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Each CHARON-AXP emulated CPU requires a corresponding physical core. So the total number of the host CPUs must exceed the number of emulated CPUs since some of the host CPUs must be dedicated to serving CHARON I/O operations and host operating system needs. If several CHARON instances run in parallel, the required number of CPU cores is cumulative.

The following table shows the minimum and recommended number of CPUs required for each virtual HP Alpha instance (note that each CHARON instance is able to run on 2 CPU cores hosts, but this configuration does not support emulation of all the virtual CPUs):

CPU type and speed

Since CHARON-AXP utilizes LAHF instruction in HP Alpha CPU emulation please avoid usage of early (pre-2005) AMD64 and Intel 64 CPUs for the CHARON host system since they lack this capability. AMD Athlon 64, Opteron and Turion 64 revision D processors from March 2005 and Intel Pentium 4 G1 stepping from December 2005 are LAHF instruction capable.

Concerning CPU speed, the general recommendation is that higher CPU frequency is better since it allows better emulated HP Alpha performance. The minimum recommendation is at least 3 GHz.

Operative memory

The minimum host memory size depends on the amount of HP Alpha memory to be emulated and the number of CHARON-AXP instances to be run on one host.
The minimum host memory is calculated according to the following formula:

The minimum host memory = (2Gb +  the amount of HP Alpha memory emulated) per CHARON-AXP instance.

Disk storage

The total amount of disk space required for CHARON-AXP can be calculated as a sum of all the disk/tape image sizes plus 50 MB for the CHARON software plus space required for the normal host OS. Temporary disk storage is often needed when setting up a new server, for saveset storage, software installation kits, etc.

Ethernet adapters

CHARON-AXP networking requires dedicated host Ethernet adapters; their number must be equal to the emulated adapters to be configured in CHARON-AXP. One adapter (optionally) can be left to the host for TCP/IP networking etc. It is also possible to use virtual network interfaces, but in consideration of performance, it is recommended to use physical ones only.

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Software Requirements

• Fedora Core Linux version 20
• Red Hat Enterprise Linux version 7.1

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Host system preparation

If a network-wide license (red dongle or software license) is going to be used, do the following:

• On server side (where the network license will reside): open port 1947 for both TCP and UDP
• On clients side: open UDP ports 30000-65535
• Both on server and client sides: set default gateway

Please consult with your Linux User's Guide on details.

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Before installation

Login as system administrator ("root") on the host system. Because Sentinel HASP runtime relies on 32-bit compatibility libraries to run on Linux, the 32-bit compatibility libraries should be installed first:

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When starting, the CHARON-AXP software checks the available number of host CPU cores. Currently, this check is based on the maximum number of AXP CPUs that can be emulated, not on the number of the actually configured AXP CPUs. Therefore the number of host CPU cores recommended for the maximum number of emulated CPUs - as shown in the right column of the table above - must be available. If the available number of host CPU cores is below this number, CHARON-AXP will issue a warning message even if the requirements for the configured number of AXP CPUs are fulfilled. The CHARON-AXP software will work despite this warning if the requirements for the configured number of AXP CPUs are fulfilled.

CPU type and speed

Since CHARON-AXP utilizes LAHF instruction in HP Alpha CPU emulation please avoid usage of early (pre-2005) AMD64 and Intel 64 CPUs for the CHARON host system since they lack this capability. AMD Athlon 64, Opteron and Turion 64 revision D processors from March 2005 and Intel Pentium 4 G1 stepping from December 2005 are LAHF instruction capable.

Concerning CPU speed, the general recommendation is that higher CPU frequency is better since it allows better emulated HP Alpha performance. The minimum recommendation is at least 3 GHz.

Operative memory

The minimum host memory size depends on the amount of HP Alpha memory to be emulated and the number of CHARON-AXP instances to be run on one host.
The minimum host memory is calculated according to the following formula:

The minimum host memory = (2Gb +  the amount of HP Alpha memory emulated) per CHARON-AXP instance.

Disk storage

The total amount of disk space required for CHARON-AXP can be calculated as a sum of all the disk/tape image sizes plus 50 MB for the CHARON software plus space required for the normal host OS. Temporary disk storage is often needed when setting up a new server, for saveset storage, software installation kits, etc.

Ethernet adapters

CHARON-AXP networking requires dedicated host Ethernet adapters; their number must be equal to the emulated adapters to be configured in CHARON-AXP. One adapter (optionally) can be left to the host for TCP/IP networking etc. It is also possible to use virtual network interfaces, but in consideration of performance, it is recommended to use physical ones only.

