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Installing Amplia on Red Hat Enterprise Linux

To install an on-premises instance of Amplia on Red Hat Enterprise Linux, follow the steps below. For other platforms, click here.

Tip

Before you start, make sure you have completed the steps outlined on Planning before installation

Prerequisites

Note

These instructions are for RHEL 7. If you use RHEL 8, please contact us.

Warning

Before starting, make sure your system is registered and subscribed to the Red Hat Customer Portal

  • Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7.x
  • PKI SDK license (in Base64 format)
  • Web PKI license (Base64/binary format) -- only needed if users will issue certificates on their computers (web issuing procedure)
  • DNS entries previously created for:
    • Dashboard access (see Dashboard domain)
    • CRL publishing (see Access domains)
  • Connection string to a previously created SQL Server or PostgreSQL database

Install the ASP.NET Core Runtime 3.1

Important

These instructions assume you are logged in as root. If you are not, run sudo su - before continuing!

Enable the official .NET package repository (this only needs to be done once per machine), then install the ASP.NET Core runtime package:

subscription-manager repos --enable=rhel-7-server-dotnet-rpms
yum install rh-dotnet31-aspnetcore-runtime-3.1 -y
ln -s /opt/rh/rh-dotnet31/root/usr/bin/dotnet /usr/bin/dotnet
Note

If the command above fails, make sure your system is registered and attached to a Red Hat subscription

To test the installation, run:

dotnet --list-runtimes

The expected output is similar to:

Microsoft.AspNetCore.App 3.1.x [/usr/share/dotnet/shared/Microsoft.AspNetCore.App]
Microsoft.NETCore.App 3.1.x [/usr/share/dotnet/shared/Microsoft.NETCore.App]
Tip

For alternative ways to install the ASP.NET Core Runtime, see this page

Install Amplia

Note

Some steps use the nano command, which might not be installed on your system. Feel free to replace the command by vi or install nano with yum install nano

Create a local user to run the Amplia server:

mkdir /var/amplia
useradd --system --home-dir /var/amplia amplia
chown amplia:amplia /var/amplia

Create the site folder, download and extract the binaries:

Note

To test the next version of Amplia, currently in Release Candidate stage, replace amplia-x.y.z.tar.gz on the following commands with amplia-4.12.0-rc02.tar.gz. Beware: Release Candidate versions are not production-ready and thus should only be installed on staging or test environments!

mkdir /usr/share/amplia
curl -O https://cdn.lacunasoftware.com/amplia/amplia-4.11.0.tar.gz
tar xzf amplia-4.11.0.tar.gz -C /usr/share/amplia
chmod -R a=,u+rwX,go+rX /usr/share/amplia
Note

Site binaries can be read by any user and can only be changed by root users. This means that the application user (amplia) can read but not change the files, which is intentional.

Create the configuration file from the given template:

mkdir /etc/amplia
cp /usr/share/amplia/config-templates/linux/appsettings.conf /etc/amplia/
chown -R root:amplia /etc/amplia
chmod -R a=,u+rwX,g+rX /etc/amplia
Note

Configuration files can only be read by members of the amplia group and can only be changed by the root user. This is important to protect sensitive data stored on the configuration files from unauthorized access.

Configure Amplia

Edit the configuration file to configure your Amplia instance:

nano /etc/amplia/appsettings.conf

On the [General] section, to fill the EncryptionKey setting generate a 256-bit key to encrypt sensitive data stored on the database:

openssl rand -base64 32

Also on the [General] section, to fill the RootPasswordHash setting choose a strong password for root access to the dashboard and hash it:

dotnet /usr/share/amplia/Lacuna.Amplia.Site.dll -- hash-root-pass
Note

If you wish to enable user management, leave the RootPasswordHash setting blank and follow the steps on Configure OpenID Connect instead

Fill the remaining settings according to the instructions on the configuration file.

Set up a daemon

Create the service definition file:

touch /etc/systemd/system/amplia.service
nano /etc/systemd/system/amplia.service

Enter the following:

[Unit]
Description=Amplia

[Service]
WorkingDirectory=/usr/share/amplia
ExecStart=/usr/bin/dotnet Lacuna.Amplia.Site.dll
Restart=always
RestartSec=10
KillSignal=SIGINT
SyslogIdentifier=amplia
User=amplia
Environment=ASPNETCORE_ENVIRONMENT=Linux
Environment=DOTNET_PRINT_TELEMETRY_MESSAGE=false

[Install]
WantedBy=multi-user.target

Save the file, then enable the service and start it:

systemctl enable amplia
systemctl start amplia
systemctl status amplia

The expected output is similar to:

* amplia.service - Amplia
   Loaded: loaded (/etc/systemd/system/amplia.service; enabled; vendor preset: enabled)
   Active: active (running) since Sun 2019-07-07 05:50:04 UTC; 4min 22s ago
 Main PID: 10960 (dotnet)
    Tasks: 31 (limit: 2319)
   CGroup: /system.slice/amplia.service
           └─10960 /usr/bin/dotnet Lacuna.Amplia.Site.dll

...

