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P4 Server Administration Documentation | 2025.2

# Start the P4 Server

After you set the `P4PORT` and `P4ROOT` environment variables, start the server by running `p4d` in the background with the command:

    p4d &

Although the example shown is sufficient to run `p4d`, you can specify other flags that control such things as error logging, checkpointing, and journaling.

Example: Starting the P4 Server

You can override `P4PORT` by starting `p4d` with the `-p` flag (in this example, listen to port 1818 on IPv6 and IPv4 transports), and `P4ROOT` by starting `p4d` with the `-r` flag. Similarly, you can specify a journal file with the `-J` flag, and an error log file with the `-L` flag. A startup command that overrides the environment variables might look like this:

    p4d -r /usr/local/p4root -J /var/log/journal -L /var/log/p4err -p tcp64:[::]:1818 &

The `-r`, `-J`, and `-L` flags (and others) are discussed in Backup and recovery. To enable SSL/TLS support, see SSL/TLS connections between client and server. A complete list of flags is provided in the P4 Server (p4d) reference.

For information about the files that have been installed, see Installed files.

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