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Software Requirements

• Linux Red Hat Enterprise 7.0 and 7.1, 64bit
  
• Linux Fedora Core 20, 21, and 22, 64bit
• VMware ESXi 5.x and 6.0 (requires a supported Linux operating system on top of a ESXi virtual machine) 

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Host system preparation

If a network-wide license (red dongle or software license) is going to be used, do the following:

• On server side (where the network license will reside): open port 1947 for both TCP and UDP
• On clients side: open UDP ports 30000-65535
• Both on server and client sides: set default gateway

Please consult with your Linux User's Guide on details.

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Before installation

1. Login as the superuser ("root") on the host system. Because Sentinel HASP runtime relies on 32-bit compatibility libraries to run on Linux, the 32-bit compatibility libraries must be installed before continuing. If the emulator host has access to a package repository, either local or remote, use the following command:

   # yum install glibc.i686

   
   

   Note

   Sometimes it is not possible to use an online repository for the installation of 32-bit glibc package. In this case the following procedure should be followed: 1. If you have a Linux distributibe CD-ROM, insert it into CD-ROM drive 1.1. If auto-mount is not enabled, mount the CD-ROM. Example: # mount /dev/sr0 /mnt 2. If you have an ISO image of the distribution CD, you can mount it using a loopback device: # mount /path/to/ISO-image.iso /mnt -o loop 3. Switch to the directory containing the packages. This directory depends on your Linux distribution. Example: # cd /mnt/Packages/ 4. Locate the target "glibc.i686" package: # ls -la glibc-*i686.rpm 5. Install the "glibc.i686" and the packages it depends on. Example: # rpm -i glibc-2.17-157.el7.i686.rpm nss-softokn-freebl-3.16.2.3-14.4.el7.i686.rpm 6. If the above command reports additional unsatisfied dependencies, add the corresponding packages to the above command line. 7. Umount the CD-ROM or ISO file if necessary: # umount /mnt

   
   

2. Create a directory for the CHARON-AXP distribution and copy the TAR.GZ files there. Set this directory as the default with a "cd" command as shown in the following example:

   # mkdir /charon_dist # cp /temp/charon-axp-4.7-17101.68704.fc20.tar.

   gz /charon_dist
   # cd /charon_dist

   gz /charon_dist # cd /charon_dist

   
   

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Distribution preparation

1. Extract the contents of the distribution TAR.GZ files to the current directory:

   # tar -xvzf charon-axp-<VER>-<BN>.<VC>.<ZZ>.tar.gz

   where:

   	Description
   VER	Version of CHARON-AXP product, for example 4.7
   BN	Build Number of CHARON-AXP product, for example 17101
   VC	68704 - CHARON-AXP product vendor code
   ZZ	CHARON-AXP target operating system identifier. For Fedora Core 20 'ZZ' value is 'fc20', for Red Hat Linux 7.1 the value is 'el71'

   Example:

   # tar -xvzf charon-axp-4.7-17101.68704.fc20.tar.gz

   As a result, the new directory "charon-axp-<VER>-<BN>.<VC>.<ZZ>" will be created.
    

2. Switch to the directory, created by the "tar" command in the previous step:

   # cd charon-axp-<VER>-<BN>.<VC>.<ZZ>

   Example:

   # cd charon-axp-4.7-17101.68704.fc20

        

3. The distribution directory contains the following RPM files with CHARON-AXP product, Sentinel run-time, license support and utilities:

   File name	Description
   charon-axp-VER-BN.VC.ZZ.x86_64.rpm	CHARON-AXP
   aksusbd-2.5-1.i386.rpm	HASP Run-time
   charon-license-VER-BN.VC.ZZ.x86_64.rpm	CHARON Libraries
   charon-utils-VER-BN.VC.ZZ.x86_64.rpm	CHARON Utilities

   Example:

   # ls aksusbd-2.5-1.i386.rpm charon-axp-4.7-17101.68704.fc20.x86_64.rpm charon-license-4.7-17101.68704.fc20.x86_64.rpm charon-utils-4.7-17101.68704.fc20.x86_64.rpm

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Issue the following command to install all the RPMs in the directory:

Enter "y" to agree to install all the listed packages.

Example:

Check that the installation process has completed successfully.

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Example:

Re-login (as "root") to apply PATH settings or execute the following command:

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By default CHARON is installed in the "/opt/charon" directory. It has the following subdirectories:

The most important directory at this stage is the "/cfg" directory since it contains template configuration files with examples of typical configuration parameters. We will focus our attention on this subject in the next chapter.

