you want to upgrade to Chesar 

3.4. 

If you have any other situation, or in case you encounter problems when installing or using 
Chesar please contact our helpdesk: 

https://echa.europa.eu/contact 

Please be aware that Chesar 2.3 files cannot be imported in Chesar 3.4. If you need to migrate 
your Chesar 2.3 database, you first need to install Chesar 3.0 and run the migration tool. 
Please refer to the related installation manuals on the Chesar website at 
https://chesar.echa.europa.eu/download-chesar-3.0. 

2.  Prerequisites 

2.1. 

Hardware requirements 

Minimum hardware recommendations for a machine running Chesar 3.4 desktop application: 

Characteristics 

Value 

CPU/Cores 

Memory 

Free disk space 

Dual Core/ 2.0 GHz 

4 GB 

300 MB 

2.2. 

Software requirements 

Chesar 3.4 desktop package comes with an included Windows compatible Java 8 JRE. If you 
want to run Chesar on a different operating system, please download and install Java from 
http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/java/javase/downloads/jre8-downloads-2133155.html. 

Chesar 3.4 desktop package already includes the database software (Derby version 10.12) and 
the application server software (Tomcat version 8) therefore there is no need for you to install 
separately a database or application server. 

Chesar 3.4 desktop package has been tested using the following: 

Software  Product 

Version  Source 

Operating 
System 

Microsoft Windows  7, 10 

Linux 

Annankatu 18, P.O. Box 400, FI-00121 Helsinki, Finland | Tel. +358 9 686180 | Fax +358 9 68618210 | echa.europa.eu 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
Chesar 3.4 Desktop (standalone) 
installation manual 

6 

Java 

JRE 

8 

http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/java/javase/
downloads/index.html 

Browser 

Internet Explorer 

11 

https://www.microsoft.com/en-
gb/download/internet-explorer.aspx 

Mozilla Firefox 

https://www.mozilla.org/en-GB/firefox/new/ 

Chrome 

https://www.google.com/chrome/browser/deskto
p/index.html 

2.3. 

Security 

The Chesar application contains a basic username / password feature aimed at reducing the 
risk of accidental modification of data. This functionality is not intended to protect against 
wilful or malicious attempts to gain access to or modify data. Chesar must be installed within a 
securely protected environment. 

3.  Install Chesar 3.4 desktop version 
Download the Chesar desktop package (Chesar-Desktop-3.4.0.zip) from the Chesar website 
(https://chesar.echa.europa.eu/) to your computer. 

Unzip the downloaded file. The unzipped folder is the Chesar installation folder: 

Chesar-Desktop-3.4.0 
The expected content is the following: 

If you are already a Chesar user (i.e. if you have data in your Chesar 3.0 / 3.1 / 3.2 / 3.3), 
you need to follow the instructions given in section 5 Upgrade from Chesar 3.0 / 3.1 / 3.2 / 3.3 
to Chesar 3.4. 

If you do not have any Chesar 3.0 / 3.1 / 3.2 / 3.3 installation or if you do not want to transfer 
the data from your Chesar 3.0 / 3.1 / 3.2 / 3.3 installation then you can proceed directly to the 
next section Running Chesar 3.4 Desktop. 

4.  Running Chesar 3.4 Desktop 

1.  Go to the installation folder e.g.: C:\Chesar-Desktop-3.4.0  
2.  Double-click chesar3.bat 

Annankatu 18, P.O. Box 400, FI-00121 Helsinki, Finland | Tel. +358 9 686180 | Fax +358 9 68618210 | echa.europa.eu 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
Chesar 3.4 Desktop (standalone) 
installation manual 

7 

In case you get the following message from your firewall, click Cancel. 

3.  The dialog below should appear. Wait until the Open Browser button becomes enabled 

Annankatu 18, P.O. Box 400, FI-00121 Helsinki, Finland | Tel. +358 9 686180 | Fax +358 9 68618210 | echa.europa.eu 

 
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
Chesar 3.4 Desktop (standalone) 
installation manual 

8 

4.  Click the Open Browser button. Chesar 3.4 opens in your default browser. If you want 
to  use  a  different  browser  from  the  default  one,  open  your  preferred  browser  and 
enter the following address in the URL bar: http://localhost:8010/index.html 

5.  Login: default username/password: admin/admin. After logging in with admin/admin 

you may at any point create additional users in Box 7. 

