Setup OS Requirements Debian¶

This section describes how to perform the setup for Debian Linux 9. The Peek platform is designed to run on Linux.

Please read through all of the documentation before commencing the installation procedure.

Note

These instructions are for Debian 9, AKA Stretch

Installation Objective¶

This Installation Guide contains specific Debian Linux 8 operating system requirements for the configuring of synerty-peek.

Required Software¶

Some of the software to be installed requires internet access. For offline installation some steps are required to be installed on another online server for the files to be packaged and transferred to the offline server.

Below is a list of all the required software:

Python 3.6.x
Postgres 10.4.x

Suggested Software¶

The following utilities are often useful.

rsync
git
unzip

Optional Software¶

Oracle 12c Client

Installing Oracle Libraries is required if you intend on installing the peek agent. Instruction for installing the Oracle Libraries are in the Online Installation Guide.

FreeTDS

FreeTDS is an open source driver for the TDS protocol, this is the protocol used to talk to the MSSQL SQLServer database.

Installation Guide¶

Follow the remaining section in this document to prepare your debian operating system for to run the Peek Platform.

The instructions on this page don’t install the peek platform, that’s done later.

Install Debian 8 OS¶

This section installs the Debian 8 64bit Linux operating system.

Create VM¶

Create a new virtual machine with the following specifications

2 CPUs
4gb of ram
50gb of disk space

Install OS¶

Download the debian ISO, navigate to the following site and click amd64 under netinst CD image

Download Debian

Mount the ISO in the virtual machine and start the virtual machine.

Run through the installer manually, do not let your virtual machine software perform a wizard or express install.

Staring Off¶

At the Debian GNU/Linux installer boot menu screen, select:

Install

At the Select a language screen, select:

English

At the Select your location screen, select the appropriate location.

At the Configure the keyboard screen, select the appropriate keyboard, or leave as default.

At the Configure the network screen, enter your desired hostname or:

peek

At the Configure the network screen, enter your desired domain, or:

localdomain

At the Setup users and passwords screen, watch for the following prompts, replace <root_password> and <peek_password> with your desired passwords.

Setup users and passwords screen prompts¶
Prompt	Enter :
Root password	<root_password>
Re-enter password to verify	<root_password>
Full name for the new user	Peek Platform
Username for your account	peek
Choose a password for the new user:	<peek_password>
Re-enter password to verify:	<peek_password>

On the Configure the clock screen, select your desired timezone.

Partition Table¶

On the Partition disks screen, select:

Manual

Then, select the disk, it will look similar to:

SCSI3 (0,0,0) (sda) - 32.2 GB VMware ...

Then it will prompt to Create new empty partition table on this device?, select:

<Yes>

We’ll be creating three partitions, /boot / and swap. For a heavily used production server you may want to create more virtual disks and separate out /var, /home, and /tmp. With one file system per disk.

Having one file system per disk removes the need for the overhead of LVM, and the VM software can still expand the disk and filesystem as required.

/boot¶

Select the following disk from the menu:

pri/log **.* GB   FREE SPACE

Enter the following responses to the prompts

/boot partition prompts part1¶
Prompt	Enter :
How to user this free space	Create a new partition
New partition size	500m
Type for the new partition	Primary
Location for the new Partition	Beginning

At the Partition Settings prompt, enter the following:

/boot partition prompts part2¶
Prompt	Enter :
Use as:	Ext2 file system
Mount point	/boot
Done setting up the partition

swap¶

Select the following disk from the menu:

pri/log **.* GB   FREE SPACE

Enter the following responses to the prompts

swap partition prompts part1¶
Prompt	Enter :
How to user this free space	Create a new partition
New partition size	4g
Type for the new partition	Primary
Location for the new Partition	Beginning

At the Partition Settings prompt, enter the following:

swap partition prompts part2¶
Prompt	Enter :
Use as:	swap
Done setting up the partition

/ (root)¶

The root file system is created at the end of the disk, ensuring that if we use the VM software to expand the virtual disk, this is the file system that will be expanded.

