Bundle Installation on Debian

perfSONAR combines various sets of measurement tools and services. For perfSONAR 4.0 we provide the whole perfSONAR toolkit as Debian packages for five different architectures. This should enable you to deploy a full perfSONAR node on one of the following distributions:

  • Debian 7 Wheezy
  • Debian 8 Jessie
  • Ubuntu 14 Trusty

Debian meta packages are available to install the bundles described in perfSONAR Installation Options. The steps in the remaining sections of this document detail the steps required for installing these bundles.

System Requirements

  • Architecture: We provide Debian packages for 5 different architectures:
    • 32-bit (i386)
    • 64-bit (amd64)
    • ARMv4t and up (armel)
    • ARMv7 and up (armhf)
    • ARM64 (arm64) (only for Debian 8)
  • Operating System: Any system running a Debian 7, Debian 8, or Ubuntu 14 server OS is supported. Other Debian flavours derived from Debian 7 or 8 or Ubuntu 14 might work too but are not officially supported.
  • See Hardware Requirements for hardware requirements and more.

Note

Installing a graphical/desktop environment with perfSONAR is not supported. These environments generally come with a Network Manager that conflicts with the way that perfSONAR is tuning the network interface parameters. We recommend doing only server grade OS installs.

Installation

Step 1: Configure APT

All you need to do is to configure the perfSONAR Debian repository source, along with our signing key, on your Debian/Ubuntu machine. You will need to follow the steps below as privileged user:

Debian 7 / Ubuntu 14:

cd /etc/apt/sources.list.d/
wget http://downloads.perfsonar.net/debian/perfsonar-wheezy-release.list
wget -qO - http://downloads.perfsonar.net/debian/perfsonar-debian-official.gpg.key | apt-key add -

Debian 8:

cd /etc/apt/sources.list.d/
wget http://downloads.perfsonar.net/debian/perfsonar-jessie-release.list
wget -qO - http://downloads.perfsonar.net/debian/perfsonar-debian-official.gpg.key | apt-key add -

Then refresh the packages list so APT knows about the perfSONAR packages:

apt-get update

Step 2: Install a Bundle

Choose one of the following bundles and see perfSONAR Installation Options page for more information about what these bundles are.

  • perfSONAR Test Point:

    apt-get install perfsonar-testpoint

    During the installation process, you’ll be asked to choose a password for the pscheduler database.

    Additionally, you may also install the toolkit service-watcher, ntp, security (firewall rules) and sysctl packages.

    Optional Packages

    To install additional packages, run:

    /usr/lib/perfsonar/scripts/install-optional-packages.py

    Or, you can manually install them to your liking by running:

    • apt-get install perfsonar-toolkit-servicewatcher
    • apt-get install perfsonar-toolkit-ntp
    • apt-get install perfsonar-toolkit-security
    • apt-get install perfsonar-toolkit-sysctl

    In particular, you should install perfsonar-toolkit-ntp if you are not managing your ntp.conf file in some other manner.

  • perfSONAR Core:

    apt-get install perfsonar-core

    During the installation process, you’ll be asked to choose a password for the pscheduler and the esmond databases.

    Just as in TestPoint Bundle, optional packages are available and can be installed via a script or manually.

    Optional Packages

    To install additional packages, run:

    /usr/lib/perfsonar/scripts/install-optional-packages.py

    Or, you can manually install them to your liking by running:

    • apt-get install perfsonar-toolkit-servicewatcher
    • apt-get install perfsonar-toolkit-ntp
    • apt-get install perfsonar-toolkit-security
    • apt-get install perfsonar-toolkit-sysctl

  • perfSONAR Central Management:

    apt-get install perfsonar-centralmanagement

    The Central Management bundle might be installed alongside another bundle.

  • perfSONAR Toolkit:

    apt-get install perfsonar-toolkit

    During the installation process, you’ll be asked to choose a password for the pscheduler and the esmond databases.

Step 3: Verify NTP and Tuning Parameters

Step 3 can be ignored for perfsonar-toolkit package installation as its instructions are included and run automatically

  • NTP Tuning

    • Auto-select NTP servers based on proximity

      The Network Time Protocol (NTP) is required by the tools in order to obtain accurate measurements. Some of the tools such as BWCTL/pscheduler will not even run unless NTP is configured. If the optional package perfsonar-toolkit-ntp was installed this has already been done for you, but if you want to rerun manually:

      /usr/lib/perfsonar/scripts/configure_ntpd new
service ntp restart

    You can also configure your own set of NTP servers if you want.

    You can verify if NTP is running with the following command:

    /usr/sbin/ntpq -p

  • System Tuning

    It is important to make sure that your host is properly tuned for maximum TCP performance on the WAN. You should verify that htcp, not reno, is the default TCP congestion control algorithm, and that the maximum TCP buffers are big enough for your paths of interest.

    If you have installed the perfsonar-toolkit-sysctl package, all should be ready for you, but if you want to rerun manually:

    /usr/lib/perfsonar/scripts/configure_sysctl

    Please refer to linux host tuning for more information.

Step 4: Firewall and Security Considerations

If you have installed the perfsonar-toolkit-security package, then your iptables are already configured with our default rules. The package also installs fail2ban.

If you would like to configure the rules manually, then please review the document here on the ports that need to be open.

Debian 7 / Ubuntu 14:

During the installation of the perfsonar-toolkit-security package you’ll be asked if you want to keep your current set of iptables rules, both for IPV4 and for IPv6. This is part of the usual installation process of the iptables-persistent package that we use to setup the firewall protecting your perfSONAR node. Whatever you answer to the question, your current rules will be saved as part of the perfsonar-toolkit-security package installation.