5.  Upgrade from Chesar 3.0 / 3.1 / 3.2 / 3.3 to Chesar 3.4 
If you want to upgrade from the previous version of Chesar 3.0 / 3.1 / 3.2 / 3.3  to Chesar 3.4, 
please proceed as follow: 

Go to Chesar 3.0 / 3.1 / 3.2 / 3.3 installation folder on your computer and copy the “Chesar3-
db” folder. 

Then, go to the newly installed Chesar 3.4 folder and paste it there.  

 Because you used copy-paste, at this point in the procedure your PC still has your previous 
Chesar 3.0 / 3.1 / 3.2 / 3.3 folder containing "chesar3-db", and in addition you have the new 
Chesar 3.4 folder containing a copy of "chesar3-db". 

When you start Chesar 3.4, the data in Chesar 3.4.0\chesar3-db (i.e. the copy of your previous 
Chesar 3.0 / 3.1 / 3.2 / 3.3 data) will be handled as if it was generated with Chesar 3.4, and it 
might be that the data is recalculated. For more information please read the Chesar 3.4 release 
note document available at https://chesar.echa.europa.eu/chesar-tool. 

Note  that  when  you  first  start  Chesar  3.4,  in  case  you  have  included  a  copy  of  a  previous 
database, the migration of your database may still be in progress after logging in to Chesar. In 
this  case  some  substances  may  be  temporarily  locked  by  the  tool.  You  will  be  able  to  access 
your substances again once the migration is finished. 

6.  Regular backups 
Your data is precious! In the same way as any other application, it is prudent to take periodic 
backups of the data. For example you could make a copy of the folder named chesar3-db 
and all of its content, and store this copy somewhere outside of the Chesar installation folder. 
Please store your backups in a safe location - without this backup you are at risk of losing 

Annankatu 18, P.O. Box 400, FI-00121 Helsinki, Finland | Tel. +358 9 686180 | Fax +358 9 68618210 | echa.europa.eu 

 
 
 
 
 
Chesar 3.4 Desktop (standalone) 
installation manual 

9 

data. Your ICT contact point should be able to give you more advice on how to back-up your 
data. 

7.  Reporting issues 
In case you encounter problems or wish to give other feedback, please use the ECHA online 
contact form: https://echa.europa.eu/contact/. 

If the issue you are reporting concerns a problem with installing or running of Chesar, please 
collect and send us the Chesar log files which can be found on your PC at: 

…\Chesar-Desktop-3.4.0\chesar3-logs 

8.  Establishing ECHA Cloud connection via company proxy 
In order to address this first collect the following information:  

•  Proxy Host; 
•  Proxy Port. 

If proxy requires authentication the following will also be needed: 

•  Proxy User; 
•  Proxy Password. 

In most cases these are the same credentials you use to log in to your workstation. 

After that follow the steps below: 

1)  Stop Chesar 3. 

2)  In a folder where Chesar 3 is installed find chesar3.bat. Create a backup copy of the 

file. Then right click on the file and open it for editing with a text editor like Notepad or 
Notepad++.  

Annankatu 18, P.O. Box 400, FI-00121 Helsinki, Finland | Tel. +358 9 686180 | Fax +358 9 68618210 | echa.europa.eu 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
Chesar 3.4 Desktop (standalone) 
installation manual 

10 

3)  Delete existing contents and paste the following. 

start jre1.8.0\bin\javaw -Xmx1024m -Xms256m -XX:+HeapDumpOnOutOfMemoryError -
Dhttp.proxyHost=PROXY_HOST -Dhttp.proxyPort=PROXY_PORT -Dhttps.proxyHost=PROXY_HOST -
Dhttps.proxyPort=PROXY_PORT -Dhttp.proxyUser=PROXY_USER -
Dhttp.proxyPassword=PROXY_PASSWORD -jar chesar-standalone.jar 

4)  Replace PROXY_HOST, PROXY_PORT, PROXY_USER and PROXY_PASSWORD with your 

own values. 

5)  Save chesar3.bat 

6)  Re-start Chesar and attempt to connect to the IUCLID Cloud. 

Annankatu 18, P.O. Box 400, FI-00121 Helsinki, Finland | Tel. +358 9 686180 | Fax +358 9 68618210 | echa.europa.eu 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
Chesar 3.4 Desktop (standalone) 
installation manual 

EUROPEAN CHEMICALS AGENCY 
ANNANKATU 18, P.O. BOX 400, 
FI-00121 HELSINKI, FINLAND 
ECHA.EUROPA.EU 

11 

Annankatu 18, P.O. Box 400, FI-00121 Helsinki, Finland | Tel. +358 9 686180 | Fax +358 9 68618210 | echa.europa.eu