The default guided install doesn’t do this.

Select the following disk from the menu:

pri/log **.* GB   FREE SPACE

Enter the following responses to the prompts

swap partition prompts part1¶
Prompt	Enter :
How to user this free space	Create a new partition
New partition size	100%
Type for the new partition	Primary
Location for the new Partition	Beginning

At the Partition Settings prompt, enter the following:

swap partition prompts part2¶
Prompt	Enter :
Use as	Ext4 journaling file system
Mount point	/
Reserved blocks	1%
Done setting up the partition

All done, select:

Finish partitioning and write changes to disk

At the Write the changes to disk? prompt, Select:

<Yes>

Finishing Up¶

On the Configure the package manager screen, select the location closest to you.

At the Debian archive mirror, select your preferred site.

At the HTTP proxy information prompt, select:

<Continue>

The installer will now download the package lists.

At the Configure popularity-contest screen, select:

<No>

Note

It’d be good to select <Yes>, but as Peek is an enterprise platform, it’s most likely installed behind a corporate firewall.

At the Software selection screen, select the following, and deselect all the other options:

SSH server
standard system utilities

Optionally, select a desktop environment, Peek doesn’t require this. “MATE” is recommended if one is selected.

The OS will now install, it will take a while to download and install the packages.

At the Install the GRUB boot loader on a hard disk screen, select:

<Yes>

At the Device for boot loader installation prompt, select:

/dev/sda

At the Finish the installation screen, select:

<Continue>

Deconfigure the Debian ISO from DVD drive in the VM software.

The OS installtion is now complete.

SSH Setup¶

SSH is this documentations method of working with the Peek Debian VM.

SSH clients are availible out of the box with OSX and Linux. There are many options for windows users, This documentation recommends MobaXterm is used for windows as it also supports graphical file copying.

This document assumes users are familair with what is required to use the SSH clients for connecting to and copying files to the Peek VM.

If this all sounds too much, reinstall the Peek OS with a graphical desktop environment and use that instead of SSH.

Note

You will not be able to login as root via SSH by default.

Login to the console of the Peek Debian VM as root and install ifconfig

with the following command:

apt-get install net-tools

Run the following command:

ifconfig

Make note of the ipaddress, you will need this to SSH to the VM. The IP addresss will be under eth0, second line, inet addr.

Install sudo with the following command:

apt-get install sudo

Give Peek sudo privielges with the following command:

usermod -a -G sudo peek

You must now logout from the root console.

Configure Static IP (Optional)¶

If this is a production server, it’s more than likely that you want to assign a static IP to the VM, Here is how you do this.

Edit file /etc/network/interfaces

Find the section:

allow-hotplug eth0
iface eth0 inet dhcp

Replace it with:

auto eth0
iface eth0 inet static
    address <IPADDRESS>
    netmask <NETMASK>
    gateway <GATEWAY>

Edit the file /etc/resolv.conf, and update it.

Replace “localdomain” with your domain
Replace the IP for the nameserver with the IP of you DNS. For multiple name servers, use multiple nameserver lines.

domain localdomain
search localdomain
nameserver 172.16.40.2

Installing General Prerequisites¶

This section installs the OS packages required.

Note

Run the commands in this step as the peek user.

Install the C Compiler package, used for compiling python or VMWare tools, etc:

PKG="gcc make linux-headers-amd64"
sudo apt-get install -y $PKG

Install the Python build dependencies:

PKG="build-essential curl git m4 ruby texinfo libbz2-dev libcurl4-openssl-dev"
PKG="$PKG libexpat-dev libncurses-dev zlib1g-dev libgmp-dev libssl-dev"
sudo apt-get install -y $PKG

Install C libraries that some python packages link to when they install:

PKG=""

