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Installation

Package Overview

The N-Squared Flow Editor software is package into a single package called n2fe. Different environmental targets of this package, such as n2fe-prod or n2fe-dev, are also available from N-Squared on request. These targeted packages allow for multiple N2FE environments to be easily installed and maintained on a single server.

In all cases, these environmental targets act the same way as the untargeted n2fe package, the only difference being the location into which files are installed by the package. As a general rule of thumb, if a file or directory is named n2fe in the standard package, then that file/directory will be named n2fe-<environment instead for the environment package.

The N2FE package is designed to be installed on Linux based systems such as RedHat Linux and Debian. Installation is performed using standard package management tools - yum and rpm on RedHat based systems, apt, apt-get and dpkg on debian based systems.

This document provides instructions for installing this package.

OS Support

The N-Squared Flow Editor is officially supported on the following systems:

RedHat based systems:

Debian based systems:

In practice, N2FE will run on any relatively modern Debian-based or RedHat-based distribution with appropriate adjustments to these installation instructions. In particular CentOS may be substituted for RedHat Linux. CentOS 6.8 instructions are available here.

Minimum Server Requirements

N2FE is a lightweight web application and can run on lightly resourced virtual machines server load, a minimum server environment would consist of:

  1. Disk space of 1Gb above the minimum installation required for the Linux distribution being installed.
  2. At least 1Gb of RAM (however note that some distributions may require more RAM than this for installation purposes).
  3. At least one 2GHz CPU, or equivalent.

In practice, a virtual machine with 20Gb of disk, 2Gb of RAM and a 2GHz CPU will provide the necessary resources to run N2FE under light user load.

Installation Assumptions

Due to the complexity of Linux OS installations, these N2FE installation instructions make a number of basic assumptions regarding the OS environment into which they are installed. These assumptions are as follows:

  1. Apache 2 is installed and working. In practice N2FE expects that /etc/apache2 or /etc/httpd/ exists and holds the Apache configuration files, that apachectl exists on the server and can be executed, and that Apache is successfully running as a web server.
  2. Apache 2 is available over HTTP by other hosts. In practice N2FE assumes that all firewall configuration necessary to allow Apache 2 to be accessible over the appropriate network interfaces has been completed, and that if a user attempts to access the N2FE host over HTTP (or HTTPS), they are able to.
  3. SELinux is set to PERMISSIVE mode. SELinux is a complex security environment and N-Squared have not targed N2FE at SELinux enabled environments. If this is a security requirement for you, please contact N-Squared to discuss SELinux support.
  4. Perl 5.10 or later is available. N2FE requires that Perl 5.10 is available prior to installation.

Installation Disclaimer

No installation guide can cover every pre-requisite or potential eventuality of package installation. While N-Squared has documented the N2FE installation, sometimes a target environment may differ in an unexpected manner and require steps in addition to those documented here to achieve a working N2FE environment. Contact N-Squared if such a situation arises for you.

Overall Installation Steps

To achieve a working N2FE installation, the following high level steps should be followed:

  1. Create and install a N2FE server with the noted minimum server resources.
  2. Install one of the supported operating systems.
  3. Install Apache2, and configure such that Apache is running and accessible to other clients. Your OS documentation will include information on how to achieve this.
  4. Ensure that the other pre-requisites listed under Installation Assumptions above are met.
  5. Install and configure Jarvis. Note that the N2FE installation instructions provide a short Jarvis installation guide for convenience.
  6. Install N2FE following the instructions included in this guide for the appropriate OS.
  7. Perform the post-installation configuration tasks.
  8. Perform the post-installation OCNCC/OC3C configuration tasks.
  9. Perform any further local configuration required. See the configuration and security section for more information on available configuration.