Debian 8:

The perfsonar-toolkit-security package uses firewalld to manage the firewall rules.

Additionally, bwctl and pscheduler allow you to limit the parameters of tests such as duration and bandwidth based on the requesters IP address. It does this through the files bwctl-server.limits and pscheduler/limits.conf. ESnet provides a file containing all R&E subnets, which is updated nightly. Instructions on how to download this file and configure pScheduler and bwctl to use it are described on the page Limiting Tests to R&E Networks Only.

Note that the perfsonar-toolkit-security package is automatically included in the perfsonar-toolkit bundle.

Step 5: Auto updates

To ensure you always have the most current and hopefully most secure packages you can install unattended-upgrades. You’ll need to configure it to actually install the available updates with the following commands:

apt-get install unattended-upgrades
echo 'APT::Periodic::Update-Package-Lists "1";' > /etc/apt/apt.conf.d/60unattended-upgrades-perfsonar
echo 'APT::Periodic::Unattended-Upgrade "1";' >> /etc/apt/apt.conf.d/60unattended-upgrades-perfsonar
echo 'APT::Periodic::AutocleanInterval "31";' >> /etc/apt/apt.conf.d/60unattended-upgrades-perfsonar
echo 'Unattended-Upgrade::Origins-Pattern:: "origin=perfSONAR";' >> /etc/apt/apt.conf.d/60unattended-upgrades-perfsonar

A cronjob will automatically install security updates from Debian/Ubuntu and new packages present in the perfsonar release repository every night. A trace of all updates applied will be stored in /var/log/unattended-upgrades/unattended-upgrades.log.

Full perfSONAR toolkit upgrades (i.e. upgrade to new major versions) might still need a manual intervention to properly conclude, but we will then announce that through our usual communication channels.

Note

Automatic updates are enabled by default in the perfSONAR Toolkit.

Step 6: Service Watcher

The perfsonar-toolkit-servicewatcher installs scripts that check if bwctl, pscheduler, owamp, databases and other processes are running and restarts if they have stopped unexpectedly.

The install automatically configures cron to run the service_watcher regularly.

To run the script manually, run:

/usr/lib/perfsonar/scripts/service_watcher

Step 7: Register your services

Note: this step can be done through the web interface if the perfsonar-toolkit bundle was installed. See Updating Administrative Information.

In order to publish the existence of your measurement services there is a single file you need to edit with some details about your host. You may populate this information by opening /etc/perfsonar/lsregistrationdaemon.conf. You will see numerous properties you may populate. They are commented out meaning you need to remove the # at the beginning of the line for them to take effect. The properties you are required to set are as follows:

##Hostname or IP address others can use to access your service
#external_address   myhost.mydomain.example

##Primary interface on host
#external_address_if_name eth0

and the other entries (administrator_email, site_name, city, country, latitude, longitude, etc.) are highly recommended.

In the example above remove the leading # before external_address and external_address_if_name respectively. Also replace myhost.mydomain.example and eth0 with the values relevant to your host. There are additional fields available for you to set. None of them are required but it is highly recommended you set as many as possible since it will make finding your services easier for others. More information on the available fields can be found in the configuration file provided by the install or at Lookup Service Registration Daemon Configuration File.

Step 8: Starting your services

You can start all the services by rebooting the host since all are configured to run by default. In order to check services status issue the following commands:

service pscheduler-scheduler status
service owamp-server status
service perfsonar-lsregistrationdaemon status

If they are not running you may start them with appropriate service commands as a root user. For example:

service pscheduler-scheduler start
service owamp-server start
service perfsonar-lsregistrationdaemon start

Note that you may have to wait a few hours for NTP to synchronize your clock before (re)starting owamp-server.

Configuration

Configuring Central Management

If your node is part of a measurement mesh and you installed perfsonar-centralmanagement bundle refer to the documentation here: Central Configuration Overview

Configuring perfSONAR through the web interface

After installing the perfsonar-toolkit bundle, you can refer to the general perfSONAR configuration from Configuring the Toolkit for the First Time.

Upgrading from 3.5.1

If you had installed perfSONAR 3.5.1 testpoint bundle and you now want to upgrade to perfSONAR 4.0, you’ll have to follow the instructions here below.

Add the 4.0 APT sources

Debian 7 / Ubuntu 14:

cd /etc/apt/sources.list.d/
wget http://downloads.perfsonar.net/debian/perfsonar-wheezy-release.list

Debian 8:

cd /etc/apt/sources.list.d/
wget http://downloads.perfsonar.net/debian/perfsonar-jessie-release.list

Then refresh the packages list so APT knows about the perfSONAR packages:

apt-get update

Upgrade the perfSONAR installation

To upgrade your perfsonar-testpoint installation, you just need to run:

apt-get dist-upgrade

During the installation process, you’ll be asked to choose a password for the pscheduler database. After the upgrade, the perfsonar-regulartesting daemon and the OPPD will be stoped as they are no longer required.

The measurements and the measurement archives that you already have defined in your 3.5.1 installation will be migrated to the 4.0 tools automatically.

Upgrade to another bundle

If you want to move from the perfsonar-testpoint bundle to another bundle that we now provide for Debian, you can do so by following the instructions above from Step 2: Install a Bundle.

Upgrade from Ubuntu 12 to Ubuntu 14

If you have a testpoint host running Ubuntu 12 and you want to upgrade it to Ubuntu 14, we recommend you to follow the instructions provided by the Ubuntu Community first and then upgrade to perfSONAR 4.0 once the Ubuntu upgrade is completed.