Dec 04 12:45:08 server.patorum.com amplia[32562]: Hosting environment: Production
Dec 04 12:45:08 server.patorum.com amplia[32562]: Content root path: /usr/share/amplia
Dec 04 12:45:08 server.patorum.com amplia[32562]: Now listening on: http://localhost:5000
Dec 04 12:45:08 server.patorum.com amplia[32562]: Application started. Press Ctrl+C to shut down.
Hint: Some lines were ellipsized, use -l to show in full.

If necessary, restart the service: systemctl restart amplia

To test that the Amplia server is running, run:

curl http://localhost:5000/api/system/info

The expected output is something like:

{"productName":"Lacuna Amplia","productVersion":"4.x.x","spaVersion":"...","timestamp":"..."}

Set up a reverse proxy server

Note

If you prefer to use Apache instead of Nginx, see this article.

Install Nginx (if not already installed):

subscription-manager repos --enable=rhel-server-rhscl-7-rpms
yum install rh-nginx116
systemctl enable rh-nginx116-nginx
systemctl start rh-nginx116-nginx
scl enable rh-nginx116 bash

Test that Nginx is running:

curl -I http://localhost/

Check the first lines of the output, which should be similar to:

HTTP/1.1 200 OK
Server: nginx/...
...

Edit the Nginx configuration:

nano /etc/opt/rh/rh-nginx116/nginx/nginx.conf

Delete or comment-out (with #s) the entire server section, shown below:

    server {
        listen       80 default_server;
        listen       [::]:80 default_server;
        server_name  _;
        root         /opt/rh/rh-nginx116/root/usr/share/nginx/html;

        # Load configuration files for the default server block.
        include      /etc/opt/rh/rh-nginx116/nginx/default.d/*.conf;

        location / {
        }

        error_page 404 /404.html;
        location = /40x.html {
        }

        error_page 500 502 503 504  /50x.html;
        location = /50x.html {
        }

        # proxy the PHP scripts to Apache listening on 127.0.0.1:80
        #
        #location ~ \.php$ {
        #    proxy_pass   http://127.0.0.1;
        #}

        # pass the PHP scripts to FastCGI server listening on 127.0.0.1:9000
        #
        #location ~ \.php$ {
        #    root           html;
        #    fastcgi_pass   127.0.0.1:9000;
        #    fastcgi_index  index.php;
        #    fastcgi_param  SCRIPT_FILENAME  /scripts$fastcgi_script_name;
        #    include        fastcgi_params;
        #}

        # deny access to .htaccess files, if Apache's document root
        # concurs with nginx's one
        #
        #location ~ /\.ht {
        #    deny  all;
        #}
    }

Create a site configuration file for Amplia:

touch /etc/opt/rh/rh-nginx116/nginx/conf.d/amplia.conf
nano /etc/opt/rh/rh-nginx116/nginx/conf.d/amplia.conf

Enter the following, replacing the dashboard domain on the server_name entry (see Dashboard domain):

server {
    listen        80;
    server_name   localhost ca.patorum.com;
    location / {
        proxy_pass         http://localhost:5000;
        proxy_http_version 1.1;
        proxy_set_header   Upgrade $http_upgrade;
        proxy_set_header   Connection keep-alive;
        proxy_set_header   Host $host;
        proxy_cache_bypass $http_upgrade;
        proxy_set_header   X-Forwarded-For $proxy_add_x_forwarded_for;
        proxy_set_header   X-Forwarded-Proto $scheme;
    }
}
Tip

Ideally, your site configuration should contain the entries ssl_certificate and ssl_certificate_key with a valid SSL certificate. This configuration is outside of the scope of these instructions.

Allow Nginx to access the Amplia service:

setsebool -P httpd_can_network_connect on

Test the Nginx configuration and reload it:

nginx -t
nginx -s reload

Test the site:

curl http://localhost/api/system/info

Allow HTTP and HTTPS traffic to your system (if not already allowed):

firewall-cmd --zone=public --add-port=80/tcp --permanent
firewall-cmd --zone=public --add-port=443/tcp --permanent
firewall-cmd --reload

See also

  • Updating Amplia on Linux
  • Troubleshooting
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