perfSONAR combines various sets of measurement tools and services. Commonly people install the entire set of tools using the Toolkit ISO (as detailed at Getting the Software) but this may not be optimal for every situation. For example if you only need a subset of the tools, you have an existing CentOS system on which you’d like to install the software and/or you are doing a large deployment of perfSONAR nodes. With this in mind RPMs are available that 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.
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.
The process configures yum to point at the necessary repositories to get packages needed for perfSONAR. You will need to follow the steps below as privileged user:
CentOS 6:
yum install epel-release
CentOS 7:
yum install epel-release
Install the perfSONAR-repo RPM:
CentOS 6:
yum install http://software.internet2.edu/rpms/el6/x86_64/main/RPMS/perfSONAR-repo-0.8-1.noarch.rpmCentOS 7:
yum install http://software.internet2.edu/rpms/el7/x86_64/main/RPMS/perfSONAR-repo-0.8-1.noarch.rpm
Refresh yum’s cache so it detects the new RPMS:
yum clean all
CHOOSE ONE of the following bundles and see perfSONAR Installation Options page for more information about what these bundles are.
perfSONAR Tools:
yum install perfsonar-tools
perfSONAR Test Point:
yum install perfsonar-testpoint
perfSONAR Core:
yum install perfsonar-core
perfSONAR Central Management:
yum install perfsonar-centralmanagement
perfSONAR Toolkit:
yum install perfsonar-toolkit
In addition to any of the bundles above you may also optionnally choose to install one or more of our add-on packages (these are automatically added on the perfsonar-toolkit bundle):
- yum install perfsonar-toolkit-ntp - Automatically detects closest NTP servers and sets them in ntp.conf
- yum install perfsonar-toolkit-security - Adds default firewall rules and installs fail2ban
- yum install perfsonar-toolkit-servicewatcher- Adds a cron job that checks if services are still running.
- yum install perfsonar-toolkit-sysctl - Adds default sysctl tuning settings
- yum install perfsonar-toolkit-systemenv-testpoint - Configures auto-update and set some default logging locations
You may also run the command below to get everything listed above on perfsonar-testpoint and perfsonar-core bundles:
/usr/lib/perfsonar/scripts/install-optional-packages.py
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 an optional package was installed, then run:
/usr/lib/perfsonar/scripts/configure_ntpd new
For CentOS6:
service ntpd restart
For CentOS7:
systemctl restart ntpd
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.
Configure perfSONAR sysctl settings
If the optional package was installed, then run:
/usr/lib/perfsonar/scripts/configure_sysctl
Advanced Manual Tuning
For more information please refer to http://fasterdata.es.net/host-tuning/linux/
Package Install
If you have installed the perfsonar-toolkit-security package, then you can configure the firewalld / IPTable entries by running:
/usr/lib/perfsonar/scripts/configure_firewall install
The package also installs fail2ban.
Or, if you would like to configure the rules manually, then please review the document here on the ports that need to be open.
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.
You can also enable yum ‘auto updates’ to ensure you always have the most current and hopefully most secure packages. To do this follow the steps in Managing Automatic Updates from the Command-Line.
Note
Automatic updates are enabled by default in the perfSONAR Toolkit.
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
Note: this step can be done through the web interface if the perfsonar-toolkit bundle (or the ISO) was installed. See Updating Administrative Information.
No actual configuration is required but filling fields such as administrator_email, site_name, city, country, latitude, longitude, etc. are highly recommended. You can add these by removing the leading # of any property and filling it out with a proper value for your host. Changes will be picked-up automatically without need for any restarts.
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:
For CentOS6:
service pscheduler-scheduler status service pscheduler-runner status service pscheduler-archiver status service pscheduler-ticker status service owamp-server status service bwctl-server status service perfsonar-lsregistrationdaemon statusFor CentOS7:
systemctl status pscheduler-scheduler systemctl status pscheduler-runner systemctl status pscheduler-archiver systemctl status pscheduler-ticker systemctl status owamp-server systemctl status bwctl-server systemctl status perfsonar-lsregistrationdaemon
If they are not running you may start them with appropriate init commands as a root user. For example:
For CentOS6:
service pscheduler-scheduler start service pscheduler-runner start service pscheduler-archiver start service pscheduler-ticker start service owamp-server start service bwctl-server start service perfsonar-lsregistrationdaemon startFor CentOS7:
systemctl start pscheduler-scheduler systemctl start pscheduler-runner systemctl start pscheduler-archiver systemctl start pscheduler-ticker systemctl start perfsonar-lsregistrationdaemon systemctl start bwctl-server systemctl start owamp-server
Note that you may have to wait a few hours for NTP to synchronize your clock before starting bwctl-server and owamp-server.
If your node is part of a measurement mesh and you installed perfsonar-centralmanagement bundle refer to the documentation here: Central Configuration Overview
If you installed the perfsonar-toolkit or perfsonar-centralmanagement bundle on an existing CentOS host, you’ll probably need to disable SELinux to gain access to the web interface. This is done with the following commands:
echo 0 >/selinux/enforce
sed -i 's/^SELINUX=enforcing/SELINUX=permissive/' /etc/selinux/config
After that, you can refer to the general perfSONAR configuration from Configuring the Toolkit for the First Time.