# For the cryptography package
PKG="$PKG libffi-dev"

# For the python Samba client
PKG="$PKG samba-dev libsmbclient-dev libcups2-dev"

# For Shapely and GEOAlchemy
PKG="$PKG libgeos-dev libgeos-c1v5"

# For LXML and the Oracle client
PKG="$PKG libxml2 libxml2-dev"
PKG="$PKG libxslt1.1 libxslt1-dev"
PKG="$PKG libaio1 libaio-dev"

# For the PostGresQL connector
PKG="$PKG libpq-dev"

# For the SQLite python connector
PKG="$PKG libsqlite3-dev"

sudo apt-get install -y $PKG

Install rsync package:

PKG="rsync unzip"
sudo apt-get install -y $PKG

Cleanup the downloaded packages

sudo apt-get clean

Installing VMWare Tools (Optional)¶

This section installs VMWare tools. The compiler tools have been installed from the section above.

In the VMWare software, find the option to install VMWare tools.

Mount and unzip the tools

sudo rm -rf /tmp/vmware-*
sudo mount /dev/sr0 /mnt
sudo tar xzf /mnt/VM*gz -C /tmp
sudo umount /mnt

Install the tools with the default options

cd /tmp/vmware-tools-distrib
sudo ./vmware-install.pl -f -d

Cleanup the tools install

sudo rm -rf /tmp/vmware-*

Reboot the virtual machine.

sudo shutdown -r now

Keep in mind, that if the static IP is not set, the IP address of the VM may change, causing issues when reconnecting with SSH.

Compile and Install Python 3.6¶

The Peek Platform runs on Python. These instructions download, compile and install the latest version of Python.

Edit ~/.bashrc and insert the following after the first block comment.

Make sure these are before any lines like:

# If not running interactively, don't do anything

Insert :

##### SET THE PEEK ENVIRONMENT #####
# Setup the variables for PYTHON
export PEEK_PY_VER="3.6.6"
export PATH="/home/peek/cpython-${PEEK_PY_VER}/bin:$PATH"

# Set the variables for the platform release
# These are updated by the deploy script
export PEEK_ENV=""
[ -n "${PEEK_ENV}" ] && export PATH="${PEEK_ENV}/bin:$PATH"

Download and unarchive the supported version of Python

cd ~
PEEK_PY_VER="3.6.6"
wget "https://www.python.org/ftp/python/${PEEK_PY_VER}/Python-${PEEK_PY_VER}.tgz"
tar xzf Python-${PEEK_PY_VER}.tgz

Configure the build

cd Python-${PEEK_PY_VER}
./configure --prefix=/home/peek/cpython-${PEEK_PY_VER}/ --enable-optimizations

Make and Make install the software

make install

Cleanup the download and build dir

cd
rm -rf Python-${PEEK_PY_VER}*

Symlink the python3 commands so they are the only ones picked up by path.

cd /home/peek/cpython-${PEEK_PY_VER}/bin
ln -s pip3 pip
ln -s python3 python

Warning

Restart your terminal you get the new environment.

Test that the setup is working

which python
echo "It should be /home/peek/cpython-3.6.6/bin/python"

which pip
echo "It should be /home/peek/cpython-3.6.6/bin/pip"

synerty-peek is deployed into python virtual environments. Install the virtualenv python package

pip install virtualenv

The Wheel package is required for building platform and plugin releases

pip install wheel

Install Worker Dependencies¶

Install the parallel processing queue we use for the peek-worker tasks.

Note

Run the commands in this step as the peek user.

Install redis and rabbitmq

sudo apt-get install -y redis-server rabbitmq-server
sudo apt-get clean

Enable the RabbitMQ management plugins:

sudo rabbitmq-plugins enable rabbitmq_mqtt
sudo rabbitmq-plugins enable rabbitmq_management
sudo service rabbitmq-server restart

Install PostGreSQL¶

Install the relational database we use on Linux.

Note

Run the commands in this step as the peek user.