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Create a specific account "charon" for running CHARON:

Any existing user can also be used to run CHARON. In this case issue the following command to include this existing user to specific groups:

Example:

Re-login to apply changes.

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• Copy aksusbd-2.5-1.i386.rpm and charon-license-4.7-<build>.68704.<OS identifier>.x86_64.rpm files (see above) to the server in any directory, for example "/temp"
• Login as "root" on the server
• Switch to that directory

• Install the copied file using "yum"
  Example:

  # cd /temp # yum install aksusbd* charon-license-*

  
  

• Connect the network HASP dongle to the server USB port.

Software license

If the CHARON license is a software license (SL) it is installed on the host using the following procedure:

1. Run hasp_srm_view utility in the following way to get the host fingerprint file ("my_host.c2v" in this example):

   # hasp_srm_view -fgp my_host.c2v

   
   

2. Send the resulting file to STROMASYS. In return STROMASYS will provide you with a "*.v2c" file, for example "your_license.v2c"
3. Copy the received "your_license.v2c" file to the CHARON host to any folder then invoke the system default web browser and enter URL http://localhost:1947 to display "Sentinel Admin Control Center" (ACC) web interface. This interface allows you to view and manage CHARON licenses.
4. In the ACC use the following menu items: first "Browse" for the "your_license.v2c" file and then "Apply File"
5. Ensure that the software license appears now in the "Sentinel Keys" menu of the ACC.

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• Text of the license is displayed correctly by the hasp_srm_view utility, no error messages are shown
• Content of the license looks correct. For example license number, major and minor versions, minimum and maximum build numbers, CHARON-AXP products and allowed hardware (CHARON-AXP models) should be checked. More details on the license content can be found in the CHARON-AXP Licensing chapter of this Guide.

Example:

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1. Invoke the system default web browser and enter URL http://localhost:1947 to display "Sentinel Admin Control Center" (ACC) web interface.
2. Click on "Sentinel Keys" link to open up "Sentinel Keys Section" page
3. Make sure that one and only one CHARON HASP or SL license is present.

Removing licenses can be done by physical disconnection of the corresponding USB HASP keys from the CHARON host and physical disconnection of the network HASP keys from all hosts on local network (or by disabling remote access to network licenses from the CHARON host - see detailed explanation below).

Software licenses can also be uninstalled with the hasp_srm_view utility "-tfr" option in the following way:

Example:

It is also possible to disable access to network licenses if only a local license is to be used: Click on "Configuration" link to open up "Configuration for Sentinel Manager" page.

Uncheck "Allow Access to Remote Licenses" and "Broadcast Search for Remote Licenses" checkboxes from the "Access to Remote License Managers" tab, then press "Submit" button to apply changes.

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Network configuration

In most cases, CHARON will use a network. If so, CHARON requires a dedicated network interface with any other protocols including TCP/IP removed at the host level.

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Login as root. Type "ncu" and press Enter. The following menu will appear:

==================================================================
bridge name     bridge id        STP enabled            interfaces

The utility lists available network interfaces (both physical and virtual) and indicates whether they are dedicated to the host or to CHARON and whether they are currently in use by host operating system.

"ncu" offers several options:

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Enter "1", then type "eth1" and press Enter:

Now the interface "eth1" is dedicated to CHARON-AXP:

==================================================================
bridge name     bridge id        STP enabled            interfaces

Enter "6" to return to console prompt.

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To choose an interface to be used for CHARON networking do the following:

Choose some interface to be used by CHARON, for example "eth1"

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To designate the chosen interface to CHARON open up the file "/etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/ifcfg-ethN" (where N is the number of the interface to be used for CHARON, in our case it is "1") and make sure that all the IP-setup related parameters are removed. The file must look like this ("eth1" is used as example):

Switching off the offload parameters

First determine what additional parameters are currently set to "on" on the host network adapter to be used by CHARON. To do that type:

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Example:

Then use ethtool to switch off all the offload parameters:

Example:

In the example above let's create a temporary file containing the commands to be run on system startup, since the offload parameters must be switched off for each reboot:

Let's suppose that the name of the file is "offload_off_eth1.txt". In this case running it on system startup can be done in the following ways:

On Red Hat Linux:

On Fedora Core:

# echo '#!/usr/bin/bash' > /etc/rc.d/rc.local       Do not use double quotes, use single ones # cat offload_off_eth1.txt >> /etc/rc.d/rc.local # chmod 755 /etc/rc.d/rc.local  # ln -s /usr/lib/systemd/system/rc-local.service /etc/systemd/system/rc-local.service  # systemctl daemon-reload

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