Add the latest PostGreSQL repository

F=/etc/apt/sources.list.d/postgresql.list
echo "deb http://apt.postgresql.org/pub/repos/apt/ stretch-pgdg main" | sudo tee $F
wget --quiet -O - https://www.postgresql.org/media/keys/ACCC4CF8.asc | sudo apt-key add -
sudo apt-get update

Install PostGresQL

sudo apt-get install -y postgresql-10-postgis-2.4 postgresql-10
sudo apt-get clean

Create the peek SQL user

F=/etc/postgresql/10/main/pg_hba.conf
if ! sudo grep -q 'peek' $F; then
    echo "host  peek    peek    127.0.0.1/32    trust" | sudo tee $F -a
fi
sudo su - postgres
createuser -d -r -s peek
exit # Exit postgres user

Create the database

createdb -O peek peek

Set the database password

psql <<EOF
\password
\q
EOF

# Set the password as "PASSWORD"

Cleanup traces of the password

[ -e ~/.psql_history ] && rm ~/.psql_history

Install Oracle Client (Optional)¶

The oracle libraries are optional. Install them where the agent runs if you are going to interface with an oracle database.

Edit ~/.bashrc and insert the following after the first block comment

Make sure these are before any lines like:

# If not running interactively, don't do anything

Insert :

# Setup the variables for ORACLE
export LD_LIBRARY_PATH="/home/peek/oracle/instantclient_12_2:$LD_LIBRARY_PATH"
export ORACLE_HOME="/home/peek/oracle/instantclient_12_2"

Warning

Restart your terminal you get the new environment.

Make the directory where the oracle client will live

mkdir /home/peek/oracle

Download the following from oracle.

The version used in these instructions is 12.2.0.1.0.

Download the ZIP “Instant Client Package - Basic” from http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/topics/linuxx86-64soft-092277.html
Download the ZIP “Instant Client Package - SDK” from http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/topics/linuxx86-64soft-092277.html

Copy these files to /home/peek/oracle on the peek server.

Extract the files.

cd ~/oracle
unzip instantclient-sdk-linux.x64-12.2.0.1.0.zip
unzip instantclient-basic-linux.x64-12.2.0.1.0.zip

Symlink the oracle client lib

cd $ORACLE_HOME
ln -snf libclntsh.so.12.1 libclntsh.so
ls -l libclntsh.so

Install FreeTDS (Optional)¶

FreeTDS is an open source driver for the TDS protocol, this is the protocol used to talk to a MSSQL SQLServer database.

Peek needs this installed if it uses the pymssql python database driver, which depends on FreeTDS.

Edit ~/.bashrc and insert the following after the first block comment

Make sure these are before any lines like:

# If not running interactively, don't do anything

Insert :

# Setup the variables for FREE TDS
export LD_LIBRARY_PATH="/home/peek/freetds:$LD_LIBRARY_PATH"

Warning

Restart your terminal you get the new environment.

Install FreeTDS:

sudo apt-get install freetds-dev

Create file freetds.conf in ~/freetds and populate with the following:

mkdir ~/freetds
cat > ~/freetds/freetds.conf <<EOF

[global]
    port = 1433
    instance = peek
    tds version = 7.4

EOF

If you want to get more debug information, add the dump file line to the [global] section Keep in mind that the dump file takes a lot of space.

[global]
    port = 1433
    instance = peek
    tds version = 7.4
    dump file = /tmp/freetds.log

What Next?¶

Refer back to the How to Use Peek Documentation guide to see which document to follow next.

Setup OS Requirements Debian¶

Installation Objective¶

Required Software¶

Suggested Software¶

Optional Software¶

Installation Guide¶

Install Debian 8 OS¶

Create VM¶

Install OS¶

Staring Off¶

Partition Table¶

/boot¶

swap¶

/ (root)¶

Finishing Up¶

SSH Setup¶

Login as Peek¶

Configure Static IP (Optional)¶

Installing General Prerequisites¶

Installing VMWare Tools (Optional)¶

Compile and Install Python 3.6¶

Install Worker Dependencies¶

Install PostGreSQL¶

Install Oracle Client (Optional)¶

Install FreeTDS (Optional)¶

What Next?¶